In this episode of The Unicorny Marketing Show, Jules Beriff, UK Marketing Director at ESET UK, reveals how businesses can build trust as a cornerstone for brand resilience.

Jules explains why trust internally—within teams and leadership—and externally, with customers and partners, is crucial for navigating crises and driving sustainable growth. 

What you'll learn: 

• The role of brand awareness in securing long-term customer loyalty 
• Tips for fostering trust between marketing leaders and finance teams 
• Insights into flat organisational structures that promote autonomy and collaboration 
• How shared experiences and community-driven events spark channel partner loyalty 

Don't miss this episode for a masterclass in turning challenges into opportunities. Listen now to better approach to brand strategy! 

About Jules Berriff 

Jules Berriff graduated with a degree in Economics and Master’s in Cultural Management from Northumbria University. 

Jules started working for the University on international projects whilst studying, moved into film, was seconded to BAFTA, and then, seduced by a job title, hopped into the old Business Link Service. After being made redundant, she spent a year in legal work focused on offices in the Middle East before returning to the cultural sector with the Science Museum Group. Jules then moved to English Heritage as Territory Marketing Manager for the North of England, before joining the Continuum Group in 2016 as Head of Sales, Marketing, and Brand Experience. Jules now works in the very different but exciting world of cybersecurity. 

Jules has a commercial head on creative shoulders and adores marketing, relishing the complex and conflicting mix of data science overlaid with creativity that, when done right, can yield fantastic results. 

Links 

Full show notes: Unicorny.co.uk 

Watch the episode: https://youtu.be/PdZXTe7BNWs

LinkedIn: Jules Berriff FCIM | Dom Hawes 

Website: ESET UK 

Sponsor: Selbey Anderson 

Other items referenced in this episode: 

Octopus energy 

Safer kids online by ESET 

Having witnessed them go through quite a catastrophic incident this year, their brand is the thing I would argue that has saved them. We run quite a brutal 360 program, so there's no hiding from you being an asshole.

You might be performing really well, but if you're a dick, you're going to be called out on it twice a year. The doors always open, call. And they do anytime, day or night.

Presumably when they come in with the door is open. You don't say you forgot to knock?

No, no, I don't have an office.

Hey folks, and welcome to The Unicorny Marketing show. I'm your host Dom Hawes and today we are exploring the art and the science of building brands that resonate, retain and really matter.

And if I alliterate like that again, you have my permission to find me in the street and hit me. But today we're joined by Jules Berriff. She is UK Marketing Director at ESET, the cyber security company trusted by millions worldwide.

And Jules is a master of navigating competitive markets with limited resources, something I think we can probably all relate to, especially in such austere times. Not going to make a comment about the government. Today she is delivering us a masterclass in turning those kinds of challenges into opportunities.

And I think that what makes this episode so unmissable is the focus on trust. Jules is going to walk us through how investing in brand resilience acts as a kind of insurance policy.

Helping businesses weather crises while keeping customers as close as possible.

She's also going to share how fostering trust internally with our own teams, leaders, leadership teams, but also our channel partners is the secret source for sustainable success. And here's the kicker. We're not just going to be talking about strategy and frameworks today.

We're going to be diving into the multiplier effect of shared experience. Jules is going to explain how a single event like ESET's partner conference can spark years and years of loyalty and collaboration.

From reimagining channel marketing, to crafting community driven events, to building a brand that punches way above its weight in very, very resource constrained environments. This episode today is packed with really useful things to take away.

In short, I think it's kind of your roadmap to balancing your short term wins with with your long term gains. I'm not going to waffle anymore because Jules can tell you straight from the unicorn's mouth. Let's go straight to the studio.

Hello, how are you? I'm good.

And you've been down and London for.

A couple of days.

I Have lots of meetings back to back. A little bit of social, which is nice.

Good.

Didn't drink too many gins last night.

Didn't.

Didn't. Okay.

Okay.

Just thought I'd share.

I'm very glad you've made time for us because we had a pre call as we always do before the unicorny podcast recording sessions and we got stuck in some really interesting stuff which we're going to talk about today.

And we're going to start with the B word brand and really the importance of long term brand building which when we got together you felt was often overlooked and it's a subject we've touched.

On before but you had some really.

Interesting angles on it. So I think it's really good, a good idea for us to, to.

To dive in as chat GPT might say the base premise we're starting with is that that or that you and I would start with because we're marketers is that long term brand building is essential.

Agreed.

But it's not always seen that way.

Not everyone agrees. Why not?

I think because you can't tangibly measure it.

Okay.

There is no direct output. And in this world of performance marketing, I think we've almost forgot about the value of building brands.

Okay.

Which for me as a marketer is really sad.

And when you look around and see the success of some businesses like for instance Octopus Energy, who I had the fortune of watching on stage at Marketing Week recently, they are a marketing up marketing first business and have grown exponentially. And not only are they growing, people love the brand and they've done it.

Or what I've observed is they've done it in a way where the look and feel is isn't an energy company. It speaks to their customers and their customer service is phenomenal. I'm a customer.

Yeah.

I used to be one of their competitors customers. I will never change because I can pick up the phone and speak directly to them.

So I think in amongst the brand building is also the product side of things and also treating your customers really well.

Yeah, they've built a really good reputation to that they didn't get my business, I must say. Someone else was five pounds cheaper. So that's the price point.

But, but, but it was a really hard choice because I know, I know instinctively I guess because they've done their branding well, what they stand for and that the service is brilliant.

I mean utilities was an area I guess that was ripe for that because traditionally certainly the received wisdom is that customer service and utilities is terrible. So they've Done really well there in business to business maybe not so much.

I mean I think the nature of the relationships is slightly different and I think some of the people that we come across would argue that brand in a B2B environment is a kite mark and not much more.

I would disagree.

Yeah, tell me why.

I think you can draw an example.

So I currently work for a cybersecurity organization which operates globally and our competition is fierce and I look at other companies, our competitors who are spending on their brand huge amounts of investment. Huge.

Their brand is well known, it's liked as seen as the cool kind of company to be purchasing for leading edge, cutting edge, using all the right terminology etc in their, in their marketing and communications. But having witnessed them go through quite a catastrophic incident this year, their brand is the thing I would argue that has saved them.

And I think when talking to CMOs, CBOs, that's a really valid point and a proof point of what, what the power of, of a brand.

So not just in the building and the reputation and the, the exposure of an organization but actually how it can save a business when shit hits the fan.

It does buy you an enormous amount of goodwill, doesn't it? You do that stuff well and we're not going to name them because we wouldn't want to give them even one reference.

But that sounds something like Cloud Mike, something like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So. But they did an amazing. I mean when that happened I thought this company's dead same. But how do you come back from something like this?

But I looked when we were on, when we were on the line online before on the line, as though there's only one. When we were online before I looked at their stock price and it's actually almost recovered now to, to pre event which is extraordinary.

I mean it is extraordinary.

So the base premise we've got so far is your brand building is important especially I think in business to business at the moment we don't need to make the case in consumer brand work because they already get it. How does investing in brand development though impact a company's growth compared to someone who's prioritizing short term?

I'm going to quote Ritson here and we all know the 95.5rule, but 95% of our buy and we know the buying cycle in B2B is anything from a year up to five years depending on contracts that were in place previously. And when we think that 95% of your customers, right now our customers, your customers aren't in the position to buy. So we've got 5% to play with.

Great. How?

Without really investing in brand, without looking at that exposure, without saying the right things, without making people feel that, you know, X, Y and Z brand is a great brand to buy. They're doing the right things because evermore we're invested in that as well. Their purpose is good and we like their product.

You know, in my case, their technology sound, we like what they do.

They've got history, they've got relevance, they've got credentials sat behind them, they're working with companies that I can't name but you know, really big organizations that trust them and know them.

Without talking about all of that loudly and proudly and investing in it, how is that 95% of the market going to even be conscious of the fact that whoever your brand is exists when they're at the point of purchase?

Well, they won't, will they?

They won't.

Yeah.

And we also know from the same body of research that when they do put a short list together, they've almost always decided who's going to win it beforehand. Yes, blimey. So we have to do that work in brand building.

And so the challenge we have is that all the things you've talked about can be quite expensive, but particularly if you're putting a media budget behind something, justifying the expenditure, sometimes hard, really expensive.

And I think, you know, I've done this for over 20 years now. I was in the space before we had Facebook advertising or digital advertising and that makes me sound really old.

And we were buying billboards and deciding which side of the road we needed to buy our billboard on, depending on which way the traffic was going to whatever destination or whatever it is that we were selling at the time. I think we've moved to such a point of short term thinking of the next quarter. The next quarter, the next quarter. Performance marketing.

Feed the pipe, Feed the pipe. What's the roi? What are we getting back off?

Every pound we forgot about the importance of brand and what that brings, but also buying into a long term strategy. And I also think that as organizations sometimes it's gone wrong.

And rather than accepting and learning from the things that have gone wrong in perhaps a brand exercise, taking stock, reevaluating, starting again, it's almost been put in the bin and written off as this just doesn't work. And it needs time, it needs time to breathe, it needs time to grow, you need to be optimizing all the time. Did that work?

And also it's not just the investment in the media buy and the Production and the creative. But how are you measuring that? Because that's an expensive business as well.

We know it's expensive, of course, to build a brand. I mean, we're going to talk a little bit later, I think, about some other ways of doing things that don't involve just buying media.

But we all have budgets, we all have a certain amount of money we're allocated in order to deliver the return. But.

And those budgets are generally created and or approved by financially focused execs, CEOs or CFOs who don't always understand the impact or the importance of brand investments. Is there a way that we can demonstrate tangible value or how do we have that conversation?

I'm not sure, other than using examples in the marketplace. And I've sat through many a presentation of. Please, Mr. Finance Director, can I have X, Y, what am I going to get back off it?

Well, I think the most important thing when putting your case across is having a really trusting relationship with your finance director. It's really unfortunate in the position that I'm in now. Our head of finance is great, great guy.

But in previous role, where I was for six years, I had the fortune to work with a very Yorkshire. Okay, Andrew was a Yorkshireman through and through. Sorry for naming you. Andrew and I had a great relationship with him.

And he would ask me every year, we'd sit down, well, what am I going to get back off this? I'm like, we're not. Not right now, but without it. I fear for the future of our performance marketing.

And also your brand marketing fuels your performance marketing ultimately. Fortunately, in that role, I worked with some really big brands.

We worked with the suite of ITV brands, so Coronation Street, Emmerdale, et cetera, et cetera. And, and we're able to leverage that to really great effect. So I think, how do you put it together?

I think examples of best practice where you've seen it happening, but I think you've got to have trust with your fd. They've got to be bought into you as a human being and your ability to execute.

And what responsibility do you think marketers have for helping either? I was going to say develop, but that sounds a bit presumptuous. But develop the lexicon certainly of other executives.

Because I've on other podcasts, lesser podcasts, obviously, I've, I've heard, I've heard advice.

That says, oh, don't use the word.

Brand in the boardroom because people think you're a marketer. And it's such duff advice. I can see by the way, you're screwing your face up. You hate that.

I hate that. Yeah, I hate that. And I think so.

In my early career, I had the fortune or misfortune of working for a law firm and I was referred to as the coloring in corner.

Oh, God.

Yeah. That made me angry.

And I'm looking around and I'm like, these are really talented people that know their shit, that understand the sales cycle, that understand the business. And I think the reputation of marketeers is something that I'm very passionate about because we are not.

I would argue that most of the people that I work with are really smart, really articulate, understand communications in a way that no other department in a business will, and have a lot of value to add. And I've probably been a bit pushy in the past that I've muscled my way into conversations that I wasn't invited to or I wasn't invited to the table.

But I've always had a lot to say and I'm interested in the success of a business. So, you know, whether that is product, whether that is the people that we're hiring, whether that is the revenue and the P L.

I've wanted to be involved in that. So to say that brand isn't. Isn't invited to the board table, I think is. Is really naive.

It is. And I think, look, I love lawyers. Me and lawyers, we love each other.

If they call you the coloring in department, I think, you know, I would have just called them value sponges and see what seem they thought about that. And some of my best friends are lawyers. It's fine, but.

But it's a good point, right?

If they don't. I actually have a real problem with that whole coloring in thing because. And we've talked about it on this podcast a little bit.

Partly we've done it to ourselves because we've created these large departments, the output of which is stuff, and what the organization sees is the stuff. So a brochure or a website or.

A this or that with a good.

Color scheme and good words. And while they might not understand the nuance or the sophistication of the communication in it to the rest of the organization, it's stuff.

That's the stuff department. So I think part of it might be that.

Part of it, I think, is that we haven't pushed hard enough in the other direction to explain to the rest of the business why marketing matters so much and how much value it creates. I think. I mean, you mentioned 95.5rule, and there's the long and short of it.

And there's all this other sort of effectiveness research now that I think really does. I wouldn't go as far as to call it science, but it does help us communicate value. And I think it's our job to, to, to take that role on internally.

And I think the science part is really interesting. I think everybody, the perception of marketing through and through is the creative people. And I'm like, yeah, okay, to a certain degree.

But also the data analytics, the science, the research.

And actually when I talk around my department, we talk around the team in there, they get really excited about a data set that tells them something and things. That the perception of the marketing team, that is the graphic designer or the copywriter, it's not, it's that.

And this is the beauty of marketing, isn't it? It's that real heavy data science like smooshed in with creativity, hopefully to create an amazing output and then that has commercial value.

But the graphic design and the copy, that's the, that's the bit that sits above the water. That's what they see, right? That it's built on. They don't get. Yeah, poor them. We can educate them though before we move on.

Slightly thinking about kind of CFOs. You said you have a great relationship. What advice would you have for other marketing leaders who don't yet have a strong relationship with finance?

How do they go about bridging that? Where do they start?

You got to understand the way the finance mind works and it's probably not the same as the way that the creative mind works or the sales guy. And I think what I found in my career is like speaking their language and also having your data. There's no point.

I have been criminal of it in the past. I want to do this really great thing. Was going to cost loads of money.

Right.

That's never going to get over the line.

So that ability to take a step back and say why, how, how long, how much, what is actually the financial plan in terms of spend, do you need it all right now or is it a drip feed into here with you know, what does that look like? So coming armed, I think that reassurance of. I've thought about it. I've really thought about it. I know why, I know who. And this is my business case.

I'll take questions. Yeah. And then being ready and armed with the information to be able to.

So you nailed it. Business case. Gotta have a business case, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So if you don't have that, then basically you're Screwed.

And even to the smaller things, you know, I am the gatekeeper in our organization of a really healthy marketing development fund that sales guys can tap into even if they're asking for a grand. I'm asking them why. Yeah, because it's really easy and spend a thousand pounds, isn't it? But why? And I think it's not just about the output.

It's getting into that rhythm of thinking about what am I trying to achieve? Who is this going to help? Even if there's no tangible output now, like what's your long play on it?

And I just think that that thought process is quite solid.

So that's exactly what I do. Fun enough internally here. In my day job. I say here because we're in the building.

But in my, in my day job, if someone wants to go in, in our case, for example, sponsor a channel event and we have an occasion like this where the leader of one of my units wanted to. Three questions to answer. What's the short term opportunity this will create? What's the long term opportunity this will create?

And how is this going to be a multiplier for your business? And if they can answer those three things and ask them.

Well, and what I look for is I look for a revenue short term, I want enough revenue to cover the cost of the event just so that the cash flow is covered.

Yes.

In the long term, I want to know there's a multiplier that makes sense from a, an ebitda, a profit, profit level. And then the multiplier is the other intangibles that sit alongside it. And that works. It does work well. So the approach seems to work.

The activity doesn't always.

Right, right.

It's never a slam dunk.

But then I'm also not frightened of failure. So let's try, you know, if there's sound rationale. But we're still like, we're not sure what's the worst that can happen. We lose a thousand pounds.

Okay. What do we learn? Like what's the learning off the back of that, you know, and don't just write it off of, you know, that was.

Sit down, let's have a talk about it. What went well? Well, there wasn't the right people there. So what do we need to be looking at next time?

Or there wasn't the opportunities or the leads that we were looking for. Okay, fine, let's talk about it. Let's take the learnings. Let's not be frightened to, to fail. Yeah.

And again, you know, I try and foster that culture within the team of let's have a go.

Speaking of that, it's almost as if you magically segued into where I wanted to go next, which is about empowering your team and about how you set your team up for success. You've had a very good 12 to 18 months, I believe.

Yeah, we have.

Good.

Really good.

You've got a really flat org structure. Yes, talk to me about that. That's like, that's like. That's counterculture when it comes to B2B.

I've worked in many organizations over the years, some with huge amounts of hierarchy.

And it niggled me, I think that I couldn't have access to the marketing director because I had to go through three different people to speak to him or her. But that's nonsense. I just want to talk to him. And it was. Or her. It was him, actually.

The company I'm talking about at the moment, I want to talk to him. Well, no, you need to come through here and then you need to come through here.

And I'm like, my message is going to get diluted by the time it gets there. And I want that relationship as well. So it niggled me.

And then you go to other places and you see other structures and there's things that you like and you don't like about it. In my. The role before this, we had a really unique setup in that we had a central marketing function and then we had eight satellite businesses.

So we had a really great, great central marketing function. Me, web designer, you know, specialists in their fields, pr, et cetera, et cetera. And then we had small marketing teams on site.

Okay.

So we were, we were. The support office worked really nicely. The temptation to centralize all of that marketing into head office was like always there.

And I played with it a few times and I really realized that unless you are on the front line, you don't know your market. So we, we left those guys to be the conduit to, you know, being on the ground. And, and it worked. It worked for a long time.

But the temptation was always there. I walked in, I had the fortune or misfortune of walking into the role that I'm in now three years ago, to essentially a pile of rubble.

The marketing department wasn't in a good place. People had left. We were lacking experience and skill, both in terms of marketing, but both in terms of cybersecurity.

My background's not tech, so this was like a whole new world to me. And we started a really large recruitment drive and I wanted to be Close to the people.

I wanted to be close to the people that I was gonna be working with. And I just didn't want to put that hierarchical structure in. In what was meant to be quite a small team at the time.

The team is compact in size, but really broad in terms of what we're delivering. So it was recruiting specialists in fields. So I needed a graphic designer, we needed a copywriter, I needed a channel marketing manager.

We needed somebody to do events, we needed somebody to look after the enterprise side and the structure. I just couldn't make a structure work out of it either. You know, why would we have the events person reporting into the enterprise guy?

It just didn't work. So I was like, right, okay, everybody's reporting in. There's no hierarchy. We make decisions as a team.

It's great for a while until you get to the point where there's more people coming in and more people coming in and more people coming in. And then my workload starts to. Yeah, yeah. So I really felt it last year, but. But I believe it works.

So how many, how many direct reports do you have now?

Some of the guys that are in the team, we've now pushed into different departments with dotted lines in. So the online business manager is.

Was reporting directly and she now runs the whole of the online business doing a cracking job, responsible for all the marketing and the revenue. So she's a dotted line now, which is fantastic.

So it's a similar approach, a central resource with locally enabled. Yeah, yeah.

People in the division.

Nice.

Yeah.

So you and Jensen Wang have something in common because you have lots of direct reports. He's the CEO of Nvidia. I don't know whether you've seen any of the material buzz around this. He has 60 direct reports.

60.

60.

That's mental.

Yes, 60 don't reports. He never speaks to them one to one. He never has one to ones with his team. Yeah, he says any conversation I have I need to have in the open.

Everyone needs to see it because otherwise how is someone going to learn from someone else's mistake?

I love that.

I quite like it. But can you imagine if you're the person who's made the mistake and you've got 59 other people going, oh my God, thank God it's not me.

Maybe they're a little bit kinder with that culture. It's quite a brutal culture that I feel.

Yeah, quite like it though.

It's quite nice A.

There's no hiding.

But also, I think as you said, like, you know, with a team of 10. Even, like the amount of information that you just automatically know because you're living and breathing every day.

Yes.

Is so different from that kind of rigid hierarchy thing where you only get what people think you need to know and you never quite know whether what.

You'Re telling them is the truth.

Yeah.

You're telling you.

Sorry. Is the truth or what they think you want to hear. Yeah. That stuff's like crapola.

My husband has a really lovely. Because he's got two huge teams. He's. He likes to be eyes on and hands off.

And I really like that because he's got full exposure of what's happening, but he's got no interest in getting involved in the detail. And, you know that I want you to get there, how you get there, I don't care. But he knows that they're on the journey and they're going.

So I really like that. And, you know, that really, really stuck with me.

I think the thing with our team is, yes, we are, like I said, a nice sized team, but we are going back multifaceted. So the thing, the thing that I struggle with sometimes is the breadth and being involved in everything.

So everything from what are we doing in the PR space to, you know, what's happening in the channel team through to, you know, our designers going, can you just have a look at this? What do you think about this? Is this where we need to be? So it's.

It's the breadth of thinking sometimes where, you know, for one meeting you're talking about sales cycles, the next one you're looking at copy. It's that. That sometimes just makes my brain creak a little bit.

When you have that breath, sometimes the things being brought to you can seem trivial. How do you handle that?

I think it's that thing of taking a breath and realizing that it's very important to the person that's asking. Or they wouldn't be.

Or they wouldn't be asking.

Yeah, yeah.

When you're running that kind of a team with lots of direct reports, very flat hierarchy, you're giving people a lot of autonomy.

Yes.

In return, you're asking for a lot of transparency.

Yes.

I'm imagining you've already told me that you quite like a bit of failure here and there because it makes you learn. So there's, you know, that I hate the phrase, but that psychological safety thing is really important. There has to be structure somewhere.

And I know the answer to this because I spoke to you about it before. How do you structure your team so that you can have that transparency, flexibility and autonomy without sacrificing the mission.

The fortunate thing at the moment is we work in a very structured organization. So there is a number that we've got to hit in the UK and that's what's driving everything.

Underneath that number is some measures of success that we get from our HQ team and there's no ambiguity in those. So flowing that down into the team isn't a difficult job. You know, these are the things that we've got to achieve.

And then extrapolating that down into workload, projects, et cetera for the rest of the guys isn't difficult. And we do it twice a year or we do it once a year. Set KPIs at the beginning of the year. Okrs I've worked with in the past in old roles.

We're very much KPI driven where we are at the moment, but with some flex as well. And I think how do you drive success? I think the fact anybody being measured doesn't want to fail first and foremost.

And I think when nice bonus payments are predicated on that success that drives motivation even more. You know, we all say that, you know, we're here because we love job. Ultimately we're all here to fund our lifestyles, I would argue.

So I think bonus payments that are predicated on performance work really well. We run Quite a brutal 360 program as well. So there's no hiding from you being an asshole.

You might be performing really well, but if you're a dick, you're going to be called out on it twice a year. And there's definitely no hiding from it.

We write out to 15, 10, 15 of your work colleagues twice a year and ask for anonymous feedback that forms part of your evaluation process. So these are the things that we need you to hit tangibly X amount of leads from X amount of campaigns.

We want you to do blah webinar on this kind of content. We're launching MDR products. Let's do this. They're all there but then around that is how you're living and breathing the values of the organization.

And if you are an easy person to work with and I saw something on LinkedIn really recently which said being easy to work with is the most underrated work skill that like people possess. And again that stuck with me.

You know, you could be the smartest guy in the room, but if you're a bit of a dick, yeah, it doesn't make for good teamwork, doesn't make for motivation. It you know it. And I hate Rob. I Hate Rob within a business.

I've got no question with anybody coming to me and saying, you said that the other day, and that really upset me. All right, okay, let's pick that apart. No worries. And I encourage that within the team. I like open dialogue, open feedback.

I don't like such and such said this, such and such said that. I've got a problem with them. Like, go and tell him, Go and tell her. Or I'll come in and do it, but don't come and, like, don't niggle at me.

That such and such has done blah. So that culture is really important to me. So really clear, set objectives. Know that your people are gonna have things to say about you twice a year.

And given the opportunity and, like, just come to work, Be easy to work with. Be a nice human being. Work hard. I've got high standards, you know, I expect my boss has got high standards of me. And I talk about it quite a lot.

I mean, talking about KPI adherence and things is quite boring. And, you know, I do that a lot. And everyone thinks I'm really boring in my. In my day job. But they matter. I mean, they are waypoints to success.

How do you communicate the importance of those? Or do you not need to? Is your team.

No, we do.

So we've got country KPIs, so, you know, things that we've got to hit as the guys know what they are, and then they're extrapolated down into our own personal KPIs, I think. And the lovely thing about that is, is these are the five or six key things that we need you to deliver in this half.

How you get there, I've got no interest in. Unless you need me, then, yeah, great, let's figure that out. How you get there is entirely up to you.

But these are the things that I need hitting by the end of the half. We'll talk about them regularly. Let's talk about them on a monthly basis.

Some of them are joined, so you have to work with your teammates on them, but there's no ambiguity in hitting them. We run a red, amber, green system. Like, are we on track? Are we go? No go. Do we need to pull back? Do we need to. And.

And, you know, a lot of the time we're green and we're great, but sometimes it's like, glaring red in there. Right, okay. How do we, like, hustle as a team together around this to put it into special measures to move it forward.

So it's kind of okr, like, yes, but not okay. I Mean you haven't got the rigidity. Presumably you're not running okrs where you are at the moment?

No, have done in the past, but not where we are now. But yeah, very much. Kind of gathering around to make sure that the ones that aren't quite where they need to be, let's try and push them forward.

But it leaves people that space to be able to work how they want to work rather than being dictators.

It's not too rigid.

Not at all.

A very modern approach.

And the doors always open, call and they do anytime, day or night.

Presumably when they come in with the doors open. You don't say you forgot to knock.

No, I don't have an office.

You're probably working from home, I guess.

Well, I work from home.

Working in the car or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in with the team in the office. And that's. And there's an interesting one as well.

Like hybrid working, being in the office, being not in the office.

Yeah, don't get me started on that one.

I love being here.

Hybrid shirking. I mean, I don't have an opinion. Yeah, so do I. I love it, I love it. I'm five days a week in the office.

Yeah.

I miss it largely because I'm not popular at home and it makes me. Yeah.

But let's talk about Channel a little bit because you mentioned earlier, you know, that part of your role, you know, one minute you can think about PR and the next minute you're thinking about Channel.

And we mentioned market development funds, mdf and you also mentioned that you've got some partners of really big budgets and their, their route to building brand and, and long term activity. That brand equity piece is to buy and, and run media and you mentioned that you didn't have that luxury.

So how, how are you working with Channel as a builder of brand?

When I came in three years ago, we were under our old CMO and we were there. There'd been talk in the years previous which was around the set brand in the UK and how it wasn't where it needed to be.

Fortunately in Slovakia, where our head office is, we're at like 90 odd percent brand awareness. It's huge. And across the rest of Europe actually, But in the UK brand awareness was about 4%.

I mean really.

Yeah, I mean really small. Really really small.

So I came in to an environment where some TV ads had been produced and there was some budget allocated to buying some media, blah, blah, blah, blah. Great. And it just didn't land for lots of reasons which you know we could spend another hour on. So I won't.

But for lots of reasons it just didn't land is at that time you think, right, okay, Christ, what's our play here?

I'm six months a year in six months in just getting to grips with the industry, just getting to grips with, you know, what all this means and just the channel side of things, brand side, it was all over. I remember having a conversation with our HQ and it was like, well, what's it going to take? I was like, to build a brand?

I was like, probably 10 million quid every year for the next five years. And they're like, yeah, it is like that's what we're playing with here. We're at such a low base and.

It'S a, it's quite a mature sector as well.

Mature market names, big names, people spending like, I'm gonna have to out buy the competition and that's going to be expensive and it's going to take us time. No was the answer. Okay, so, right, okay, how do I make this work then? How do I make this work with the budget that I've got? What can I do?

And we'd almost forgot about the fact that our partners are ultimately our customers. So yes, brand awareness is important, but we sell through a channel. 90% of our business goes through resellers and partners.

We'd almost forgot about them. So I was like, right, we're going to turn this massively on its head.

And the two things I want to do was refocus most of our investment into our partners. We know that you buy from people that you like.

Yep.

Yeah. How do I get these guys to love Eset more?

And you think about the motivation of a partner, what they interested in, ease of use, profit margins is the product sound, is that right? So we build everything that we do around those things. And the other thing was brand perception was so two things.

There's brand awareness but there's also the perception of the brand was probably quite low and actually our products are shit hot. So I was like, how do I raise the percept?

Two things that I can do is get more involved with these channel guys, get them to love Eset more through the motivations I've just talked about. But I can also raise the perception of our brand. I've got the money to do that by narrowing the net, so narrowing the scope.

Tell me about the event.

So in the past we've done driving days, we've done in. In quite corporate environments. And I was like, I don't want to do that. So I was like, right, this is, this is what I'm thinking, guys, to the two.

We look for an amazing venue somewhere central in the country that people can get to easily and we take it over and we give people the best time and we're like, okay, so, guys, like, brilliant. Off we went and we found this amazing venue just north of Birmingham called Hallcross hall. And we took exclusive use of the entire place.

And it's beautiful, right? It's like big bloody country manor. Lovely, lovely lawns out the back, but stunningly beautiful.

So instantly when people arrived, there was the wild factor. And, you know, we branded it all. He said, stunning. Really lovely event in the evening, great content during the day. Really great content.

Some external speakers, some internal speakers, some workshops. And we just really looked after people and not in that over the top, you know, loads of booze. It wasn't that.

It was just made sure that they felt valued and they are valued and welcomed and the organization, Amy and my team was, you know, Mrs. Spreadsheet. And there was no deviation from the spreadsheet, but she knew exactly who was coming, what time they were coming.

We printed bespoke agendas for every single person. We did really great gifts. We got commissioned. Lego eset, Lego. Just every little touch point was really well thought through.

So we did the 80% of the organization, the 20% of Flair, and the feedback's just been stunning, stunningly brilliant. And people feel educated, so our partners feel much more educated about our products and services, so they're enabled to sell eset more effectively.

They love us more because we've built those relationships.

And I had the full sales team there and just the camaraderie and the conversation and those again, that ability to build a relationship in human form.

Human connection.

Human connections.

Great memories.

Yes.

And learning things new.

Learning things new.

Fantastic.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's going to pay dividends, isn't it, that event?

It will. You know, we're already seeing. We're starting to see some of the stuff off the back of it. Oh, God. Tell me about your MDR products.

I didn't know you did that. Come and can we do a joint webinar? Can we do a joint marketing campaign together?

And so Caitlin, the channel marketing manager, is now like inflow, being barraged with requests for joint marketing activity. So even that is like the Momentum that will then drive pipeline into Q1.

Next year and beyond, I guess. I mean, we started today talking about, talking about brand and the long term effect of it.

But I think when you mobilize a community like that and when you really get a hold of, yeah, your channel partners and they get a hold of you and that kind of, that symbiosis starts actually. That's years worth of value that you get from one event, isn't it?

Yeah. And again, you know, it's that relationship piece. It's really like you'll love doing business with you even if they're 10% more expensive.

I know in my own experience I'll buy from the guys that I like.

It's all relate everything's relationships, isn't it? It's all about relationships.

Can I call? You know, in my previous role we had a really great outsourced design agency.

The guy was Exelgivy Maeva, he was based in Yorkshire and great relationship with him. Fantastic. But I knew I could call on him for a favor. Nobody could get me to deviate from that contract because I really liked his.

I liked his personality. We gelled. We could have great conversation and I could call and say, I'm in the shit, can you turn this round in 24 hours? And they'd always step up.

So there was, you know, my design contract wasn't going anywhere.

And he lived in God's county, obviously.

And he lived in God's county, obviously. Yeah.

I've got form when it comes to Yorkshire, so I'm not gonna say any more than that. So channel's really important.

But you also have one other initiative that is, I think is really interesting and that's your activity with Bournemouth.

So we're based in Bournemouth, Our head office is in Bournemouth. We are Seaside, which is lovely. And before my time. So before I joined the organization, we had a marketing campaign called Safer Kids Online.

Does what it says on the tin. Yeah. Loads of information and, and campaigns around keeping your kids safe online. Grassroots level.

And we started talking, or they had started talking to the football club about an outreach program. So obviously ESEC can't go waltzing into schools teaching kids how to be safer online.

But the football club had an outreach program which worked with local schools and communities on various things. We set up a program where they would go into schools, we created content and they would spend time with the kids. Fantastic.

It renewed the year before I came and then when I came in, I was looking at the activity that we were doing. I was like, this looks really interesting. And the team there are great is another thing, loads of investment going in the football club.

They are massively invested in the community but also the business community as well. So they work really closely with Vitality Stadium and they work really closely with the university as well.

So it's like a really natural fit there for us. Then I employed brand and partnerships manager. She came in and I was like this, this has got potential, like run with it. And she was great with it.

She really kind of got under the skin and it needs that again. Where do you prove the value of somebody spending time in a football club seven days a week or whatever?

I couldn't at first, but it snowballed and the more that she was there working with the team and working with the guys, the opportunity started coming in to the point where we were offered the opportunity to sponsor the women's team and again that fell really nicely in the women's agenda that we were looking at. So, you know, we really promote women in tech. We've just sponsored a lady student who's about to embark on her cyber degree at Bournemouth Uni.

So it played really nicely and it's something that I'm really passionate about, really invested in. So we sponsored the women's team. That was great. And then the opportunities just started to come in, come in, come in.

We looked at, they came across to Eset World for us.

They spoke about communities and partnerships for us and again, like I said, Lena just really worked that relations to a point where we got into a conversation about them, them using our product, really nice symbiotic relationship and us securing what is now Premier League club.

So there's a bit of, there's a bit of contra deal going on there, but it allows us exposure to football fans on a Premier League stage and also ties into that bit that I was talking about earlier about raising the perception of our brand. Eset is now associated with a Premier League club and we protect a Premier League club. So that was, that's really cool, really great for us.

So we're talking, I mean, you know, we started today talking about long term and brand building and we've talked through then about how you've enabled your team by having a kind of a flat structure and creating the environment that allows them to get on and do stuff.

And now we're talking about relationships and the communities that you're building and all of these things feed each other so that your in a position there where you're building a brand without having to buy $10 million worth of media a year. But it's building one brick at a time, Right?

Definitely. And also the opportunity to then take our partners and our customers to the games. So everybody loves a bit of corporate hospitality come along.

And there's the Eset brand all over the stadium. So, again, that perception, that raising. Raising the bar, raising the perception of the brand is there. So they've.

It seems like it's all been really well planned.

Of course it has been.

What are you talking about? Yeah, definitely. All those things have just fallen really nicely into place.

But I think, especially for Lena, you know, with that contract, the ability to have the breathing space to talk about the opportunities to spend the time. It's been three years in the making to get us to where we are now. Brand building, you could argue, takes time. Takes time.

And it's really starting to pay dividends for us. Now, tying into that, we also took a box at Wembley, which was a massive expense. Yeah.

But it was.

But again, allows us to. And it's branded. It looks beautiful. It's really nice. Really bougie. We get 12 tickets to every event that's happening at Wembley.

I mean, we were lucky. We got Taylor Swift and then away. Yeah, I wasn't, but I am now.

Okay, okay. I'm not a Swiftie. I haven't yet been.

She was bloody brilliant. Yeah. So we had all the Taylor Swift dates, then all the Oasis dates landed, and then the Coldplay tickets landed on top of all of the football.

So leveraging those as incentives into our partners to say, hey, look, let's come in, let's do a spiffy day. Yeah, We've got the normal champagne voucher started up. I've got two Oasis tickets for the guy that brings me the.

Or the girl that brings me the most leads. And then it's hot property.

And then they go, stuff money can't.

Buy and then they go, and. And I said to the guys, if we're inviting people, let's not just invite single whoever on a. On a night.

Let them bring their daughter, their husband, their wife, like, come as an experience. Because I. I know myself, I don't want to spend Saturday nights away from my family, but if it's like, hey, jp, there's two tickets for Oasis.

Are you coming? Yes. So, you know, small things like that, and I think it's just thinking about the human psyche of what do people actually want?

Making happy memories. Again.

Making happy memories. And the box looks amazing. So, again, that perception of who we are and the sphere that we're operating in is Raised again.

So that was a real win for us.

I know eset for other reasons, but you know, when you, when you took on the brand, as you say, you had 4% awareness and really an uphill struggle because of the sector that you're in and the strength of competitors.

Yeah.

But you have found a way of carving your own niche and, and being able to build experience and memories and relationships and community.

Yeah.

And going back to where we started. Then when you go to speak to your CFO now who you have a good relationship with, they will understand the value of all of those things.

Yes. Because we've just had something tangible on decent period of growth. Yeah.

First two years were tough and this year we're on double digit growth forecast for the year end. And I can attribute a lot, you know, I'm also very fastidious about campaign codes.

In Salesforce, we can attribute a lot of that activity back to the marketing either funded or leads that have been generated by the team. We can track it all back and there, you know, it's taken a long time, but we can see it.

And that is a wrap, folks. Wow, wasn't Jules fantastic?

I think she really took us into some like nitty gritty detail about what makes marketing color not just work, but resonate. And again, not in the marketing department, but around the business as a whole.

So, Jules, thank you so much for taking the time to come and talk to us. I know how busy you are. Well, as we have been doing recently, let's close out today's episode with very, very quick bit of reflection.

And I'm going to start by saying this trust builds an unshakable foundation. Whether you are a marketer, a business leader, maybe even just a curious listener that surfed your way in.

Remember this trust isn't just an asset to the business. Actually, it's really kind of the lifeblood of any meaningful relationship. And in business that's both inside and outside your organ.

Jules reminded us how brands that cultivate trust purposefully create a safety net for themselves, for growth, for resilience, and for impact in the event that you have some cataclysmic thing happen to your business. It's trust that's going to save your company. So it shouldn't be taken lightly.

You should be building methods of how to grow trust into your day to day. Secondly, I would say we learned today that shared experience, it really is a secret sauce.

We know already, and I've waffled about it on this podcast again and again and again that marketers jobs isn't just about running campaigns in Jules parlance, she said today it's about creating connections.

And she challenged us to think about how our work can multiply value for our businesses through real human moments, events if you like, or partnerships, even small personal touch points that might linger in people's minds. That's that mental availability that Byron Sharp talks about all the time. And finally today we learned that empowerment breeds excellence.

And we waffled a lot in the early days of this podcast about organizational design and that kind of stuff. And I'm talking here really about things like flat structure as giving your teams autonomy and that important element, psychological safety.

Jules showed us how giving teams the tools and trust to take ownership can drive real creativity and improve your outcomes, which ultimately is going to improve the effectiveness of your department because you know when your team thrives, your brand is going to shine. Now, before we sign off, I have a little bit of homework for you to do. And this week is this.

I want you to identify one thing that you can do this week either to build trust or to create meaningful experiences or to empower your team. Take some time to reflect on that and then take action. And then I want you to do exactly that next week.

And then I want you to do the same thing the week after and so on. If you do that, and every week you ask yourself that one question, what can I do to do one of these three things?

You will be well, well, well on the way to building something truly great.

Now, if you loved today's episode as much as I did, please don't forget to share it with your network and friends to subscribe or even to leave a review. You can find us on all of.

Your favorite podcast platforms and you can.

Reach me directly on LinkedIn. As always, keep chasing those unicorn y moments. Those are the moments that make your work and your world a little bit more magical.

I will see you next time.