Stop talking to audiences. Start talking to fans

Hello lovely human beings, thank you all so much for being in the chat as you are today and just being fantastic as ever. Really, really appreciate you all just for being brilliant. If you haven't already do pop in the chat where you're watching from and you'll be able to see in the chat that I've just made the stupid founder decision which is that if you pop a question into the Q and A ticket today and it's the best question from today, then I'll send you a Marketing Meetup cap. They are for charity, so I will cover your charity donation personally. So that's your encouragement today to get involved in the chat and the Q and A today. So let's get started introducing today's subject. Today we're once again focusing on our collaboration with The Marketing Meetup and a very incredible group called WACL. Now WACL stands for Women in Advertising and Communications Leadership. It's a network of over three fifty senior women in advertising, marketing, tech and communications and its mission is to accelerate gender equality for the benefit of all with the ambition to achieve fifty percent female CEOs in the industry. We have a big thank you to Jo Royce for putting together this season and Jody today, our guest, is likewise a member of WACL as well. So let's get going speaking about the very incredible Jody. And like the first thing we need to know is that like I tried my best to write a bio for today's session for Jodi, but honestly, she's one of these people that if I spent the time speaking through all of her achievements, I'll be here all afternoon. So what you need to know is Jodi is the co founder and co CEO of Rumdeep, which is a specialist sport and entertainment, creative, and strategy agency, which helps brands unlock the power of influence and fans. Jody, was previously managing director and partner at M and C Saatchi Sport and entertainment delivering campaigns for Barclays, Absolute, O2, Virgin Media, Google Pixel, Bannon Signs, and Jamieson across many more. And I think one of other thing is that is really interesting to highlight is that Jody isn't just someone who shows up with competence in work, but also as a human being, as a real proud advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion, which is just so important in our industry. So not only do we have competent human being here, but we have someone who shows up with great character as well, which I think is so important. Today, we're gonna be speaking about stopping to speak into audiences and start speaking to fans. And Jody's gonna speak far more eloquently than I will be able to about that in a presentation element, will subsequently be followed up by a q and a. So as mentioned, if you do have questions, pop them into the q and a feature just a little bit later. Before we get started, I just wanna say a big thank you to our sponsors. This week's featured sponsor is Canva. Now I'm glad to be involved with Canva this week as they're starting a brand new small business pitch. They're going to be inviting a hundred small businesses from around the UK into their space, as well as giving folks free access to Canva Pro if you pitch your business via the QR code there, but also there's a link on my LinkedIn. It's an incredible scheme, definitely take the time to check out this small business pitch that's going on right now. Applications close on the twelfth of July. Also a big thank you to Wistia, to Frontify, Cambridge Marty College, Prismic and Planable. Amazing people, amazing sponsors. We wouldn't be able to do this without them. So that's my introduction done. Now is the time to introduce Jodie properly to the stage and say thank you so much to you for being here. Also a huge thank you to everyone in the chat for just being phenomenal, popping in where you're watching from, being lovely people. It's really, really appreciated. Jodi, it's over to you. Thank you, Joe. We're using new technology, so I'm just gonna check that you can still see my screen. And obviously, Joe, jump in if what I'm talking about doesn't correspond with this slide. But assuming it's all working fine, I will kick off. So, yeah, firstly, just want to say thank you to Joe and Joe for inviting me to speak today about something I'm so passionate about, and that is the power of fandom. And more importantly, the business we're all in, the opportunity for brands to unlock that fandom. So my provocation today is for all of us to stop thinking and talking to audiences and stop thinking about our consumers as audiences and start thinking about them as fans and how we can talk to them as fans. And hopefully, by the end of this presentation, I'll convince you as a marketeer to reevaluate your approach to audiences. I don't feel like I need to do that now because I've had a really amazing introduction from Joe. So yeah, this is me. I think the only thing to add to what Joe said is that I'm a fan myself, of course. So massive fan of cinema. And when I say cinema, I mean going to the cinema like I hope everyone does and will continue to do so that it stays alive. Reading, live music, and podcasts generally, but particularly politics podcasts. So I always think it's nice to just put a bit of a human touch, especially as I'm about to talk about fandom. And I think actually always good for you all to think about what you're fans of as well because it might sort of trigger some questions towards the Q and A and get you into the right frame of mind for what we're about to talk about. So very quickly at RUN Deep, this is what we do. I'm not going talk about RUN Deep. I'm going to talk about a point of view on fandom that I'm really passionate about. But I do think it's important to give you a sense of the legitimacy that I have on this subject because it's very much at the core of what we do at Rundeep. So we promise to take brands to the heart of fan culture. And the reason we do this is because we believe in three fundamental things, which really boil down to the fact that brands need to be relevant to survive. I imagine that's inarguable for most people on this call. But our perspective is that being relevant means being culturally relevant. So those two things go hand in hand. And I think the build again on that, that perhaps isn't something everyone else is as familiar with, is that being culturally relevant means being in fandom. So culture is fandom. I can get into lots of different examples, but the reality is every big kind of cultural conversation really stems from a big fan moment. So that's really what we're going get into today is that depth of fandom. So I guess the challenge really to everybody here is to start thinking about how you can put fans at the heart of your brand strategy. Because basically, we feel audiences are more fragmented than ever. We're, as an industry, I think in a period of flux. And we are transitioning to this kind of new frontier. And it just feels like increasingly we're at risk of being out of touch with our audience. So the answer we think is to stop thinking about your audiences in traditional ways, like traditional segmentation, and just start thinking about them as fans. So just a bit of context here. The world is essentially moving faster than than we are. I think that's if we can articulate how everyone's feeling at the moment, that would probably be how we do it. It's just we can't keep up with the state of change. It's unprecedented. I think whilst it's very exciting, it's also quite terrifying. And ultimately we don't really know where it's going to end up. It's an unknown entity. So it's a fast moving world out there. And what this means is we've already got this attention crisis, but AI is absolutely going to accelerate that. So it's about to flood every platform with infinite amounts of content. So what is already a overpopulated content environment that we all engage in is going to become so much more so. And that just means it's going to fragment audiences more than ever, which just means it's harder to connect with audiences at a mass scale. Kind of mono media era is definitely over. And we know that just means that the comms landscape is really, really challenging for traditional advertising. Audiences are just scattered across so many different channels and platforms. And the risk is that as brands, as you try and be everywhere to reach as many people as possible, you end up being nowhere and you get lost in the noise and the cut through is really, really challenging. And we know that audiences are also just not engaged in traditional advertising. So brands no longer have permission to just broadcast their message to their audience because audiences have so much more power. The authority has very much switched from being on the side of the brand and the paid media operator to the audiences themselves, the communities, creators, ambassadors, etcetera. So the flip in this hierarchy mean that you've got to be really, really engaging to cut through. And so advertising in its, I believe in its traditional format is not the way to do that. And we know that broadcasting is boring. And then on top of that, there are all of these tools. So people can just turn on their ad blockers and forty three percent of internet users do that. And in every social media platform, there's an ad free subscription and people are using them because we're all becoming attention deficit. So we're essentially becoming incapable of waiting for anything. There's this immediacy economy through everything being delivered to us immediately to our doors, collecting us, take us x to y, means that we're just not willing to sit around and and wait to be served content. If there's a way to avoid that, we will. So it does paint a bit of a bleak picture, I think, it stands. I'm probably telling you nothing you don't know, but it does mean that audiences are harder to reach, they're harder to engage, and they're harder to influence than ever before. And the problem is that we're just misunderstanding who the audience are. So we've got this sort of wider backdrop of them being harder to reach and the attention economy in crisis. But we also have a challenge to just understand our audiences better. Think there's a sense that we're still using models and principles that are very much outdated. Fundamentally, we're still defining our audience by traditional demographic measures like age and gender and geography. And then we're making huge assumptions on their emotion triggers and levers. So segmentation models just still feel a little bit too one dimensional. And it's just a bit of an example of on the left hand side, I guess the old model, which I think is still being largely used, really just looks at audiences in relation to them as customers and where on the journey they might be when it comes to their purchase intent and potential to purchase. So it really just eliminates any of the kind of depth of the individual. The reality is we are multi hyphenated people. We have multiple roles. We operate within these roles simultaneously. And a big part of our identity increasingly is fandom and sort of what we love and what we're passionate about and what we spend time doing. So the idea that we were still meant to sort of fit into these kind of one dimensional boxes is really outdated because increasingly everything is fluid, even those sort of traditional demographic ideas of gender and sexuality. So the issue is that segmentation that's being used to reach these audiences just hasn't kept up with culture. Culture is what we engage in day out day in, day out. And as I've defined, it's you know, we see culture as fan culture. So if we're not understanding our audiences through the lens of fandom and the fan communities they're part of, then we're just really not understanding them at all. And some of these assumptions that we get to are just, I think, taking us to dead ends. So I'm just going to address some of the ones that might feel a little bit less conventional or expected. I think where we talk about men of a certain age that still live at home, we'd assume that they're all gamers, but perhaps not realising that actually the gaming audience is nearly half female. So again, just thinking if you want to reach gamers, that start and end with sixteen year old boys in their bedroom. Female gamers are on the rise and nearly make up half the audience. Also, there's this sort of expectation around beauty. The beauty industry is huge and growing, but we tend to think about audience, core audience being women and girls. But actually, there are huge viral movements around perhaps some sort of toxic identities around lux maxing. But what that really indicates is that there are a huge audience of boys, young boys and men who are very much into kind of beauty and fragrance and looking to brands to serve them. When we think about pop music, we think about, again, groups of young girls. But I think what so interesting in terms of massive pop acts is just the breadth of the demographic that support them. Taylor Swift is a great example of if you went to an Era's tour, saw in the crowd, there was just such a diverse range of ages. There's a lot of mums with daughters, but there's also a lot of older women going as groups of friends. So there's a real rise in women going to see live music together. And thanks to TikTok, local culture is just no longer local and it's globalized instantly. So from a music perspective, see the likes of two biggest artists in the world, Rosalia, Bad Bunny singing, rapping in Spanish and commanding global audiences. And then at a more local level, food fandom, which used to be something that was very domestic, has become a kind of huge fandom and is really crossing borders through the likes of TikTok. And I love the British maxing and London maxing of food on TikTok. So what we need to do is we need to start to use culture to guide our audience segmentation because when it comes down to it, fandom is actually our true identity. It's increasingly how we define ourselves. But understanding fans through the lens of fandom is really only one part of the puzzle. I think understanding their commercial value is the other. So there's a huge opportunity for brands to tap into fans, not just to be more relevant and engage them, but to really kind of unlock the commercial potential. Because fans are very, very loyal and very willing to spend their hard earned money on the object of their fandom. So sixty percent of fans are more likely to spend money with brands that align to their favorite artists and community. So they increasingly spend a huge amount accessing their fandom, and then they're also willing to spend money on brands that speak to their fandom in a really authentic way and really support the the objects of their fandom. The fandom market is massive. So it's projected to be thirty eight billion in two thousand and thirty five, growing year on year. And we know that consumers increasingly discover brands through their fandom. So as well as spending more on brands that engage in their fandom, they also like to discover new brands through the things that they love. And we look at a super relevant example. Harry Styles' London dates are predicted to generate over one point one billion in spending, which surpasses the Era's tour, which was obviously headlines all over the world in terms of, like, the the Taylor Swift economy, and then Oasis last year. So it's just it's live music is sort of a a constantly growing beast, and there seems to be an endless number of fans that are willing to spend over the odds for live music, especially these kind of big stadium tours. But the fact that this twelve night tour in Wembley Stadium alone is generating that level of income and spending is just incredible. That's just the tickets. So before you actually then look at the likes of the preparation, the outfits, the food and drink, etcetera. The global sports fan market is bigger than ever. So it's expected to It generated three zero two billion in twenty twenty five alone and that is just going to keep on growing. You can see this really steady incremental increase on spending amongst fans and spectators all the way up to two thousand thirty three. And what's really exciting about fandom is that it's not a sort of temporary cultural tactical moment. It's a sort of enduring commitment to kind of passion and identity. So sixty three percent of fans are unlikely to ever stop supporting their fandom. So when we think about demographics and how we bracket people in age groups, if you then look at this through a different perspective and think about fandoms, you're able to reach a much broader audience, which I think is really useful for brands that are mass brands and need to engage as many people as possible. It's really helpful to think about them as fans because we then don't have to think about the specific age limitations and it's more about a kind of collective affinity. But for most brands, even the ones that are investing a huge amount in culture and have entire culture strategies, they are still seeing brand strategy and culture strategy as a separate stream. So they'll have brand storytelling and they'll have huge amounts of investment in brand campaigns that are specifically trying to deliver a brand message that is entirely internal facing in that sense of what it is that brand stands for, believes in, and has some kind of product message at the heart. What I really believe and what I want to talk to you about today is this idea that they shouldn't be separate. So they fundamentally need to come together. Understanding your audience as fans means that you should be putting them in the heart of your brand strategy. So your brand storytelling should really be telling story of fandom and reflecting your audience's fandoms in that storytelling. It really is how you future proof your brand. So now that we've sort of established that audience segmentation is outdated, that we need to start thinking about audiences as fans, and that we prove the value of fandom and why it's more than just an audience strategy, but in fact, it's a business model. Think it's quite useful to think about who are the fans and how you access them. So the great thing about fandom is that everyone is a fan. Eighty one percent of consumers identify as fans. I mean, that's you know? And that's using language such as fans. I think a lot of people love things and enjoy them and don't necessarily identify them themselves as a fan. But, you know, broadly, everyone is a fan of something. And we actually increasingly are multi fans. So again, we talk to brands a lot about not thinking about their audiences as in siloed fandoms, but thinking about their audience having multiple fandoms and also where those opportunities might lie and where those fandoms cross over. So TikTok has really helped to kind of fuel this idea of fandom through just the easy access that we have to the content that really helps bring us to that space in fandom. So it really is easier than ever to kind of get into fandom, to become a fan of something. I'll give you a good example. I watched a TV show with my daughter, which is called Popstar Academy, which was about the making of a kind of international k pop band. And the TV show was on Netflix, and then off the back of that, I started following fan accounts mainly because my daughter's obsessed with them and, a, I want to be relevant to her, but, b, more importantly, she wants to go see them live. So I'm thinking, okay. I I follow I'll I'll I'll kinda follow the official accounts, and and hopefully, I'll get first news on when they go live. As a result of that, I get so much content served to me because my algorithm now shows that I am engaged to some degree in in a big K pop band. And you can't help yourself. Before you know it, you you kinda know what their names are and you suddenly start to really appreciate all their dance moves and then you start to see all the other videos of people doing the dance moves and you're very much a fan at this point. So yeah, thanks to TikTokification of Culture, which is really the second generation of social media. The fact that these platforms are actually more organised around shared interests and interpersonal networks means that we have algorithms serving us the content that it thinks we might like. And it's based on our previous engagement with the platform. All it really takes is sort of one or two pauses on videos and more and more gets served to you. So it's a very, very easy place to become knowledgeable about different fandoms and get really deep into the world of different fandoms. So from that perspective, it's actually easier to access fans than it is your audiences. So when we started off, we talked about how hard it is to kind of increasingly hard it is to reach audiences. But actually from a fan point of view, it's a lot easier because we're able to kind of identify where the fans are and fundamentally they're on social media and they're engaging in fan content there. There is Through this lens of fandom, it actually becomes a lot easier to reach the people we want to reach. It also becomes easier because there are so many different entry points into fandom. I think traditionally, when we talked about fandom, it was really seen as a bit of a channel for marketers, and that channel was sponsorship. So in order to access fans, you might need to buy an expensive rights deal, that would give you access to you know, be at the matches or in the concerts. And that that that is how you you sort of access fans and and try and engage them. That's really the kind of primary universe, you know, that is still very, very powerful. And it, know, definitely gives you mass access to mass fans and it gives you cultural relevancy. But I think for a lot of brands, that really is from a cost perspective, out of reach. But that's really exciting because there are now just so many other ways to access fan communities because there are all of these secondary universes around the primary universe of fandom. And what that actually means is these are all subcultures or communities that are smaller perhaps than the biggest fandom, or certainly they represent smaller parts. But it also just means from a brand perspective, really whatever level of investment you have, you can find a way to access fans. So whether it be through the kind of intersectional interests of the fan groups, so, you know, the the kind of maybe quite, like, niche aspects of that fandom that crossover into food or fashion, you know, or street culture, Or it can be the grassroots aspect of that fandom. So helping to get people in communities closer to their area of interest, but a real on the ground level, which can be very, very cost effective. And then obviously you've got the creator economy and that's a whole spectrum. So yes, can And you probably would spend millions on some of the biggest creators, but there are many influential creators who are a lot smaller that are very easy to access and you can make a real impact by working with them and speaking the language of fandom. So they're easier to access because the platforms are there, but also there's multiple entryways, there's lots of doors to get into fandom. And also they're easier to access because we're just spending more time on the things we love. If fans are a fan of something, they will endeavor inevitably to spend a lot of time online around that fandom. So seventy percent of millennials and Gen Z say that if they are a fan of a show or franchise, they will be engaging with content and conversation on multiple platforms, at least three. And we know that consumers are spending on average two and a half hours a day on social platforms, and most of this is engaging in creators and teams and artists and shows, so essentially objects of fandom. And I think the sense of fandom being more important than ever is partly because we are seeking human connection as the world becomes more automated. As AI becomes more intrinsic to everything we do, I think that feeling is just going to grow and get more important, which is why we feel so strongly about fandom being the future for brands because human connection is really at the heart of fandom, whether that be in the massive stadiums, in the concerts, but it's also on the touch lines of the smaller local football clubs. It's also inevitably mostly online engaging with other people who share your love and passion for that thing. And that human connection is really, really important. And we know that seventy five percent of consumers want more interaction with real people as technology continues to advance. So, okay, we've set the scene for why fandom is just so important for brand survival, but now there's a little bit of a kind of how to in terms of best practice of running deep into fandom. So I think the first thing to point out is to just stop thinking about fan culture as a channel and actually start thinking about it as a full content ecosystem. So really once you figure out what fan culture or multiple fan cultures your brand needs to be in based on where your audience is as fans, it's then just about thinking how do we reach them through the full ecosystem? And it's not just a question of a partnership or a badging exercise, but thinking about the the kind of multiple touch points of that fandom and how you can start to bring in some of those behaviors and insights into your own brand and comms ecosystem. But essentially there are five core principles of running deep in fan cultures. And so I'm just going to go through each one of these and give a couple of examples for each because it just helps to kind of bring them to life and make them more tangible. So the first is to really kind of know your stans. And stans is an interesting word because I think it probably had some kind of negative connotations for. It certainly came from a song which definitely took fandom too far. But we actually love the word stan because it's really evolved into just an expression of of real passion and and knowledge and depth for for your fandom. So we really embrace the word stan, and we also don't think it means like niche groups anymore. As I talked about, it's so easy to become very knowledgeable about fans, about different fandoms. So being a stan actually is sort of easier than it's ever been. So, yeah, that's really just about understanding what it is that the most passionate fans really, really care about. And just for example, there's a report that we did a couple of years ago now just on the kind of growth of live music and how actually from a stand perspective, it's really problematic. If you're someone who loves going to see live music all the time, you're inevitably being priced out. There's not many people that really can afford to go and see live music on a regular basis now. So live music becoming the new luxury is a real problem, and it really kind of puts up barriers for fans to to experience live music. So going deep into that fandom and understanding that means that you as a brand, for example, could be thinking about how to unlock more of that kind of live experience for young people or certainly talk to them in a way that shows them that you understand that that's a problem that they're having. So yeah, I've just got a few examples of brands doing stand up really well. So, yeah, for decades, the anime creators replaced McDonald's with with McDonald's. Obviously, for a copyright point of view, that was problematic. But the stans loved that and how it always showed up in anime. And instead of McDonald's taking umbrage of that, they embraced it and delivered a a whole kind of anime led campaign, really going deep on that law and owning it, which the fans loved. And this is a much this is a super recent example around the World Cup. And I think what's good about this example, and hopefully you'll see there's a real mix in some of the examples, I think we always try and help brands to think about fan culture from a long term point of view. And I'm going to talk about this in a bit more detail, but there is just also a world in which as a brand, if you don't have rights to If you don't have the budget or the rights of the World Cup, there are still ways that you can be active in those kind of fan moments and really kind of show the fans that you understand their passion and their experience of those moments and be part of it regardless of permission. So this is just an example of delivery, believing that bigger pizzas make for happy fans when the fans are watching football. So they did a partnership with Peter Crouch and have made a pizza as tall as him, which obviously no one really needs, but it's good fun. Drove loads of other media and just, I think, reflected a fan insight back to the fans at a really crucial time for football fandom. The second principle is around understanding their code. So this feeds into standem, but it doesn't have to be just for stanza. It's understanding the fandom at large and what are those universal behaviors that that fandom exhibits? And this is a really lovely example of that. How Duracell understood that if you're a K pop fan, the light stick is everything. So any kind of K pop fan will have a light stick even if they've never been to a K pop concert. It's just part of the culture. And that is part of the mass culture. It's not a niche thing. It's not specific to a certain place or location or geography. It's like any K pop fan. So recognising that, these light sticks need to essentially be on for an entirety of a concert. Duracell did a whole campaign and load of content around understanding the importance of battery power during these moments and Duracell being the the right brand of choice for those moments so they can ensure the fans' lights stay on all night. Little do it beautifully at Mighty Hoopla. So instead of just turning up at Mighty Hoopla, brand did a partnership with Hunsnet, and that just meant that the way they turned up felt really, really authentic. And HunsNet were very much creative directors, but also brand partners in helping to curate the little experience at Mighty Hoopla, Understanding that, you know, there are there are there are certain things that, you know, that audience will really engage with at the festival and really help Little turn up in a way that actually, you know, made made the impact and was loved by the crowd. So they created a a whole kind of stage, which included like a a lip sync battle, live, laugh, live sorry, live, laugh, little arena, sing alongs, giveaways, performances, including Celine Dion, which I absolutely love. The third principle is creating a value exchange. So this is really about understanding that if you can speak to brands sorry, if you can speak to fans in their language but also give them something that will make their fan experience better, then they are extremely open to welcoming you as a brand into the space, but also converting that into becoming a fan of your brand and ultimately the kind of purchase power within that. This is the real commercial value of fandom. Lays have done a really great campaign for the World Cup, which taps into this idea that when football fans are watching all of the games, they are often in WhatsApp groups talking about the games. And so the opportunity here was for brands to, in return for their data and competition mechanics, etcetera, they got to access this private WhatsApp group featuring Messi and Beckham, even Steve Carell, so that they can engage in conversation with them whilst they're watching the games. Airbnb partnered with Sabrina Carpenter, and together they created the ultimate Airbnb experience, which was a combination of a kind of amazing fan meet and greet, but also a kind of ongoing brand experience for Airbnb and Sabrina, really kind of allowing fans to to kind of access her world in a way that they'd never be able to before. And this is obviously a performer who has such a kind of creative and visceral world that she's built. So the idea of actually being able to convert that into a real world experience is really clever and something that fans desperately, desperately wanted. It's incredibly popular. The fourth principle is about spanning the multiverse. We talked a bit about this idea of the multiverse. So really kind of making sure this is an example of Spurs and and how, you know, creative is so different for every single every shirt that they have, whether it be home or away, and really kind of understanding that the audience are different, and therefore, you need to kind of speak to all of them in different ways. Red Bull, I think, are a great example of this. I think everyone knows that if you you know, Red Bull, their whole brand strategy is is their culture strategy. You just don't really see their brand existing, and they're probably the the best brand at being able to kind of integrate culture into their brand story. So really, their entire brand is built around acts and culture, and that's across culture from, you know, everything from F1 music to all the kind of crazy extreme stunts that they do. No other brand lives in culture in the way that Red Bull does. And then the other way to do it is to kind of span the multiverse of a specific area of fandom. So if football is the fandom, then make sure that you as a brand are trying to kind of get to all corners of it. Barclays is a really good example of this and sponsoring Premier League for as long as they have. It shows commitment, it shows a belief in the sport, but what they really talk about is how they're championing women's football, making sure that women's football is something that schools have across up and down the country, making sure that communities around the country have opportunities through football. Really kind of pushing into grassroots and also women's sport to demonstrate their commitment in football. And that really leads us nicely onto the sort of long term commitment that's we believe required from brands to kind of really be culturally relevant and to kind of really protect them in the long term. And that really just involves commitment over a period of time and turning up in the same way consistently in a way that is true to your brand, but also really serves a purpose in the space that you're in. So red breast whiskey, for example, is a hidden gem in the whiskey world. And as a result, the brand believes that the best things require a little searching and digging to unearth. And so their culture platform, Red Brush and Hidden, is like a five year platform that unhides cinematic gems, mainly kind of original storytelling through a partnership with South by Southwest and Andrew Scott. And these are five year deals that are being done and they are our commitment to young up and coming filmmakers to support them and to show their work to fans across the world. Charlotte Tilbury has done something fantastic. It's really sort of moved into supporting women in F1, which is obviously something that I think needs a lot more visibility, a lot more investment. So having the brand's own academy demonstrates a long term approach. You can't do that in one year. That has to be something that you build over five, ten, and possibly longer to really make an impact. Otherwise, it it can really backfire and fans will be incredibly turned off by that kind of tactical sponsorship. And then O2 is another great example of this. So they committed to equal investment in terms of their deal for the men and women's England rugby teams until two thousand and thirty one. So that was a really kind of groundbreaking move they did, I think it was maybe six, seven years ago, but now it's a commitment for A published commitment until two thousand thirty one. So it's a really kind of long term belief. So in terms of using those principles to build a culture strategy, essentially there are sort of four steps. So find the fans, really kind of get to know them, understand them, understand who the fans are, what their values are, what their codes are. Then really important, it's about finding the white space for your brand. So what is it that your brand authentically can say about itself? Usually that needs to come from a product truth that can then be applied to the fan space in a way that makes sense for the brand and for the fan because the fans will thank you if you get that right. Then it's about delivering a roadmap and framework. So thinking about how this can be a longer term or certainly a campaign ecosystem rather than a single act. And look at how you can integrate partners of all levels, whether that be, like I say, the grassroots ones all the way up through to the global broadcast ones, just to help you access those fans and also gain IP to to kind of give you credibility in the space. So I'm I'm gonna wrap up now. If there's three things, I guess, I would love lost you. There you go. Three things that I would love for everyone to take away, it would be, number one, fandom reveals consumers and your audience much more deeply than demographics ever can. It makes audiences three-dimensional. It brings segmentation up to date with how we as people, as humans think about ourselves and relates to the way we behave and the time we spend much better than any kind of traditional demographic does. The second lesson and take out is that fan culture isn't a tactic, it's the strategy. So it's not separate from your brand strategy. It's not a flash in the pan. It's not a moment in time. It needs to become inherently a part of your brand strategy to future proof your brand moving forward. And then the third point is make sure that you do something with the fans that will build a value exchange and then stay there for as long as you can. And the longer you're there, the more the fans will reward you. So there's a direct correlation between how long you commit and the impact that your brand makes and the conversion that you can get from those fans into being fans of your brand. Thank you so much for bearing with me. And I'm happy to talk to Joe and take any questions that anyone may have on this topic. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Jody. It's really, really appreciated. There are, like there's thirteen open questions right now, in in in the q and a plus about I've got about a billion. So I know that we won't be able to get to them all in the next fourteen minutes, but but let's make sure that we try and get to as many as possible because it feels like there are so many useful builds off the back of everything you just said. So thank you for first and foremost for sharing your experience because I know that within that presentation there are years and years. And so for you to be so generous with your knowledge, it's really, really appreciated. Thank you also to the community for your fantastic questions as well. Really, really brilliant. And let's get to those now. As mentioned, Jodi, we've got thirteen open questions right now in thirteen minutes. So if we could treat this as a bit of a quick fire, then that might be the easiest So, you and I were chatting beforehand and we kind of knew that this question would come up in the best way possible. And it comes from Anne Marie and there's a few versions of it. So I'm gonna try and bring together into one. So Anne Marie says, with a small or no budget, can fandom work for smaller businesses and non for profits? There's also a version of this question which is for b to b businesses which, may consider themselves a bit more boring Yeah. Quote unquote because there's no such thing as boring business. But particularly for those sort of starting out on their journey budget wise, I've seen that you've obviously pointed out the principles that you have today. Do they work just as well for smaller budgets, etcetera? Yeah, I think so. I think it's about it's a mindset shift. So there's a couple of things. Think the the investment really needs to be at the front end. So it's about the understanding of your audience and understanding their fandoms and creating fan profiles of your audience and making the strategic decision to start speaking to them as fans. That's the number one upfront investment. And that just takes a bit of time and expertise. The other point is to think about regardless of who your audience are. So I think we talked about this before, traditional B2B audience, example, tends to put people in a bit of a tailspin when it comes to fandom because they're like, Oh, but they're not They're businesses. And yes, that is true, but they're also fans because they're run by humans. So they will be fans of many things just as all of us are. So again, stop thinking about these audiences in relation to your business services or the nature of their purchase to your business and start thinking about them as fans. That and that really helps to unlock how you can engage them in different ways. And then I think the next piece is to think about what area of fandom that you legitimately as a business could show up in and why that would make sense. And then it's just about, as I said, the multiverse and understanding where those really, really low budget, low impact entry points are. And that tends to be in the community. It tends to be working with content creators and influencers that are very much social purpose driven, especially for those businesses that are not for profits. We did this with a campaign for War Child for Brits Week, which is obviously a charity. They put on these amazing shows. They get artists to perform for free. People pay thirty pound plus a ticket to go and see these artists and into the venues, but then there's no budget to really do anything else. So on a very low budget, we developed a merch collection And then we got a load of content creators and influencers who are really values led and like to wear their values on their fashion to support that campaign. And no money was really changed hands. We did contra deals. We invited them to concerts. We sent them the t shirts. We told them why this was so important. There are ways in which you can show up in these spaces. That was doing something really great within community, but at a very kind of low cost level. Love that. Thank you so much. I love the example as well. That's really helpful to sort of point that out. So I really, really appreciate that. Let's take the next question from Emily, Not because I don't want to follow-up on your previous answer, but I wanna make sure we get across the breadth of the questions. So one of your first four steps, in your conclusion, just a moment ago was about sort of establishing where your fandom is and and taking the time there. Would you be able to sort of speak a little bit more on the the how to on that? I I appreciate you've covered some elements, in in the presentation today, like that sort of step one sort of figuring out where people are. Do you have a process that you sort of follow through for that? How do you go about finding those folks as part of that culture that you want to be part of? Yeah. I mean, obviously every brand's gonna have like different level of sophistication when it comes to their audience mapping and profiles. We a sort of combination of things. So we take often the brand's own audience segmentation and data And then we cross reference those segments with some qualitative data. So we do a lot of fan interviews. We also map it against individual research, small target number, one thousand, two thousand people surveys essentially, where we try and get into, if you like these things, if you fit into this demographic, what do you tend to enjoy in your spare time and how much time do you spend with it, etcetera. And we do a lot of social listening as well. And then fundamentally, this is going to be really unhelpful, I suppose it's is that there are there's a reason brands work with guides and agency strategy partners, whatever it might be, individuals, agencies. There's a reason they do that. It's because these are people that have built up years and years of experience of doing one thing. And we're very lucky in that we've got a lot of experience in our business and the individuals within our business have been here and done this and know what they're doing. So there is an element of expertise that comes with that as well. Yeah. You're allowed you're very much allowed to say you're really good at what you do. That's that's absolutely fine. So that that works really well, Jay. Thank you very much. Let's take the next one from from James because I think for, some of those, particularly under short term pressures, having these kind of conversations may be fraught with with the age of marketing challenge of of short term results and and So James asks, is it common to have someone who is a fan but doesn't convert being a customer? I. E. They're part of the noise online influencing commercial outcomes but never actually spend any money, so it comes down to it. And if so, how do you begin to measure those things when it comes to that interaction? So I think that the research shows us that fans are very open to considering spending on brands and products that are within their pandemic if those brands are doing it right. They're very influential in that sense. They're easily influenced in a good way. They're very open to the exchange. I talk about the value exchange. So I would say no. I'd say it's quite unusual for If you're targeting a certain group of fans and you're doing it in a way that's authentic to your brand, to that space, you understand what their values are, what they're looking for from brands and you get that right, yeah, it's very unlikely that that fan won't then become a customer. Certainly it's a much better conversion rate than just generic advertising to certain demographics. Because for all the reasons I've talked about, fans are just more engaged. They're leaning in, they're passionate. You say the right thing to them, you can convert them pretty easily. So I think that was the first part of the question. In terms of measurement, yeah, mean, there's just so many different ways you can do that. If, for example, you have a piece of content which encourages people to go here to sign up for X, Y and Z, then you've got their data and then you can see how that translates into sales. Obviously a lot of content creators and the social media platforms, etcetera, you can do that very literally. You can go from a brand fan storytelling piece straight to product. But also for brands that are doing really big campaigns that are much more brand storytelling led or brand led and less product led, they can also look at isolating their usual brand metrics around the time of that campaign. And they can understand, are their engagements higher? Are people Does consideration go up? There's also really great ways of mapping how people that are interacting with your fan led campaigns convert into customers by then looking at If your customers are engaging in those campaigns, you can then look at the value of your customers. So we've done this with O2, we've done it with Barclays. You can see that the value of that customer is higher if they engage with your fan led campaigns. They are going to be the customers that spend more money with you. They're going to be the customers that have higher and more expensive products. Thank you so much. I think it's just so powerful to reiterate. I mean, you had so many facets to your answer there, but the value exchange bit at the beginning there where you sort of said that because I think intuitively for someone doing a project like this for the first time or sort of approaching this for the first time, they may do everything up until that point. And then sort of forget about the value exchange bit at which point that conversation becomes a lot harder. So like, I'm really grateful for you sort of speaking through in that way because that's, it's the hard bit. It's the easier bit to forget in a way but where you're going to see the results. I really appreciate that. We've got a great question here from Shireen who says you've presumably been on this journey quite viscerally for yourself. So Shireen asks, how can we challenge our agencies to start segmenting based on culture versus traditional audience modelling? I guess you must spend way too much of your life, sort of flying this particular flag. Are there any quick wins that you could share? I think it's starts with intent. So I think brands need decide that they want to be culturally relevant. They want to do that through fan culture. And then it's about organizing as much of the business around that, particularly the brand team, around that principle And starting to I think the brand also has to be accountable for their segmentation and being committed to going deeper on their audience and understand them as fans. And then I think it's about making sure the briefs to the agencies are using those fan profiles. I think more importantly, there's a bit of strategy that needs to be done, which is understanding where the fandom is, where's the bull's eye or multiple bull's eye. What we do a lot of the time with brands is we work out a kind of culture strategy. So this is a level above the individual fandoms. It's about helping them to have a point of view in culture that's consistent, whether you're in film, whether you're in football, whether you're in music, whether you're in fashion. But the way you behave is true to your brand and also taps into a consistent insight of fans across all of those different fashion areas. So for example, I'll give you the red breasts example. That is They know that their audience we know that their audience are always looking for something different and original, but they don't have time to find it. And that's whether it be films, music, obscure books, whatever. And so Red Cross Unhidden is something that sits across all of those fandoms. And then it's just a question of whether the brand wants to push into a specific fandom at a specific time. But the way they do that will always be consistent. Nice. I love that. Thank you very, very much. That's endlessly helpful. And thank you also, Sherif, the brilliant question. I think am going to decline this sounds very grand but I think that that may well be the question from today that we choose to reward with the cap. So Shirin if you wanna get in touch with us. Very good question. Yeah thank you very much for dropping that in. And thank you also, Jody, for the past hour for you sharing your hard earned experience with the community. There's so much there for folks to go at in the best possible way. As I said to you before today's session that the way you structured your presentation just itches my brain in the right way in the sense that of how everything was presented. So I really appreciate that. Thank you everyone for your fascinating chat comments, your great questions as ever. We'll be back next week. But in the meantime, Jody, thank you so much. You. You've been wonderful. And we'll see you. Thank you so much. Take care, everyone. Bye.