[00:00:00] Stephen: Today's Wow at Work podcast, um, I'm talking to Simon Batchelar, who's the author of Reframing Marketing and he's also a marketing mentor for the last 20 years. And the reason why I'm talking to Simon from marketing is I'm very interested in the whole idea of ethical marketing. Cause when we talk about Happiness at work, we talk about a supply chain that goes from the supplier, the grower, all the way through the person that markets the product and sells the product and the customer too. And the way we see it at Wow at Work is that we can't experience happiness at work if at some stage of the supply chain we feel there's something nefarious going on. Um, and whether it's the way we're treating the suppliers or the growers are the way it's worth treating our employees in the middle, or it's through sales practices that just don't seem right, that don't click in with the values of the company. And that's what we're talking about today. We're talking about ethical marketing and how and why that's important to creating a workplace where everybody feels good about themselves.

[00:00:59] Stephen: What I like about what we're going, what we're talking about today is, is Where I come from, from the whole ideas of workplace, Happiness is like values, purpose, you know, why you joined the organization in the first place, how they treat you within the organization, how the organization is treating its customers, you know, the production line from, you know, supply chain, from how, if there's like, you know, a supplier involved, how we're treating the suppliers, if there's farmers involved, how the farmers are being treated, how they're being paid, all the way through the organization to the point of sale, is everything in that, is it aligning with our values?

[00:01:34] Stephen: And I think a lot of us, when we work in organizations, we like to think that that's what's going on and, and. All along that supply chain, there's nobody that's been sort of hustled or done out of, you know, what they should be given or whatever, you know, are made to feel worse by the, the practices that we do. And I think we've all sort of had examples of, uh, organizations where that has been an issue. 

[00:01:55] Stephen: Before we even get into it, I, I had a thought today when I was thinking about this, was, was about, um, an organization that I, I worked for years, oh yeah, an organization I worked for years ago. I, I was working in London. I was at, I, I got a job, right. And I thought it was gonna be something different. And I turned up to work. And really what I was doing was I was sitting down and I had to go through the, Yellow Pages, is it a Yellow Pages? That's called Golden Pages Yellow Pages. So I had to go through the Yellow Pages, which for anybody who is not from that generation is actually a book with all the information about all the companies and the advertisers and everybody else's you wanted to know about in all different categories, there would be catering, there would be, you know, mechanic, there would be whatever in there. 

[00:02:38] Stephen: And what the, this company were doing is they, they said they were doing is, they had created, uh, a celebrity cookbook with lots of recipes from celebrities. And I, simple job was to be able to get advertising for this cookbook. Now, I didn't know how cookbooks worked. I haven't ever bought a cookbook with advertising in it, so I dunno what way this is working, anyway. From the start, I should have thought about this.

[00:03:01] Stephen: So I had to go through the, the yellow Pages and I had to find all these catering companies and I had to go and ask them, would they like to come on board on this cookbook for cancer research? So these celebrities are giving their time to give a recipe for cancer research pulling into heartstrings already. And I was given a little script and I had to read out this script. And the script was, you cannot say that across the UK there isn't a family that hasn't been touched by cancer. And oh, so gosh, and then I had to talk about, you know, bring your company on board this wonderful cookbook and align with us and here's some advertising space you can buy.

[00:03:35] Stephen: And at the time, I didn't even know who the celebrities were that were involved in this, so I had to make up the names. So I, yeah, I had to make, I'd say Steve, Steve Davis has come on board with a, with, with a really good one.

[00:03:45] Simon: Amazing. 

[00:03:46] Stephen: I had no idea if Steve Davis, but he was just topical at the time. Doesn't tell you how long ago it was. So I'm using these names of, of these relevant celebrities that had not contributed God and I remember going for lunch. And I asked the, um, the guys in the organization where the nearest tube station was and they said, well, it's just down the road. And I said, how long is lunch? And he said, it's an hour. Be back by two. And I said, great. I said, see you at two. And I walked out the door and I went straight down to that tube station and I never turned. Because I just felt that working for this organization just didn't align with anything that I thought was right. 

[00:04:21] Simon: We used to get those calls all the time, and it was like for, for calendars that were gonna go to schools, like wall planners and it was like supporting firefighters and all sorts and, yeah, books that were gonna go into schools was always a good one. And yeah, I remember just being like, but how will we ever know that you've sent the books to the schools? It was all like, you'll never know. So 

[00:04:44] Stephen: And to this day, I have not seen that book or found ev, uh, any evidence that, that, that, book. And I go, my God, how many, what was the turnover like in that organization? Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so that's the ethics of, I suppose, me, me as a human being of what, what I expect. So when I talk about, you know, the alignment of what we do and working, is the company doing good and the values of that, it's like today, talking to you, an expert and an author in, in the world of marketing. Um, I like to get an insight into how marketing works and how we end up at a stage where you're talking about the ethics and the ethical marketing, um, that you're coming from, cuz most marketers probably wouldn't have entered into that sphere.

[00:05:27] Stephen: So would you gimme a little bit of insight into, into, into marketing, I suppose from, from the early days of where marketing has come from or. When did it first start?

[00:05:37] Simon: So marketing's been around for a lot longer than you'd think, but also not as long as you'd think at the same time. There was a time obviously when people would just go to the shop to buy the things they needed, and that was, that was how it works, and you just picked up the things. But in fact, even before then, you wouldn't, you just ask for the things and then the person at the shop would pick it up and give it to you. It was only when Piggly Wiggly, the first supermarket came, which allowed people to walk round and pick up their own things, um, revolutionized shopping.

[00:06:08] Simon: So marketing used to be just about being recognizable on the shelf. So the reason you have like Brasso is a great example of all those lines pointing in towards the brand. And it's just so when someone's scanning the shelf behind the shopkeeper, they go, oh, and gimme a tin of Brasso. That comes down into the bag and then they tot it all up and you pay for it. So advertising really was more about brand recognition than it was about anything else.

[00:06:31] Simon: And then there was a guy called Claude c Hopkins, um, who wrote a book called Scientific Advertising. And that was all about how to, how he had basically revolutionized catalog sales. So how door to door sales would work, they'd drop off a catalog and then they'd come back and pick it up. And one of their big sellers was that they had a vacuum cleaner, um, that had a panel of wood on the front that you could change. So he, the salesperson would go into the house and see what sort of dining room furniture they had, and then you could have a vacuum cleaner panel that would match your dining room furniture. And the idea of this was that if you were going to buy a tool that would give your wife less work to do. You could display it when people came around for dinner and it would look good, and it would be a talking point, which tells you all of the things that were wrong about selling vacuum cleaners. And that was the beloved household brand Hoover, uh, who were, who were behind that campaign.

[00:07:33] Simon: But that then evolved over a long period of time into. Sort of newspaper and television advertising. And then it's evolved again into digital advertising, which is all around us at the moment.

[00:07:46] Stephen: I kind of like that. How it, how it's, I Have you ever seen much of Adam Curtis' work? He makes really good documentaries on, so social and cultural documentaries for the BBC. I'd never known anything about marketing till I saw him talk about Edward Bernays. Um, and Edward Bernays was a nephew of Sigmund freud. And he was seen as the first guy to, to tap into the whole idea of psychological marketing cuz he had spoken to his da, his, his, his uncle about this.

[00:08:13] Stephen: And a good example of this would've been back in the early parts of the 20th century, women didn't smoke. And tobacco industries were very, have you heard a story before? Have you.

[00:08:23] Simon: I've heard a version of it.

[00:08:25] Stephen: Go ahead. What's your, your version's probably better.

[00:08:27] Simon: So yeah, women didn't traditionally smoke, so they turned Marlboro, was it Marlboro? Cigarettes. They turned, they made an addition of Mol Bro for women. And it was basically the same cigarette, but just in a different packaging, that's, that's the version I heard. And then it was so outrageous that they banned smoking in New York for two weeks, because one of the mares was absolutely outraged that he had seen a woman smoking. But it then turned out he hadn't actually seen a woman smoking. He'd just read about it in the newspaper. But yeah, there was that huge campaign to try and transfer it, but I dunno if there was any psychological play behind it. Maybe there

[00:09:04] Stephen: Well, here you go. So this is what happened. So when Ed Edward Bernays had looked into this, he discovered when he heard his, uh, I think he had me talking to Sigmund about this or read Sigma's papers, what he discovered was that the cigarette apparently is just seen as, as an extension of the male penis.

[00:09:21] Simon: Oh, I see.

[00:09:22] Stephen: So this is, this is what he did. This is what he did. Because 50% of the tobacco industries were, were obviously interested in extending their market and realized that they didn't have any female uh uh, because it wasn't a done thing for females to smoke back then. So it was during one of the parades that went through New York City, and that would've been, you know, the May Day parade or July the fourth parade, and he simply got a load of journalists. And he said, at this particular point on the parade, something big is going to happen today. You will want to be here. So contacted all them.

[00:09:51] Stephen: So they all stood at this particular point and at this particular point, he had contacted beforehand, the feminists, um, I think it was the women's, uh, there was some form of the, uh, uh, the feminist association. And he said, this is the time to empower you and I'm going to empower you. Your ability to smoke is, is gonna start today. Don't let anybody tell you you can't do this.

[00:10:10] Stephen: So he got the women to actually, at this particular point in the parade to walk by and all actively take out a cigarette each and light it up. And no one had ever seen this before. And this was like shocking, and it got into the headlines of the papers the next day. 

[00:10:23] Simon: it's pretty, crazy, isn't it? That level of manipulation now, like listening to that now feels quite shocking that that, that would happen. But then there are numerous brands that still use exactly that same ploy, like every day. Massive brands might use that.

[00:10:39] Simon: Cuz they badge it as doing really good work. But when you actually just cut the waffle off the top, it is just really nasty stuff that's happening.

[00:10:47] Stephen: But you think more than ever now, that now there's, we live in this world of transparency that, and people are seeing through things and questioning things more, that there would be less of that happening, which seems to be what is connected to marketing, is the idea that, and somehow we are being manipulated to, to buy a product that we don't necessarily want, but we're meant to feel that we need it.

[00:11:09] Simon: Yeah, I mean a good example that comes to mind is caffeine shampoo. Have you ever heard of this?

[00:11:14] Stephen: Sort of seen once, once or twice, never bought

[00:11:16] Simon: Yeah, it was a big thing a few years ago, and to me it was the combination of two things that would never go together and have no plausible benefit other than the fact that people quite like caffeine and people quite like shampoo. And it was a genius concept of just combining two useless things and trying. It was like a, a solution in search of a problem.

[00:11:36] Simon: And I think that's what a lot of these. Big brands are doing now. They, uh, they, they have a slight variation on a product and they're like, well, you kind of need to find a way to make a hole in someone's life for this product to fill. And I think that is a, a very common trick that is employed with marketing is like, well, okay, you've got this great product. What problem does it solve? And. Sometimes it solves a problem. And those are the good products. They're the products that well houses are full of already. But sometimes when you've got a hundred products already out there and you've invented product 101, it's like, well, we've already solved that. We've already done this. We've already told people that that fix is this. Told people that's sorted. So what's left? Ah, what about if people don't feel that their hair is energized enough? What if we put caffeine in shampoo? Like people love coffee. What's coffee made of like. You know, people don't, people don't coffee smelling hair, but they want the energy of caffeine in their hair, and it's like, what is happening?

[00:12:39] Simon: But, I'm sure someone made a couple of million quid off that, and it, maybe it's still out there, they've just stopped advertising it. But I think that that's always one of my funny, ridiculous product mixtures that I, I genuinely can't see are use for.

[00:12:52] Simon: I mean, product positioning is a real art. And your big companies, your SE Johnsons, Unilevers, GSK, you know, they employ hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who job is just to subdivide products. Do you know what I mean? I mean, whoever makes Colgate, they what I mean, 20 different versions of Colgate? Could, could anybody tell the difference if they were in the same tube? No, not at all.

[00:13:17] Simon: But toothpaste is a really good example actually of, of why, of how numb people have become to advertising. So if you think about reading a toothpaste box, if even one of the things that was written on a toothpaste box was true, you'd never need to go to the dentist again. So we just accept the fact that when you buy a box of toothpaste, you, it, it's all lies. Everything written on the box is complete lies.

[00:13:41] Simon: And the idea is, is like, prevents cavities. Well, I use toothpaste and I've got a cavity, so therefore I'm entitled to all of my money back for all of the toothpaste, surely. Cuz it said, prevents cavities. Prevents gum disease. Brilliant one. Tuber toothpaste. I never get gum disease. It's a miracle product if you believe anything that's written on it. But because people are so numb to these promises in cosmetics, you could say, you know, we'll take the black spots off a cow. It doesn't matter if it doesn't work, cuz you're never gonna take toothpaste back to the shop cuz it doesn't work. It's like, it could say, yeah, can be used instead of petrol in your car in and oh, it didn't work. No, it's only toothpaste. Throw it in the bin. 

[00:14:20] Stephen: So there's a huge amount of psychology involved, like we've mentioned that ever so slightly is there involved in, um, what, what, what are the things that a lot of marketing companies or a lot of organizations use as psychology to try and get us to, to purchase products?

[00:14:33] Simon: There's a number of them that come up a lot, so you've got, I'll list through them and then we can dive into them a bit more. But, like, demanding attention is a really big one. So essentially putting your adverts in a place where they have to be watched. You can't skip them. You know, see YouTube for example.

[00:14:51] Simon: Manipulation, which is simply acting from a position of power. So a lot of brands are more knowledgeable, their sales people are trained to know all of the different things about the product, and therefore you are able to leverage a conversation, you're able to manipulate something. So manipulation's a strong one.

[00:15:09] Simon: Applying unnecessary pressure. That's a classic. So that's sometimes then with deadlines, it's in b b2b, it's always, well, we've got someone else lined up to buy this. If you don't. So a bit of fomo.

[00:15:22] Simon: False scarcity is a big one because, you know, you're saying there's only only three left when you've got a factory of them.

[00:15:30] Stephen: Just, on that one. Simon. That's really interesting cuz I was looking at only, was it bookings.com yesterday and I was looking at accom accommodations and every time I'm on bookings.com, I'm not saying this is what they do, but it looks like one just left, two just bought or something. Something along those lines as telling you two at this price. Same with the airlines as well. There's two, two seats left at this price.

[00:15:50] Stephen: Suddenly, I mean, I, I am, and I was doing this exactly two nights ago. I was, I was booking a flight and I was going, oh my gosh, maybe I need to get the flight now. If I don't, God knows off flight price is gonna be next.

[00:16:00] Simon: There's a number of things happening there. The only one left on booking.com. Same with Expedia. I think there's literally those two companies that own everything else, like booking.com, own Kayak. They own Opoldo. They own, oh, uh, Microsoft owns Skyscanner, but other than that, I think there's like three people who do it and they own everybody else.

[00:16:18] Simon: So when we say booking.com for legal reasons, we're of course talking market wide. This whole only one room left, now sometimes there genuinely will be only one room left, I get it. Like a hotel has a fixed number of rooms. There is scarcity involved. However, there's a thing called dynamic pricing, which is happening. And dynamic pricing is essentially just a way of working out what they think you'll pay for it, and then seeing if you'll pay it. So everybody gets a different price.

[00:16:46] Simon: So for example, uh, if you book a flight in Europe, on ba.com is cheaper than if you book the same flight. ba.com from the UK and you pay in Euros. So if like me, you've got a Monso account, you don't mind paying in Euros cuz you're getting a good rate. If you use a VPN to be in France or Germany and you book a flight in Europe, it's cheaper. And it's just because they think they can charge more in the UK because UK people will pay more to fly in Europe.

[00:17:13] Simon: It's not just airlines that do this, uh, theater tickets, if you ever seen a, the ticket for 52 pounds, 73 or something's ridiculous, that's just dynamic pricing. They're just nudging and testing those, especially for the big theater groups do it. Um, and your online shopping app is a good one as well. That's a really good example of it.

[00:17:31] Stephen: So this is an interesting one cause I've seen dynamic pricing come into the concert tickets for the very first time in the last year. So some obviously has designed or created this or come up with this and somebody has said, this is gonna work. So suddenly you gotta see Taylor Swift, you gotta sue, see Bruce Springsteen, I think they have dynamic pricing built in. And it's, it's, it's, it just means that things are getting outrageously expensive when it comes to those, uh, services.

[00:17:53] Simon: I mean, you get surge pricing on stuff like Uber and different apps like that. It's just responding to demand. So flights will get experientially quicker, uh, more expensive. So I had a standup comedian call it the Tyranny of the Nerd, which I think is brilliant. And it's essentially if you are really organized and you get and get your shit together, you will be first and you'll get an amazing deal. And everyone else is buggered. And he was u this comedian was using it in reference to, um, during the, uh, pandemic, in the lockdown when you had to pre-book a table at a pub. So you'd turn up to the pub and like it was full of people who'd booked three months ago. And you were like, no, can't get, can't get in. So is that, but that with dynamic pricing is the same, it's just.

[00:18:34] Simon: But yeah, the, I, I think this is the thing with the scarcity, I see quite often on things like websites where it'll be, you know, sale ends in two days and you're just like, well, the sale doesn't necessarily need to. That's, that's your choice to do that. And then the, in two days time, another sailer is they've just got a different banner at the top of the webpage or, you know, only 30 tickets left for a webinar. And you're like, yeah. It's a webinar, you can have hundreds of people on it. It's literally the same prices. Do you know what I mean? It's, there's, there's all this sort of false scarcity and I, I, I completely accept when there is actual scarcity, as we said with the hotels, there is physically only another number of rooms they can sell per night. I get it, you know. But there's a lot of digital stuff though, where it just simply isn't the case.

[00:19:19] Simon: I think full scarcity is, is is not one of the big ones, but it is one when used with, uh, manipulation, so if you are leveraging the fact that, you know, people don't know there's another way of doing it, then false scarcity just multiplies the effect of that.

[00:19:36] Simon: And then applying unnecessary pressure. So then if you then put a time limit on that, like they do on everyone's favorite RyanAir with, uh, you've got 16 minutes to check out, absolute classic because it's, you know, time pressure. It's, the thing is, is you, you, you can flip all of these round and say that for some people who are really bad at making decisions, sometimes a deadline's really useful, right? So actually the time constraint can be a useful thing to have for some people. I dunno, there's lots of different ways of viewing this. But in my mind it's the intention with which you set off. 

[00:20:12] Stephen: I think it's what we call arousal procrastination. So it stops you from procrastinating because you're aroused by stress. So something else from outside has created that stress that gave you a deadline, that you do know you ha, and suddenly everything else around you collapses. Cuz you know you've gotta get that flight, that hotel room. Whatever it is, that webinar, and then suddenly it's the stress that's causing you to book it.

[00:20:35] Stephen: So, uh, you've brought in a book Reframing Marketing. In your book, you, you, you discussed the concept of marketing work purpose. How does purpose driven marketing align with what we call ethical marketing practices?

[00:20:47] Simon: So, I think the purpose of what you're trying to achieve is started in the relationship sense with marketing. So, If you are, let's say, a consulting firm, and you are gonna go in and do, uh, some work with a firm to analyze all of their, let's say accounts, just for a simple example. So let's say you're gonna go and do an accounts audit. Then, if your promise that you're making to the client is that you're gonna be transparent, you're gonna be open, and you are gonna respect what they've got to take, you know, all of these values that companies have and put all over their website, and then you use a load of Facebook ads to send someone to a higher pressure sales page, which gives them 15 minutes to get 500 pounds off the hourly rate for the entire project, but they've gotta commit to all this stuff and there's loads of small print and you basically trick someone into buying it, and then you show up and you go, one of our key values is transparency, they're just gonna look at you and go, who the hell? You've literally just n robbed me of five grand and now you're telling me you value, honestly, and honesty and openness.

[00:21:54] Simon: So I think the, the values that you are saying you have in my mind, nobody really gets to know until they work with you. The only way they can see that is through your marketing. So part of what I'm trying to do in the book is to say to people, well, if you want people to feel a certain way when they're working with you or think a certain thing, or you know, if, if you're tr, if you're making a promise when people are working with you, how do you communicate that promise in your marketing? Because ultimately that's the decision. That's what people are using to decide whether they, when they wanna work with you.

[00:22:29] Stephen: Any good companies that are really good at doing that?

[00:22:31] Simon: It's a hard one because a lot of the companies, basically any example I give, someone can find something, you know? It's really hard to find a completely good, uh, End to end client. There's always something, but I would say in terms of marketing, companies that, that do it quite well are the ones that are just completely open about the floors in what they're doing.

[00:23:00] Simon: So for example, BrewDog is always an example I use, but it immediately with BrewDog, someone jumps on something else that's wrong with BrewDog. But if we just draw a highlighter square around their advertising for a moment, that advertising is really clever because it's, it's very playful and it's just really upfront about what they're doing. And I personally quite like that approach because they're not trying to hide anything. They're not trying to convince you of something. They're basically just saying this is what we do. If you like this kind of thing, then we are over here doing it. And I think that works really well.

[00:23:35] Simon: They got caught out with their solid gold can, I dunno if you saw this recently? So basically in their cans of Brew Dog, they put a solid gold can in one pack, but of course it's not solid gold, it's just gold plated. So, You know, the Karens of the internet decided they were gonna absolutely pile on for the fact that it wasn't solid gold, so it was false advertising. They then did a newspaper advert on the Tube, which was all of the small print, and they basically just went through, they just got the, the competition and just did like a felt tip line through solid and just broke plated if through the whole thing. And just really played up the fact of like, if, if you want small print, this is small print, but it was ironically printed really big. And they, they kind of play. And then on the box now it's just the small print, but in really big letters. So they kind of play around with that and I think that's quite good. 

[00:24:25] Simon: There's some good like clothing brands that do really good marketing in the sense that they're not over promising. But in terms of a corporate, I'm trying to think of a bigger. A bigger firm, but I think a lot of those firms don't really do the kind of advertising that I would see.

[00:24:41] Stephen: Yeah, but when you mentioned clothing there, I, I'm usually taught at Patagonia and, and how Patagonia do that really well, like, was it 2011, they had the don't buy this jacket, they had an ad, don't buy this jacket because if you've got a perfectly good jacket, you don't need to buy this jacket. And, uh, yeah, they're particularly good at doing, you know, very ethical when it comes to, you know, how they stand. They're a company that you know that if you work for your values, if they were connected with the company, are gonna be kept in place, that the company seem to be very good at not being able to step outside of that, not having to lean into, you know, profit for profit's sake. Um, certainly because they, um, rely on nature and the environment for what they do and what their customers enjoy doing is they, they do so much things to protect that, whether it's where they source their fabrics and source their even down to the where, where they, they source their coloring and all that kind of stuff for their products. 

[00:25:33] Simon: I would. I would carry on that theme with, I was speaking to a guy, and I've forgotten the name of the brand, which makes for a fantastic anecdote, doesn't it? But basically, this guy made wool in Wales from sheep. And was like, what if we could just get this wool to the people who use wool? What if we had to stop ship flying around the world, which is what wool is currently one of the very carbon intensive, uh, material to use. So carbon footprint of wool, you'd think, oh, it's a sheep over there in the field, and then they get some wool, but it flies around the world sometimes a couple of times before it ends up in your socks.

[00:26:11] Simon: So this guy was looking into it and basically there's only about three people in the world who process it, and one of them's in France, so from Wales, he has to get it to France to then come back to be made in Wales. So sometimes even with the best intentions, someone can pick a hole in it. So obviously what he did was just be really open about the fact that all of our products come from the field to the factory, except the world where we have to fly to France and back because, and you're just really upfront about it. And that I think was a really clever way of just heading it off at the pass.

[00:26:46] Simon: So I think with marketing, there's definitely some things where it's too much detail up front, and there's other things where actually you can really help people understand a bit more about your values and your process without necessarily talking about your values and your process, by simply explaining a little bit more about what the product is and where it comes from.

[00:27:04] Stephen: I kind of like that. And so that's, that's sort of touched on like, you know, the whole idea that's come into play a lot, I suppose at the moment is, is, is greenwashing. Like, how could we address, you know, the issue. That the greenwashing has given us where companies are making false or exaggerated claims. Everybody seems to be ecologically sound now and sustainable and all the different things that, you know, the, the buzzwords we hear about this.

[00:27:26] Simon: There's a, there's a number of things that are happening, uh, this side of the pond. So, In Europe and the UK, less so on the other side of the pond, but this side of the pond they are in, I believe there's legislation coming in saying that you can't use offsetting to call something carbon neutral. So that's gonna help because obviously very cheaply you can b a couple of quid at some trees and say it's carbon neutral. But as it's been shown, that doesn't often work as a, as a policy, it's like keep polluting in plants and trees isn't gonna cut it. So I think the greenwashing, it's about being really transparent when things are working and when things aren't working, and just being really open about the fact that there are some materials or some parts of the process that are in progress, work in progress. And there's B Corp is one of the people that allows you to do that because they have the sort of independently measured report on your website that shows what is working and what isn't.

[00:28:30] Simon: Obviously there's, you know, say what you want about B Corp. The fact that Nespresso managed to get B Corp, I think is. Slightly eye-opening considering they make one of the least recyclable products on the planet. But I dunno, must have ticked enough boxes on the, uh, on the people side of things. But then you've got a lot of bocks doing really good work, so, you know.

[00:28:52] Stephen: Once you mention that, right, so I'm aware of B Corp and some great companies that do B Corp, and I can see it as the gold standard when it comes to a, a company that when I look and I see the accreditation, I go, ah, yeah, I, I can see why to me, that company are a company that I, I'd align myself with. But when you mention things like Nespresso, that that brought to mind to me this.

[00:29:15] Stephen: Somebody had told me a story Nestle were looking to bring coffee to the Japanese market, a market where there was no coffee drinkers, a very little coffee drinkers are very few. And they had gone to some organizational marketing organization, and they said, listen, this is what we wanna do. We want to bring coffee to, and they said, this is gonna take 14 years. And they go, sorry? They said, well, this is gonna take 14 years. They said, well, why is it gonna take 14 years? I'm gonna tell you if you're willing to stick with us for 14 years, we can get coffee into the Japanese market. And they went, well, how's this gonna happen? And I said, the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna start making coffee sweets for kids.

[00:29:53] Stephen: And they did just that. And the kids in Japan suddenly began, To enjoy coffee flavor for the first time as a child and it traveled through their lifetime to now coffee. And I thought there was something quite insidious about that, about creating a market that wasn't needed, that had tea, that had, could sustain itself with water, with tea, whatever it is that they were enjoying, but didn't come to you asking, can you please bring us coffee to Japan? We have no concept of how to get it 

[00:30:22] Simon: well, it loops us background to what we started with, isn't it? It's the problem In search of a solution, in search of a problem. It's, but when you are, when, when you're a big company like that, that is, that is what, what what you are after isn't it? Is what is another thin slice of this audience that we can make a variation of our product for? And you can make up a whole brand with its own values and its own buzzwords and its own Fancy Pants website, and pretend it's a whole micro brand of a bigger product.

[00:30:53] Simon: It's what you know, it's what, uh, the trainer people do, isn't it? Nike and Adidas. They just make up any old nonsense for some new shoes, but it's like, it's the same shoes, it's just, they just got a different website for it. Do you know what I mean? It's like, and they just stick an extra hundred quid and it's limited edition and it's, it's all the things are listed earlier.

[00:31:10] Simon: But, you know, I'm not knocking it, it works if people wanna buy their, you know, I'm not judging anybody who's buying it. I'm just saying like, it's a perfect example of how you can sell the same thing in many different ways.

[00:31:22] Stephen: I do a, I do a, a really nice exercise sometimes when I'm in schools, uh, when I'm talking to teens, uh, about 16, 15 years old. And I, I get them to do an exercise on values, about what the ideas of values are. So I talk about what my values are important, like human rights would be important. Uh, equality, justice, those things are quite important to, to me, so they would be strong values. And then I get, uh, while I'm talking about this, I explain my values.

[00:31:49] Stephen: And then, what I say to them. He said, listen, but I'm in a bit of a dilemma. And he said, well, what's the dilemma? And he says, well, I've been offered a job. And he said, what? You've been offering the job? He said, yeah, I've been offered a job, right? And I have to make the decision by next Wednesday. So this could be the last workshop that I ever deliver, because I've been offered a job. And I tell them, I make small little videos. I make two and a half to three minute videos that this organization in Europe have seen. And they said they really like what I do, and they'd like me to come on board as your videographer for, for their organization in the communications department. And I'm going to be the guy who makes smaller snippets of little videos for this organization to show how green and ecologically sound and all the good things they're doing.

[00:32:25] Stephen: They're an energy company. And the company are called Shell. Shell. Oh, you might have heard them and no go. Yeah. Yeah. And then I say, well, yeah, and they've offered, they're gonna pay me 250,000 euros a year. And I go, I don't know if I do. What do you think, guys? Cause I'm gonna ask you do, do you think I should take it? And then hands up, who thinks I should take it? All the hands pretty much go from the cast. Take it. I says, why do you think I should take it? Oh, wow. Don't think of all the money. And then there'll always be somebody in the class goes on, I don't think you should take it. And, and they go, I go, why? And I said, well, your values that you just told me don't seem to be the same as the values of the organization. And I go, you're absolutely right. So as much as the money would sound nice. And going into that job and that role would be good. And I get to travel and all the perks and all that kind of stuff, after a couple of weeks, no matter how much they get paid and how much the perks are, suddenly the values of me and the organization are quite different.

[00:33:16] Stephen: But it's a prime example of how we can enter into that idea that we're like, there's, there's lots of celebrities, there's lots of influencers get involved with products and they can either damage or enhance the products. And I think that when you go into that role, when you take on somebody to, to align to your product. You never know. We're human at the end of the day and we never know how humans are going to, uh, affect like our brand. There's probably tons of examples of, uh, there of companies that got somebody on board and went, hang on a second. And we didn't realize this bit of news was about to come out about them.

[00:33:44] Simon: Well, I think also that another thing that sort of links on from that thought is that a lot of companies, I think are focused from the top down in terms of short-term thinking. So there's a lot of focus on quarterly results and a lot of focus on this push for quarters and ultimately I would, you know, broad sweeping statement, alert, but I just don't think anybody gives a shit, really.

[00:34:09] Simon: Because if you think about an employee at a company, not like senior level C, C level, people who are being paid, you know, triple figures up, everyone else, they don't give a shit about the quarter. They don't give a shit about next quarter, the quarter after that they've got a 20 year mortgage. A quarter is, is, is nothing. It's, it's meaningless. And so I think there's this mismatch between that short-term gain that companies are pushing and the long-term payoff, which is what employees are in it for. And I think that is where values can really like meet, uh, like a, like a loggerheads, you know.

[00:34:45] Simon: Because the company's value is obviously we've gotta make money for the shareholders, or we've gotta, you know, return this quarter, we've gotta do this, this, this, this. And it's all short, short, short, short where the employees are all, I just want a job in 10 years time. Do you know what I mean? I've got kids at school, I can't afford to lose this job. You know, S are meaningless to me. And that I think is where marketing can kind of either upset the apple cart or can support it because you can, you are either feeding in lots of short term clients that you're just getting to meet the target, or you're trying to bring in long-term clients that are gonna build the business over a period of years. And I think there's, there's often a mismatch there with, but the same could be said with suppliers when you're choosing suppliers and customers.

[00:35:25] Stephen: I suppose I, I haven't met many marketing people have talked about the whole idea of, of ethical marketing. So if I'm an organization and I want to go about that, how is, how has that started or how is it done? Or what do we need to look out for?

[00:35:35] Simon: I think the key is to work to, to, to look at what you are expecting someone to do when they see your marketing. So a lot of people will jump straight to ads because they think, well, I've seen it work for a trainer company, or a plants company, or a, I dunno. Whatever a product company and you are offering a service, let's say. And essentially what you're trying to do is just, well, we, we just need to get people to the page, they read it.

[00:36:05] Simon: And I think when you look at what you are expecting there, you wouldn't expect the client to do that in a relationship that you're going to be having. So I think the expectation or the quickest way for me, I think to summarize how you would do ethical marketing, is to say that you should essentially try and build the relationship back out to where the client is now. So rather than trying to shortcut them from where they are to becoming a customer, Is to just embrace the fact that that could take a long time and you might need to show up and be there for a while to make that work. But the kind of clients you're gonna attract in doing so will be better clients. They'll just be much more engaged with what you're doing. They'll be willing to recognize the value you're delivering.

[00:36:51] Simon: And I think where unethical marketing starts to come in is when you try and shorten that. You try and compress it. You try and get people, okay, you are here. I've got the solution for you now come on by, come on by, come on by. And as soon as you're doing that short term thinking, as soon as you are pressing for the quarter, you know you are at risk of having to trick someone into buying it just so you can get your line on a spreadsheet somewhere, so that you get, you know, that that green tick at the end of the month.

[00:37:22] Simon: So, I think it's about trying to understand where you want the client to ideally be when you are asking them to say, so do you want to go ahead? And then what do you need to do to get them to that place? What do they need to understand to get there?

[00:37:40] Stephen: Any advice that you have for markers who want to say if they haven't done ethical marketing or strategies to become more ethical?

[00:37:46] Simon: I think I would look out for some of the things I mentioned earlier, you know. Are you, are you inadvertently creating some scarcity? Are you giving people arbitrary deadlines, just because that's, that's the way it's always been, you know? That's, that's probably the thing to start looking out for is are there things that are happening within your organization that are doing, that are being done just because they've always been done that way. And if there's something that you feel doesn't look or feel right to you, then kind of question, well is there another way of doing this?

[00:38:19] Simon: And I think the other thing is to just look out for where you are either shortening a time or you are trying to accelerate someone's thinking, or if you are presenting a very one-sided argument to something in order to get someone to believe something that isn't necessarily the, the main thing they need to be focusing on, you know, distraction or your, yeah, no. A lot of companies are thinking about this at the moment, and they're all leaning and you just play, play, play up, play it up, play it up, play it up until they're eventually like, we've gotta do something about this. But when they came to you, they weren't even thinking about it. I've seen that done as a classic sales tactic before. And that's all you're, all you're doing is bringing someone who doesn't really want to buy what you are selling into a business and then handing it over to a team of people who've gotta then deal with that customer, who's, I mean, yeah, you're just stitching up the people. Downstream, I guess is the way of thinking about it.

[00:39:13] Stephen: Yeah. And from reading your book the first time I came across the whole concept of squeeze pages, uh, and I didn't realize that I had been caught by that so many often, so, so, so often can you explain squeeze pages to, to the audience?

[00:39:27] Simon: squeeze page is essentially a page on the website that is bringing someone in with a very specific either question, promise, or offer. Then uses a series of very well tried and tested techniques to essentially make you think that you need to buy the thing they're selling now, and in doing so, it will be a bargain.

[00:39:53] Simon: They've generally got a timer running at the top one hour. The timer re if you reload the page, the timer starts again. That's the fix. And then they're generally offering you five to $6,000 worth of stuff for around 10% of that. So it's generally 10%. So you get, like, we normally sell this 20 part video course for $399. I also sell this ebook for £299. And it just stacks, stacks stack value, it's called value Stacking the value stack it all up. That's 5,000 pounds of value. It's gone crazy. I'm gonna sell it to you right here, right now to £500. Nope. I've changed my mind. $50. You didn't read that wrong. $50 and it just goes on and on.

[00:40:37] Simon: It's like the um, old used car salesman you see in like seventies movies and stuff. And it is, you know, I'm just gonna go out the back and check with my manager. You know, it's like the guy in Fargo, you know, when he has to call his manager and he is literally just calling the talking clock and just talking. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Okay. He's just authorized me to do a deal and he doesn't normally do this deal. Imagine that. But in a webpage, and these pages are probably 5,000 prob, probably around 5,000 words long. They are epic reads, with videos in them. Sometimes they'll even have free downloads right in the middle of it, you know, just to, just to give you something like you've made it this far. Some of them even celebrate the fact that this page is, you know, acres long.

[00:41:20] Simon: But, um, yeah, essentially if you've ever walked away from a computer thinking, hang on a minute, I've just spent 30 quid on that. You've been on a squeeze page. But I can I tell you, the best squeeze pages? The best squeeze pages. The squeeze pages that tell you how to make squeeze pages. It is the most meta thing in the world. It is brilliant. I mean, I've been on them to try and research them and you get to the end of it and you're like, I mean, it is only $60. No, I don't need a, a buck and a spreadsheet and a video course now to make these pages. I don't wanna make It's

[00:41:56] Stephen: Yeah, it's, how can I help you to trick people that I've tricked you to buying this in the first Every single morning I go on to, uh, I do a particular routine that I have in the morning that I, there's a particular YouTube clip that I watch that helps me with what I'm doing, and every single morning before that clip comes on an ad inserts itself in, and the ad is always somebody else who has done something brilliant, become rich, Bitcoin, whatever you name it, they've done this or they've got this technique around health and they want to share it with me rather than which Just, yeah. And I just have to go, oh, skip ad. I have to wait for the five seconds or so that it takes before.

[00:42:30] Stephen: Yeah. And with the squeeze pages, got caught with a squeeze page. About a month ago I did ran guitar lessons. Thought I was buying something from the squeeze page that looked absolutely brilliant cuz I wanted there and, uh, I did. It was only $23. It felt like a bargain at the time. It's not what I wanted, not what I expected. And I have just had to unsubscribe from the amount of, you know, emails and stuff that was coming through from the guy, that just had these long-winded, uh, stories about how to play guitar rather than actually showing me how to play guitar. It was like this one long squeeze page, you know, advertisement rather than, you know, me getting any better at guitar, which I wasn't.

[00:43:03] Simon: What you've just described is buyer's remorse, hasn't it? It's that you've clicked by and you instantly regret. And when you trick someone into buying it, that's how you're starting that customer relationship.

[00:43:14] Simon: if you think about the old snake oil salesman, they could move to the next town before people figured out it didn't work, right? So that's how they got away with it. And online, the $23, is it worth trying to get a refund? Is it worth contacting your bank to try and get, can you be bothered? No. So you trick maybe what, 2, 300 people a month into buying a $23 nightmare video course. Howard, you might have to refund what, 10% of that? But that's an easy day's work, isn't it? As long as you can move to the next town before everyone leaves you bad reviews and catches you out.

[00:43:47] Simon: I think that's the thing. It's a lot of what I've been talking about is unethical marketing people experience a lot. And it's, if you've ever experienced buyers remorse, I would say most of the time that's because the advertising of the marketing made you think you were buying something that you then didn't end up getting.

[00:44:04] Stephen: And it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. And I think now more than ever, I think organizations are beginning to realize that one, their staff and the people that are involved in the organization don't like this stuff. The fact that it's underhand stuff being done at some part of the, of the organization. Uh, the customers are beginning to wake up to this and then go, well, hang on a second here. I want to know a lot more about what your product is and what your product does or your service is and service does. So I think now the whole idea of what you talk about ethical marketing, I think is becoming more. Um, uh, mainstream now rather than something that was quite niche before. And I think organizations, uh, we still, I think, need to be wary about organizations.

[00:44:42] Stephen: I am sort of genuinely, when you told me that Nespresso got the B Corp accreditation I went, wow. How did that happen? I've just told you a story about how they, they tricked Japanese people into drinking coffee and they've probably done other things. They have done other things based around, isn't it, uh, milk products and stuff like that in Africa and.

[00:45:00] Simon: But then even, even if, even if we think about that, let's think about Oatley. This is one that always gets me. That is an example of someone where the product is ultimately not that good, as in like the actual liquid is great, but it comes an entirely unrecyclable package. 

[00:45:17] Stephen: There you go. I've

[00:45:18] Simon: So all of this greenwashing all over the box about how carbon neutral it is. It's like, yeah, it is carbon neutral, you're just not mentioning the fact that you can't recycle the box. And it's, it's like, I mean, even with milk bottles as, even as carbon unintensive as dairy farming is, at least you can recycle the plastic bottle as the thing comes in, right?

[00:45:38] Simon: So, I think you are right in saying that you have to be slightly wary of what you're being told. I always think if someone's shouting a bit too loud about one thing, it's because there's another thing they don't want you to look at. That sort of slight of hand that magicians use.

[00:45:51] Stephen: There's so much you could go into. Cause I love all the examples of the different companies that you know are ethical or unethical or whatever, you know, whether it's Ben and Jerry's being ethical, Patagonia being ethical, and then the ones that just have these underhand things like Volkswagen with the whole diesel thing a couple of years ago.

[00:46:05] Stephen: And I'm a Volkswagen. I've had, I'm on my fourth, fifth Volkswagen. Golf or whatever the cars I kind of like to drive. But yes, to think the company that I was aligned with, I thought they were very, you know, great safety. They were just genuinely honest German company. And then they do something like that. How, how it can alter people's perception of the brand.

[00:46:24] Simon: Well, yeah, but how well has marketing got 'em out of it?

[00:46:27] Stephen: Yeah, because we're not talking about it much anymore, are we? It's only small little sort of conversations like this where it happens. But everyone else, they're going, what? Did it happen? Well, I never heard of that. 

[00:46:35] Simon: Well, it's like Toyota with their Yaris. They just advertised the Yaris for years, even though they sold hardly any as percentage terms globally, but they became known as the green car company because they made a, a hybrid renewable vehicle. In essence, all that means is you've got a really inefficient petrol engine dragging some batteries down a motorway. It's not green at all, it's just. Cuz you're using petrol to charge electricity. It's a. It's an awful idea. And they were selling like 10, I don't, don't quote me on the figures, but in the region of 10 times as many Toyota Land Cruisers globally as they were Yarises, but yet they only advertise the Yaris.

[00:47:16] Simon: Like when Amazon put the wind turbines on their website saying like, oh, we invested this much in Green Engine. It's like no one's knocking that they are spending a lot of money on wind turbines, right? 

[00:47:26] Simon: And this, this is, this comes down to this thing, like when you ask me for an example of somebody who's doing it well, it's like end, literally anybody I pull up, there's always something else going on.

[00:47:34] Stephen: Absolutely true. And I think about it, Heineken or Guinness don't even ever need to advertise the fact that they have alcohol in their products. Cuz the Heineken zero zero brand and Guinness Zero zero brand is exactly what you'll see on the football pitch of the rugby pitch, which they sponsor. So they're go, no, we're not sponsoring alcohol, we're sponsoring non-alcoholic products. Look, This is Heineken zero zero. There's no alcohol in this. But yet when you see it, you immediately think of all the Heineken products and all the Guinness products. You're not thinking of Heineken zero zero. I'm thinking, oh, I'm gonna go for a bite of Heineken. It probably won't be zero zero, but that's what I'm gonna go for.

[00:48:03] Stephen: So, so if an organization wants to, to be, become a more ethical, um, you know, organization and learn more about ethical marketing, just to finish off, is there a couple of tips that you, you would recommend them to do? 

[00:48:14] Simon: there's a book called Sustainable Marketing which is really good and is designed for organizations to look at their whole organization and see where it is sustainable and how marketing can help them make it more sustainable. Um, there's also a podcast called Can Marketing Save the Planet, which is very good. I'd recommend, uh, checking out a few episodes of that. Um, and then also if you really wanna deep dive into the kind of ethics behind ethical marketing, then I'd recommend checking out theethicalmove.org, because they are. The kind of original people in the space.

[00:48:53] Simon: Um, the Ethical Move is a really good organization. I'm a member of the community, um, and there's a lot of people there who are sort of working through some of the bigger, uh, ethical questions that are floating around in marketing and, yeah, trying to work out ways of working and doing things that are more in line with what people expect of ethical marketing.

[00:49:13] Simon: But I think the key is much like being green or sustainable or eco. It really means different things to different people. So I don't think there is a benchmark. There certainly isn't a rule book for it. It's definitely a conversation that is ongoing and a movement that is evolving. And I think even if you can just look at what your marketing is all about. And even if you decide, actually, I'm pretty happy with it, then that's cool. At least you've had a look. You know, you don't necessarily need to stop everything until you've checked it. It's much more a case of how can we evolve this? How can we communicate this better? And yeah, how can you kind of keep, keep getting the kind of clients that you want to get? In a way that means you can embrace what they're looking for and sort of deliver on that promise you're making.

[00:50:01] Stephen: I like that. And I'm also gonna reference your book, which is Reframing Marketing, Simon, which is a, a great insight into. Into marketing and, uh, my first sort of delve into ethical marketing, among other things about marketing, which I think is fantastic. You've just reminded me there when you talked about this, just to finish up, is that I, I talked to a guy called Ynzo Van Zanten a number of years ago, and he's the head of, um, choco evangelist for Tony's Chocolonely. And one of the things that Tony's Chocoloneley do is they don't advertise. So you'll never see them advertised. Now, that might have changed over the last years, but this is 2020. They said, we don't have an advertising budget. We just don't advertise. It's all word of mouth that gets us out there. That might have changed in the last few years, but I always thought it was interesting. And they're accompanied that from source cocoa bean all the way to, to, you know, the customer. There's a very ethical line there. We need more of those organizations.

[00:50:52] Stephen: Simon, this has been a wonderful way to spend an hour together chatting about, the ethics. And I think we need more people like yourself promoting what's good about marketing. Like we need to promote our organizations. A lot of times we need to tell people our products in there as a lot of us have really good products that are worth sharing with the rest of the world. And we need people like yourself to be able to, uh, amplify that. Simon Batchelar, uh, marketing consultant and author, thank you very, very much.

[00:51:17] Simon: Thanks Steven. It's been a pleasure.