In this episode of The Build Up, Dan chats with Mark Morris, Marketing Manager at Thomas Dudley, recorded live at The Installer Show.

Mark shares how the 110-year-old British brand continues to stay relevant through loyalty-building with plumbers, standout product innovation, and bold marketing moves — including sending their Quantum siphon into space.

They also talk agency relationships, the power of a great brief, and how Thomas Dudley uses social media and reputation to connect with merchants and end users alike.

Whether you’re in-house or agency-side, this one’s full of takeaways for anyone working in construction marketing.

Hello and welcome to The Buildup. This is the podcast for marketing

in the construction industry. I'm

Dan, the creative director at Dissident. We've been working with construction brands for

a number of years. It's an exciting and rapidly evolving industry, and

that's why we created a podcast dedicated to the weird and wonderful world

of construction marketing. I'll be speaking to leading brands, other agencies,

creatives, influencers, and startups. This is the

resource I wish we had when we first started out in the industry. Thank

you for being here and welcome to The Builder. Welcome

to The Buildup. I'm Dan, the creative director at Dissonant. We are a social first creative

agency working with construction brands to create hard-hitting social media marketing

and content. And we're live today at the Thomas Dudley stand at

The Installer Show, and I'm joined with the marketing manager of Thomas Dudley, Mark

Hi Dan, no worries. I'm glad to have you here on the stand. It's been a busy few

And the stand's looking amazing, which is great. And it's packed. I don't know

whether you can hear in the background, but it is absolutely rambo. First of all, Emma,

Emma, can we get a little noise for Mark

Morris, please, everybody? Woo! Yeah, Mark

Morris! Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Literally, all the dissing team

was just looking at me, just not engaging with that at all. Thank you

so much, guys. That's my fan club. On

that note, can you give us an instruction to yourself, Mark, what you do and a bit about Thomas

Yeah, I'm Mark Morris. I'm the marketing manager for Thomas Dudley Plumbing

Products. I look after all things marketing, from

printing a brochure right the way through to planning and executing exhibitions to

sending products into space. So, yeah, completely Absolutely

And in terms of Thomas Dudley, can you kind of summarize what Thomas Dudley does as

Yeah, Thomas Dudley has been around about 110 odd years. It's

a mixture of a few different companies, a few different

products it makes. It owns its own foundry, which was the original business, make

drain covers. It could also do things like cat's eyes to the

road, pretty much anything kind of castings it'll do. And then

we have the plumbing products division that makes anything inside and outside

the toilet system, flush valves, siphons, brassware, anything

like that. And then we've got another company called Rugby Plastics

that makes things like stadium football seats, things

like that. And WaterFit, it makes pipes under the ground. So yeah, pretty

A real mixed bag of different stuff. I'm right in saying you guys have

Yeah, we haven't yet. So yeah, it's one of our divisions makes

I mean, so Thomas Dudley's an interesting one, and I suppose this can

go for a few different brands, but there are plumbers and

installers over the UK that are, they

are massive Thomas Dudley fans. They are Thomas

Dudley through and through. If there's a thing that they need to change or if there's a

problem that they need to fix, they're going straight to Thomas Dudley. Can

you try and extrapolate that? How does that work? And

Our products are reliable. Well, first of all, they're made in Britain, they're made here.

So people really put a bit of a premium on that. So, you

know, you can buy products from abroad, you can do that. But

a lot of our people who promise you buy our products, they

value that and say, okay, yeah, I'm helping to support the

British industry and the local industry as well. You know, these people, we actually

are called Thomas Dudley and we're based in Dudley. Is

that a happy accident, by the way? It is a happy accident, yeah. I like to think there's something

more romantic involved in it, but there isn't. It's just, I mean, to be fair, whether the

original owners of Walpast went, you know, that's Dudley, I'm going to settle in

Dudley, why not? Why not? Yeah, so it is a bit of a happy coincidence. But

when you buy one of our products, our customers know they're helping to support the

people on the shop floor in Dudley, the local area and the wider economy.

And also they're reliable. And if there's any

problems, they can pick up the phone to us. You know, we're there and we answer the phone.

It's difficult for people to, if they're struggling

to get a hold of somebody and their customer service is terrible, that

says a lot about a company. Our customer service always gets very high

ratings and plumbers, merchant customers,

That's really cool. I mean, I've had a tour of the factory a couple of times, and

it's really, really impressive. And it's true. It

is literally like, for a lot of businesses, you think, OK, can I have a tour

of your factory? But it's kind of a distribution warehouse or something like that. There is

people making stuff on machines all over the place.

There is, yeah. Obviously, there's moldings coming

off everywhere, whole production lines

of people doing all sorts of intricate bits and bobs and robots and all that kind of thing.

And we like thinking there's a family feel to it. A

lot of that is because a lot of them are related to each other. There's parents,

kids, there's two or three generations all working in there at the same time.

I almost imagine, I don't think this is the case, but I always imagine like, you

know, the sort of water mills that sprung up and then the owners would kind

of create almost like a the surrounding areas for

It's a bit like Bourneville, the Bourneville Trust sort of does that sort of thing, yeah. I

think we're not quite that big but, you know, the company does an

awful lot for its employees. You know, every Christmas it'll buy loads of pantomime

seats at Wolverhampton Civic, sorry, Wolverhampton Grand. And,

you know, it's done, it buys cinema tickets every week so you can

take, you know, your family to the cinema and they'll be doing that all the time,

you know, hundreds at a time. So it does a lot more than some

people think a business would do. Our company does it. bigger

and better that way. And it does it without fanfare as well. It

just sees that that's the importance of it to do. Look after your employees

And when it comes to acquiring new

customers, do you think that's a generational thing? Because it's

been around for so long, do you think it's the thing where if you've got perhaps

an apprentice that's coming up and

the person that they're learning from is a Thomas Dudley guy, do you think it's

Yeah, I think so. I mean, we know in the past that, you

know, a lot of our, you know, we did a bit of research and some of our customers

are a bit older. So, you know, we've engaged, we've tried to

engage, you know, I'm not exactly Mr. Young and trendy myself, but, you

know, we tried to engage with product ambassadors who

are social media influencers within the plumbing trade. And

they're very big fans of Thomas Dudley. And so their enthusiasm and

their passion comes across to the younger generation. And

so we've gone into colleges where plumbing's been

taught and we'll give them free product to trial

and test. We'll give them posters and explanation guides and

training in how the products work. Things that they wouldn't normally get, we

go in and do. So that then helps them when they come out of a college course

and go into the real world, they then start to recognize our products

and that's how you continually gain that brand identity. It's

not easy because there are lots of choice out there and

that's why we want to try and sing the benefits of our products,

the Made in Britain, the quality, reliability, things like that. Yeah,

one of the worst things for a plumber is a callback. Yes. And it

makes you that job they did was a waste of money. Yes. So they know when they put

one of our products in there, it's not going to fail. They're not going to get called back. Yes.

And that you can't put a price on that for a plumber because it's all about

reputation. and you know reputational damage for a plumber because

if one of our products fails it's the plumber's reputation that suffers. Yes.

They might moan to us but it's their reputation that suffers. Yeah. So

we try to do everything we can to make sure that doesn't happen because

we understand how the reputation for

Absolutely. Yeah, that's massive. And obviously, if that suffers, they're going to start thinking,

Yeah, that's exactly it. And you know, we don't want that. So we will

Yeah. Wicked. I love that. It's a really cool story. Thomas

Dudley, then in terms of marketing, you're the marketing manager. Is there something

that you guys are doing? This kind of interesting and unique

to not necessarily unique, but More unique compared to

your competitors like what are the kind of things that you guys are doing? That's kind

of a bit different or at least it's working well,

We try to make sure that we keep changing every year. And there's that joke of

someone saying, I've been in the job 20 years, I've got 20 years experience. Someone said, no, you've

got one year experience, you've repeated 20 times. We

try to make sure we don't do that. We're always looking for what's new, what's

coming along next, what can we engage with? Which is why we talk

to companies like yourselves, so we can say, okay, what's

new and on the horizon, what's going to keep us looking fresh? So we don't

just repeat, repeat, repeat. It's okay, let's do something different. When

we come to this installer show, we try and do something different. How

do we engage with our customers in a different way than we did last year?

So that helps keep us fresh in the minds and people think, oh, they're continually moving

That wasn't me just fishing by the way for like a shout out

to Dissident for doing all their cool videos and stuff like that. I just

want to put that out there. That was of his own volition. When

it comes to things like social media, actually let's take it a

further step back. Because you're the marketing manager, obviously managers

manage people and manage processes and situations and stuff

like that. What kind of stuff have you guys brought in in terms of people,

channels, news, obviously you're doing crazy stuff at

the Installer Show and things like that. What kind of stuff have you brought in as a marketing manager

Well, when I first came in, we used Trello,

it's really well known. It helps us manage all our activities. And all

of our team members, we know where we are and what we're working on. So

we can all jump in and out of each other's work if we need to. So that helps

keep things sort of moving so we don't stop. And

it's all about making sure you finish projects. It's all important

because there's a lot of great starters out there

who will start something off, get bored, and then give up on it.

Yeah, I know some starters. Look at him, he's not

even paying attention. Look at him. Don't matter, don't matter. I

But for us, we can't afford to do that. We have got

to make sure that we finish everything that we start. Yes. And

that helps keep our reputation as a department that delivers going.

And we've just got to keep moving. And where can

we engage differently? Where can we bring

our influence on things? keeping the brand identity tight,

moving things. It's all about trying to stay fresh in a

world where trends move very fast.

What social media channel should we engage with? What

messages are out there? And it's difficult, it's a continual job.

I mean, I hosted some podcasts that you guys put on for us,

and I never hosted a podcast before. Which you did very well, by the

way. I've got a lot of respect now for people who host podcasts. You

know, waiting for a conversation and looking like he's going to die off

and knowing when to jump in and keep it moving. That's an art unto itself. It's

almost like being a disco DJ or something like that. I

never really appreciated that. But now you think, wow, that's a tough job, tough

gig. And, you know, even social media influences, you know, OK,

we all sort of love and turn on, you know, roll our eyes a little bit. That's

a full-time job to keep that moving and keep it all fresh and new.

So even within a marketing that's with a business-to-business, you've

got to keep that moving fresh, you've got to keep the new content coming, you've

got to look at what social media channels, what communication channels you're going

to use, and you don't forget the ones that work. Email marketing is a

great tool and it works really well in the business-to-business world. So,

you can't ignore that while you're looking at something else. So, it's all about

Absolutely. So, when it comes to things like social media,

which is kind of like the stuff that we're always interested in.

Obviously, that's only one sort of channel in a

series of other channels of marketing. When it comes to social media, I'm

always interested because you guys sell purely through distribution, am I right? Pretty

much, yeah. Not a great deal straight to consumer. How

do you split your marketing efforts and do you do that sort of

by channel? Because I imagine you're marketing to an end user in

the hopes that they go to one of your retailers and buy a product and then you're hoping to

It's all about push and pull. We want to influence the plumber

at the other end to walk into a merchant and ask for our product. We

also then want to push that products through to the merchants so that they'll stock it

on the shelves. So it'd be

great if we could just advertise the business to consumers,

because we've just got one market to influence within a broader market. But

we've actually got two very distinct ones, because a consumer or

a plumber in this instance or an installer, their needs and wants are very

different to what a merchant's needs and wants are, so we've got to make sure

we tailor our messages to the merchants in a very different way

than we tailor it to the end-user plumbers or DIYers, so

split that by platforms. So let's say things like TikTok

and Instagram, they're probably going to go to your retailers

and stuff at some stage, aren't they? But I imagine you're focusing more on the end

user and engaging with those guys. Things like LinkedIn and stuff, do you have

We look at LinkedIn as a bit more detailed, so we carry

a lot longer posts, a lot of different type of messages, whereas on social media,

short and sharp. Short, sharp, and repeat, repeat, repeat. Especially if you're looking

at something like Twitter, for instance, you might send a tweet out,

but sending it once ain't really going to benefit you. You're going to have to send

it three or four times, so you can schedule it to go so

that it just continues. People will hit the message at some point, Because

it comes off your feed very fast. And I think I saw a stat somewhere that you've

got 0.2 of a second to catch somebody scrolling. Yeah.

So someone's scrolling for social media, 0.2 of a second to catch their interest or

they'll scroll past. You've got to get your hook spot on. And that's why, I mean, when

you're tailoring a message or a video or whatever it might be,

it's very different on social media knowing that they're scrolling than it is if you're

doing something maybe on a longer one on LinkedIn that

people are going to stop and look at. Because when they're scrolling through on

either YouTube Shorts or whatever it might be, you've

got to get, almost tell the entire story in less than like

0.2 of a second. And that's very hard. Just

something different. How am I going to stop someone scrolling past? Because we all do it,

we all scroll, scroll, scroll. Oh, that's interesting, what was that? No, scroll. The

video works really well for that, but it's got to be, you know, that

initial little bit of a second you've got has got to be really

Yeah, you can't sort of start it on like a title screen or something like that,

you know what I mean? You go straight into it. Yeah, the days of

kind of like slow and steady films on social media. Some

of them will work, obviously, but it kind of depends on your platform, not your brand and stuff

like that. So talk about how you guys do

stuff a little bit differently. Everyone's got their own kind of unique flavor

and approach to marketing. And again, it's always changing, isn't it? It's always

developing. But you guys did something really cool recently and

something that I hadn't really seen before, certainly in this industry, where

you sent one of your products off into space. Yeah, we did. Can you talk

I've been wanting to send someone into space for quite a while. I get to

be very excited. I'm always a big space nerd, really. Well,

our new product, the Quantum, it actually looks a bit like a rocket. Yeah, it does. I

spoke to the board and said, look, we've got a great product

here. We think we can send it up into space. It looks like a rocket. And

then we could get some good marketing out of it. And they're all like, oh, cool. That's

a great idea. So we contacted the company out there who does

it all, because obviously they've got to get permission from air traffic control, all

that kind of stuff, because it goes up very high. And yeah, so

they built a little mini capsule for it, sent it up and then chased it down and

got it back. Amazing. So yeah, some of the footage, which I'm sure you

probably had seen, it just looked absolutely stunning. Looks wicked. Yeah, see

our quantum against the curve of the Earth. Just something else

that is. And how they do it, is it just a massive balloon? It's

not a massive balloon because it's filled with, I think it's helium maybe,

I'm not 100% sure. So it starts off small and as it goes up into the

atmosphere, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger because of the pressure changes

and how that gas works under low

pressure. Until it gets to a point where it's so big it bursts. And

then when it bursts, it comes down on a parachute. Wicked. So yeah,

so it gets to about 125,000 feet. A jet

will fly at about 40,000 max. Yes. So you're looking at

three times as high as you fly when you're going on holiday. And

that's how high up it goes. That's nice. How long does it take to actually get up there? It's

about two or three hours only total to come back down. So we

launched it from Derbyshire and it came down in Lincolnshire. So

they have a chase team that follows it around with a GPS in

the car and they follow it around and then they can dig it out of the farmer's field. So

we got the footage of it landing in this farmer's field and obviously they would

then chase it around and go climb over some fences and get it back. Derbyshire to

Lincolnshire is a fair old trek as well, isn't it? It is, yeah, two and a half hours. Yeah,

That's absolutely mad. But it was exciting and I loved every second of

it. Yeah, and so that was a project that was just like got your

And no one else has done it. Other companies like, you know, Barbie

have sent one of theirs up, you know, I think there's a whiskey company sent theirs up, but no

one in this industry has done it. So again, we're the first, we're groundbreakers, you

know, and that's what we want to be, you know, keep innovating. And that

No, we're going to launch it after the show, so yeah, so this is a bit of a sneak preview

of it really. Yeah, well we'll be editing this probably after the launch of

that, so we'll see what that looks like. If you haven't seen

it, go and check it out. It's almost totally, get them all on socials and you'll see the

quantum going up into space. Yeah, it looks amazing. Yeah. And

then another thing which is kind of like slightly off script, you

know, you guys are really, really pushing for water saving,

so as well as trying to promote your products. And obviously, pretty much

any brand, if they've got some messaging, it's usually because they've

got our products which can help in this kind of situation. But can you talk us through kind

of like the saving water kind of thing that you guys have been up

It is, yeah. I mean, prior to about 2001, every

toilet had to be fitted with a siphon. And siphons, by design, don't leak.

So after 2001 they tried, the government legislated that they

wanted to be more like Europe. So for the first time ever, they let flush valves

into the country. And flush vials by their design leak

after a bit of time. The seal gets all gummed up

or whatever it might be, it will leak. And the

government knew this when they brought this change in legislation in. But

their logic was that people would get the toilet fixed, there wouldn't be that much of a problem. But

people are people and that doesn't generally happen. So now the

stats say anywhere between one and a half and two million toilets are leaking in

the UK every day. Now that's enough water, fresh

drinking water, going down the toilet to fill about

4 million baths of water every day. Now we talk about a water shortage.

If everybody was to switch back to a siphon, you would save 4 million

bathfuls of water every single day in lost

And that certainly helped towards the hosepipe bans, when

If you think about some of the areas in the country that are already in drought conditions, and

they've all got leaking toilets in those areas, and they're wasting water. Yeah,

it's just, I mean, it's a no-brainer of a problem

solve. So, you know, what we found is

a lot of people don't really know the difference. You

wouldn't know whether your toilet had a valve or a siphon in it. So,

just a quick one. If you walk up to it and there's a handle, it'll be a siphon. Yes.

If it's a button, it'll be a valve. Okay. Now, over time, people

have actually liked the idea of having a button because it

looks nice and you can put it where you want, which would mean that they're going to have a valve.

Okay. To get over that problem of

the leaking valve with a button, the company spent about

15 years developing the Quantum because it's trying to get the technology right

in this product. So it's basically a siphon that can be

activated by pressing a button. Amazing. All new technology so

that it gives the leak-free benefits of a siphon with

the aesthetically pleasing elements of yes, you can have a button. And

so we're developing further models as we go along in order

to make it better as you do. Yeah. But yeah, if everyone

was to switch over to a quantum with a button, yeah, you'd

say again, you'd say this problem, you still have a nice button, and you would save all that

And so I mean, first of all, really, really clever product

design, because you've got a situation where you've got a lot of people that want a

button. But they don't care. They just want the button

to flush. They don't know. Most people don't care what's

I have no idea. It does what it

Well, you guys have come out with a product which allows them

to have a toilet with a push button. If they

prefer that as opposed to a handle, then

that's great. But you guys can... educate

the plumbers who are installing those, if they are, because

they can be like, well this is the one to go for, because you don't have any problems

with this for years, as opposed to a valve where potentially

It could, yeah, I mean and it will, all valves will leak over time,

whether it's tomorrow, next day, in a year's time, but it will leak over time.

And, you know, overall, some people are a bit lazy, it's leaking

a little bit down the back of the toilet, you might not notice it in the start, and it just gets worse

and worse and worse as it goes. And it's like, as one

of our friends said one day, you wouldn't leave a tap running all day, so

why would you leave your toilet running all day? Yeah, and that's

And the thing is, it probably is a big thing for a lot of people, it's like out of sight,

Well, if you think about it in the past, they used to have the out... because a lot of the products now,

like the valves and stuff, have an internal overflow. Yes. So

it leaks down into the toilet. Previously, we

used to have the out feed, it used to go outside the house. Yes. So if the toilet was leaking like

that, it was overfilling, for instance, it would leak outside the house and down your wall. Yeah. And

that would stain your wall and you would see it and go, I need to get that fixed. Yes. Because

it's leaking down inside the toilet, you don't notice it for a while, and

then you do notice it, and you're probably getting it fixed when

you're getting something else fixed. You might have a dodgy tap, and they might get

the plumber out to it and say, oh, while you're there, go and have a look at the toilets. As

Yeah, whatever. Yeah, it still works. Yeah, I'll sort that out at some point. Yeah,

I'll get done. Yeah. And it's not it's not a necessity. So you so you

guys, you created a product, which solves that problem.

Yeah, both problems if you can have you can have a product which

doesn't leak, which is a siphon also still continue to have the

toilet that you prefer, which has got like a pushy button type thing. Exactly right. And

so the but then the marketing messaging kind of like throughout that

is was water So you're buying this product, not only is it a

cool product, you get to do all the stuff you want to do with your bathroom, but you're also

Yeah, that's it. Save water, save life. You know, I mean, we all need

it. Yeah. You know, and we are running, you know, we're running out in places and

we don't want to go into drought. So it's a very simple fix. Yes. If

everybody woke up tomorrow morning and went, you know what, I'm going to change out

my valve for a siphon and I'll just have a handle for now, you'll

I love it. So how have you pushed that message across?

For the audience, we know how you guys have been doing all sorts of different things

within your marketing to push water savings and stuff. What's

Yeah, I mean, we get a lot of feedback. We just recently launched a new video, which you guys helped

us do, which really sort of put a lot of the stats together. Yeah,

educated the audience. Yes, and it's all about helping. This is how you can fix it. This is

how you can tell if your toilet's leaking. This is how much is leaking. You know, we

continually talk to me. Sometimes it's like pushing water

a bill in some places because... Water's relatively

cheap in this country, although it's starting to become more expensive. The

more expensive it becomes, the more people are more interested in stopping

the leaks. It's like the price of milk. When that goes up, you go, oh, OK, I'm starting to

realize this. And it's like petrol, isn't it? When petrol gets so high, you start to

change the way that you drive a little bit and think, OK, I'm not going to drive

it unless you make it flat out all the time. So I'm going to try

to be a little bit more economical with what I'm doing. And that's what

Well, you know, probably will happen with water because the price is only

going to go one way. Nothing ever goes down in price. So,

you know, you might be paying, say, X amount per litre of water at

the moment, probably be doubled in the next few years. And if you

look at the investment people that the government's talking about, you know, new reservoirs here

and there, that's all going to have to be paid for either through direct or indirect taxes. Yes.

Absolutely. So going

on from that, you guys are doing a great job of promoting water

savings through your communication and stuff like that. How are you

guys driving traffic towards Thomas Dudley? Can you

give us an overview of the channels and

the methods to get people talking or interested or seeing Thomas

We use various ones. If you look at all the marketing tools

that are available to us, we try and have a bit of a... marketing

speak now, a bit of a through the line sort of strategy where

social media for the mass market. We've used radio advertising

in the past, but not necessarily, or works for us all the time. Email

marketing in the business to business world is a very strong tool for us,

so we use that quite a lot. We break our

email marketing down into certain target audiences, then

tailor the messages around those, and then we might send them through what

we use to call a nurture. You know, you might write

an email and you might send it through to a thousand people. And

then you'll then set it so that if they don't open it, they might get

it again in five days. If they don't open it, they'll get it again and again until you

reach a certain point where you think, well, they're really not interested in this. And

if they do open it, you might send them down another nurture that says, okay, you opened this,

you were clearly interested in that link, so I'm going to send you a little bit more information on

this product. And that's all set up automatically. So we build these, and

then we can actually let them get on with it and do it. And then we monitor the results, and then we

tweak and tailor to make sure we get the messages right. Similar

to social media, we use a lot of Facebook advertising just

to try and get in front of people. We're all

looking at our AdWords. So we use a little bit of AdWords, but not too much.

We're getting our SEO right on the websites. Yeah,

which is a black magic, isn't it? It is. Yeah, I mean Google changes these algorithms all

the time So you've got a website that ranks highly and all of a sudden it doesn't anymore

You get penalized for something that you didn't realize you weren't supposed to do It

doesn't like double pages and like this it doesn't like that and you

know And I think they do it on purpose to try and encourage you to actually make some changes and

do something So yeah, so you've always got to be constantly looking at those we

did direct mail So it might sound old-fashioned, but we still send stuff

out in the post. I love a lumpy mail Yeah, we do brochures, so we

try to do a lot of the tools to hit and obviously with that,

you know, you've got the however many P's there are now in your marketing mix

anymore, you know, public relations is one, you

know, you've always got to try and look at how do we interact with our

customers a bit more, you know, your reputation, you know, if that gets

damaged, you know, that can almost no way back for that for some time.

We're constantly looking at how you can engage with different people. We use

a team of ambassadors who are all social media influencers, who

have an audience of their own. We only

want ambassadors who actually believe and use our products. The

right avatars for the brand. We don't want to pay or have anybody

on board that is doing it just because they want to earn a

little bit of money. That's no good to us because they'll do it for anybody. People

come to us and say, look, I only use your products. I'll only ever use

your products. I'm really a big believer in Thomas Dudley.

They're the kind of people that we want as our ambassadors. And that's

the type of ambassadors that we've got. and people

can feel their enthusiasm come through. And that says an

awful lot that someone is willing to stake their reputation on

our products. And that says a lot about them, it says a lot about us as well,

That's massive, yeah. It's huge that when you're on the

ambassador side of things that these people, and because you can tell when

they're genuine fans, can't you? They're so

passionate about the products, about the brand. And the thing

about brands and

businesses and products and stuff like that. Up

to a certain point, we as business owners

and people who work behind the scenes and stuff, we'll know

that our product is better than a competitor's. We know the stats and

we know all the figures and we know that this is made better, we know that it's made in the

UK and stuff like that. Up to a certain point, The customer

Yeah, it's all about using the tools correctly. And we

know that our products aren't the cheapest on the market, but

we believe they're the best. Yes. But that's not to say that there aren't other

products out there that are good. Yes. I'm not going to knock any of our competitors' products

that they do a job. Yeah. So all we're interested in

is seeing the benefits of ours. Yes. You want to buy our product because all

the strengths we'll put against it, it's reliability, it's quality build. you're

made in Britain, all those elements that will take you so far. But you're right, if

you push the price up too high, people will start not to trust the

value of it. But in the same way, you can't be cheap in

a market. If you're promoting the quality and the reputation and the reliability of

a product, you can't then turn around and say it's cheap. Because

people won't trust that either. People are smart. It's psychological, isn't

it? You're looking and saying, well, you're telling me it's got this, this, this, and this, but it's

only a quid. I know what I'm going to get for that. People

aren't stupid, they understand what that means. We

talk about the quality of our products and that has a little bit

of a premium attached to it. If you want to support the British industries,

you want to support the British workforce, then

there is a little bit of a price comparison because we treat

our employees well. We have certain regulations that we have to

come up against, whether it's environmental, whether it's

British standards, whatever it might be. If you're buying a product that comes from

China, it might be an okay product, but

you don't know how the employees have been treated, where they're

making it. You don't know how old they are, whether they're using child labor, whatever it

might be. Cutting corners, whatever. Yeah, and we've

all seen some real shoddy practices in countries abroad,

and that's what you've got to think about as well. You're not just buying a

product. Do you know where it comes from? Yeah. How did it get here?

How old was any child labor? You know, you could have been fitting a product that

was made by a five-year-old. Yeah. No, you just don't know. But

You know what that means. And that's part of your brand, right? You know, it's

literally in the colors, you know, the Union Jack. It's

all part of that brand. And, you know, as I mentioned, People

expect a product to work regardless, don't they? After

a certain point, you pay X amount of money, I expect this to be of a certain quality.

It's interesting because if you take Ryanair as an example, the service you

get from Ryanair isn't actually bad, but you go into it

expecting it to be terrible. and then people get off the plane the

other end and go you know what that wasn't so bad they exceeded your

expectations yeah because in your mind you're thinking i'll

be lucky if i get a seat on this plane because you know i'll be standing up because that's

what in your mind that's what Ryanair's like you know but actually their

service isn't that bad. And it's comparable on

the budget that you pay. So, their reputation is

it's terrible, but most of the people's interactions with it is actually pretty

good. And that's how, that's the power of suggestive marketing,

what it is. You know, Ryanair in the mines is cheap, and

you know, that's why you're moaning about going, why is my bag too big, is the millimetre too

wide, all this sort of deal. So they can keep their prices down. But actually

when you're on the plane, you're still getting to where you're going, and

you've still got the same qualified Pilot and the maintenance is still the

same and the planes still in the good condition. So yeah, it's

all about how that actually works So, you know, we will tell you

that our products aren't the cheapest Yeah, and you know, we'll tell you why yeah, and

it comes down to the mind of the the customers in the end It's not buying car

insurance, isn't it? Yes, some people there'll be a portion of the public that will always buy

the cheapest car insurance that they can find Then there'll be

the portions of people at the very end who don't mind spending ridiculous money because they

can afford it. Most of us settle in the middle. Yeah, like watch

the cat shift. With the cheapest ones it's just like, am I actually going to get insured here? I don't trust that, yeah.

Or will they be there when I need them? That's the only time you know if your insurance is

any good, is if it's there when you need it. And that's

when you realize, you know, that wasn't worth the money, you know, because it was actually a terrible service

or whatever, you know. So, you know, brands have brand

strength for a reason. And usually that's reputation that will follow that

around. And, you know, you can see around here

where we've got all our, you know, some of our customer feedback, you know, how good

Yeah, that's it. I mean, it's the strength of the brand, it's the

strength of the reputation. That's what will bring

a brand through. Even if they're competing against somebody who's

got a very similar product, a very similar price point, brand

That's why you've got to keep pushing. We've got to keep building the Thomas Dudley

brand. Let people know what it means. Because, you know, does

everybody know what we do? No. It's our job to keep educating people.

This is what Thomas Dudley means. This is what you get from us. This is

why it costs that. This is the benefits of doing it. And that's

what we've got to keep doing. Love it. So I'm looking over there, I'm seeing people messing

Someone's broken the quantum. That's the one that went into space, leave it alone. That's

the unbreakable quantum. Yeah, it's been in space and he's taken it

apart. One final

question for you, Mark, before we wrap it up because I'm sure you've got lots of stuff to do because we

are mid-show. Any last words of wisdom for the

audience when it comes to marketing? Anything that I haven't asked

Always have a plan in mind of what you're doing and I'll

say this, the most important thing you can do, especially, I mean,

dealing with a company like yourselves, I'll say this. Great agencies and

stuff, Kieran. Agencies, yeah. You need

to have a very good brief. Yes. If you haven't got a brief written

out, what you want to achieve out of something, before you

know it, you're very good at not doing this, is that the costs

will skyrocket out of control and the project will go off in so many

different directions that you will not be able to control it. Always write

a very good brief at the beginning. Let your

creative people operate within that box that you're writing out, but give them

an overall, this is what I want to achieve, this is roughly how

much money I've got to spend, and these are the deliverables that I

would like out of this. and then you come to an agreement. My

job is to manage that brief, manage the agencies through it,

and again, always be honest with the

agency. If you're working with agencies, and even if you've got designers in-house, always

be honest with them. I'll talk to the agencies in a way that,

you know, and I'll say to people at the beginning, this is what I'm good at and let people know.

If you're expecting me to come back on time every time with information, you're going to be sorely

disappointed. So you're going to need to bug me and hassle me

and harass me and feel free to do that in any way, shape or

form that you see fit, because that's how I respond to

things. So I'm honest and I'll tell people I'm good at this and I'm terrible at that.

And that's what you've got to be with an agency or your own team. You've

got to be honest with them. Set the expectations. So that when you write a brief out,

you all know what you're working towards and you know what you're

going to deliver and when you're going to deliver it. Otherwise... The

cost will go through the roof. You'll end up doing about 10 different drafts of

whatever you wanted, and then nobody will be happy, and

then everyone will point the fingers and blame everybody else for it. But

it all starts from the very beginning. Your job, as in my job,

is to write a very good brief about what I want. I'm not a designer. I

don't design things. If I had to design something, it would look like

a dog's dinner. But I'm very good at writing a brief of what I want,

and I'll have ideas of what I want. And that's, if I was going to give a

bit of advice to anybody is, know what a

brief looks like and write it out. Some people write a brief literally

on the back of that and say, that's my brief. A video. Yeah.

Can you promote my business? That's what I want you to do. I've got the video. I've

wrote a little bit on there. It's not good enough. Nah. Take

a little bit of time, get the brief right, and you won't

I love that. It's really refreshing to hear because there are

certain situations, and a lot of time can be saved in

the creative process and in marketing just by setting the

goals outright, getting on the right page. As

a creative agency and as creatives, We don't really like guesswork.

We want freedom within a certain area of the

creative process because that's important to us. We don't want to be just button pushers.

But when we have to guess stuff, because

we're all ADHD and we've all got all sorts of situations

where we just hesitate and all that kind of thing, it makes the

creative process really, really difficult. So if you just set, this

is what I want to achieve, this is who it's for, this is the budget,

this is where it's going to go, these are the deliverables. which is a really good

I mean, whenever I deal with an agent and I said the same thing to yourselves and

I will I'll talk an honest one and I'll say you be honest

with me I'll be honest with you and you can you want to call me a swear word

because I'm not doing what you want then you'd feel free to do that and have that kind

of relationship where you're not going to be offended by each other. Yes. Because at some point

I'm gonna have to tell you I'm not happy with what you've done. Yeah.

And creatives You know who you are. They

get very offended when you criticize their work.

They forget, some creators forget, that actually I'm paying for

this, so I'll get what I want. Because creators think

they know best. So I'll always say, look, at some point,

and it happens to every agency, I'm going to have to tell you I'm not happy with what you've done, because

it's not good enough, or you've gone down a hole that wasn't there. So

you've got to have that level of honesty with them. And

that's why having a brief at the beginning helps, but just be

completely honest with your agency. Otherwise, you'll get something

you don't want and then the agency won't be happy because you just

won't use them again. And I

won't be happy because I won't get the results I want. My boss won't be happy because I spent money

and not delivered anything. And one good example, if you haven't seen

it, go and look on our YouTube channel, our water saving video. you

guys did that we wrote a brief and we said you can operate within that

this is what we'd like to achieve these are the stats we'd like you to cover you

guys took that away and delivered on time first time exactly

what we wanted no no reshoots yeah

no reshoots no redoing it again perfect first time yeah

and that was an absolutely fantastic result we had a tight timeline for that

yes And it was delivered on time, actually early, everything

that we wanted. And that came through the honest communication with each other

and the briefing at the beginning of what we wanted to achieve. And

that's my word of advice. And that gets overlooked because in

the marketing courses I've done, I've done chart of industry marketing, they don't teach you

how to write a brief. No, it's mad, isn't it? Teach you how to do lots of things, but

they don't teach you how to write a brief at agency. But it's the one thing that

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's absolutely massive. And it's

a great point to end on. You know, I think Brief, Ryan,

super important. But also, I think you mentioned there, like just the relationships, having a

great relationship, having a great line of communication, not bullying or

scaring agencies or vice versa, into feeling

like they can't ask questions, like they can't have

Not every idea that I have is going to be the best idea. I mean, of course,

99.99% of the time my idea is going to be the best. Absolutely. But

you have to be ready for that criticism to say, I

don't think that's going to work, or we think that's going to work better. And never

be afraid to take the advice of the people that you're paying the advice

for. They're the experts in the end, not you. Not

It's one of those, isn't it? When you're a party of one, in

your head, thinking about a thing, and you go, this is definitely going to work.

But then actually, when you bring that to a team, and you go, I like that,

but you've probably not considered this, because you've been blind

as I am. Because you're like, I can't wait to do this thing. That's it, yeah. Have

you thought about this? And you can make some tweaks and changes, and you can actually

do what you want to do, but make it successful. Mark, thank you

so much, first of all for being on the build-up, but also for hosting

the build-up. There's a bar just

over there that's serving drinks, so that's why it's getting pretty lively

now. Thank you so much, I appreciate it. No worries, really