17 Years shaping the industry - The story of Google Dave Hazlehurst

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to another episode of Employer Bland. There are people in our industry who talk about employer brand and there are people who actually built it. Google Dave Hazlehurst is the latter 17 years at PH Creative later Human magic, the body of work that most agencies would kill for. And enough stories to fill a book, some of which he might actually tell us today, hopefully. Dave, welcome to Employer Bland. This one feels a. A real privilege. [00:00:29] Speaker B: Oh, Chris, thanks for the lovely intro there. Jesus Christ. He just made me, made me feel really, really old. But we to see you, mate. Thanks for inviting me on and yeah, I'm looking forward to this. Quite looking forward to this. [00:00:43] Speaker A: Yeah, me too, me too. I really appreciate you jumping on and I've hardly let you breathe because I think the moment you, you announced, you know, your departure, I was kind of on you pretty quickly and have been, you know, a lot probably in the last couple of months, but super grateful that you've jumped on to kick things off. What would be really good is, you know, let's cut, you know, how did we get here, Dave, you know, take me back to the beginning. What was PH Creative actually doing 17 years ago? Let's go right back there. [00:01:12] Speaker B: Okay, so that's, that's a really good question. If memory goes back far enough. Interestingly, just before ph, many, many years ago, I used to work in health and fitness and I fell into like recruitment by accident, which will probably come up a bit later on. And it was basically doing some work for a mate and I was doing some digital consultancy at the same time as like a side hustle, I suppose you'd call it. [00:01:38] Speaker A: Oh yeah. [00:01:40] Speaker B: What happened was Brian, Brian was doing websites, email marketing, all this. And I was doing Google AdWords and SEO and all this had Google, Google Dave. And we got introduced to each other by business coach and brides. Like we should do something together. And he, he kind of just started. PH was going, it was just doing websites. [00:02:01] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:03] Speaker B: And so cut. Long story short, we did. So I was like, right, okay, so 17 years ago, jumped in and. And just a small agency, four of us in an office in Brody street in Liverpool. Our local bar down the corner, Hannah's, every Friday, go there. And we built websites, we did email marketing and we now did paid media, paid advertising, SEO, digital marketing. And we do it for solicitors, we do it for accountants. You know, it was very scrappy. We were making it up as we went along. Very entrepreneurial. We'd be there every breakfast meeting, network, go to the opening of an envelope. Really, really good times, really. When I Look back like it was madness. And then, you know, there are all kinds of little stories in there and how we just started, you know, to grow up a little bit. Really? Yeah, yeah. [00:02:56] Speaker A: So I was going to say, so what? So. So I take it, you know, there'd be a solicitor firm or there would be a local physiotherapist or whatever. They needed. They needed a landing page, they needed a little bit of SEO or they needed some, you know, some, some. Some paid ads or whatever. When did it. [00:03:11] Speaker B: When did. [00:03:11] Speaker A: When did you start kind of harnessing, you know, whether it's traditional recruitment, recruitment, marketing, even venturing towards employer, brand. When did. That was. Was there like a pivotal moment where you turned a bit of a corner? [00:03:23] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's a really good. That's a really good question. And yes. So what happened is, before pH, I worked for Ochre House RPO Company. Yeah. And it was just pure fluke how that happened. Right. An old mate of mine, Martin, got me along, said, can you help me run assessment centers for a few weeks? I was like, what's an assessment center? Because I was doing marketing for health clubs before. And so what happened is I was doing these assessment centers. Let me play the story out so it will all become relevant. And every day at the end of these assessment centers, I'd have boxes of assessment materials and I'd be on a conference call to recruitment agencies going, got a vacancy here, We've got a vacancy. There's a. And they'd be getting like 10 grand a vacancy. And after about a week of me doing this job, I remember phone and Marc, like, what's going on here, mate? I'm giving out, like hundreds of thousands of pounds. [00:04:16] Speaker A: We're not getting any of this. Yeah. [00:04:18] Speaker B: And I'm like, why don't we market the jobs? Like, I used to market health club memberships, you know, to get people to join the health club. Why aren't we marking the jobs that way? I was like, this is madness. So anyway, that sort of stuck with me and I was there, blah, blah, blah, blah, coming to ph and after, after, after, like we start a couple of years, old contacts started to reach out to me from the recruitment space. So people that had left Oak House, rpo, all the different clients, and what happened was got a phone call from a lady called Anne Carrigan. Great lady, love it to bits. Worked with her for years, different clients. And she phoned up, she was at Nationwide Build Society, and she's like, will you come and pitch for our career website? And we were like, of course you will. And there's about, you know, we weren't massive at the time, but we were building E commerce stuff and all this. We were still B2B. B2C. We weren't employer brand yet. So we go in and we approach the pitch like we were building E commerce platform. So the product page was the job page. This is, Christ, this is like I don't know, 2009 or 10 or 2010. And we won was the UK's first mobile responsive career website. That led into more work with them then. Wow. [00:05:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:35] Speaker B: And then we got a few more and then what happened is me and Brad, we chatted and we were like, oh, let's try and get some more work in the recruitment space. And I was like, right, okay, you carry on putting grown ups around us as we grow and doing stuff and doing his thing. And I was like, I'll try and make us famous in recruitment market it. [00:05:55] Speaker A: I. [00:05:55] Speaker B: And it was just a thing. So I started talking about it and all this and then I'm coming to this pivotal moment. I start, I got an invite from Johnny Campbell at Social Talent going, will you come and speak at True Dublin? Right. And I was like, yeah, no problem. I didn't know what I was going to talk about. I'm going to talk about AdWords and recruitment marketing. And this is 2012 and 2012 sort of thing. I go over to Dublin, I get in the hotel room, I get a tweet from Bill Borman, who we've never met, and there's a pint of Peroni on the bar. So I go down. So I meet all these people, like I don't know any of these people from Adam. [00:06:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:06:31] Speaker B: Dublin was a guy called Ollie Shaw who was the sales manager at LinkedIn. Yeah. So and he, you know, great guy. And he goes, will you come and do what you've just done to my team? So when it did, it's his team then they invited me to Recruiter recruiting, which is the recruitment that LinkedIn at the time recruitment agency events like conference and this is now 2013. So go into there. I did this talk and the marketing director of LinkedIn ran up to me. She goes, will you do that at Talent Connect? And I was like, yeah, sound. And I didn't know what Sound Connect was. Like, I'm like, okay, yes sir. [00:07:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:06] Speaker B: She's like, it's in six weeks and we want you to do like the keynote at the end of the first day. So okay, yeah, sound. And this is all happening rapid fire. And I'M just like this bull guy from Liverpool, like making this stuff up as I go along. But we, we were always focused and inspired by things outside of our world and how they'd influence this world. And I went and did this talk and we were still a B2B agency. And I knew it was important because when it got there, I was like, from Osprey. There's a lot of people here. It's like, you know, 2,000 people. And they put makeup on my head and I knew that murder. I thought, my God, this, this is bigger than a fall. [00:07:48] Speaker A: That's when you know that you're part of a proper setup. [00:07:52] Speaker B: Y and I put a lot of effort into. I mean, you know, I laugh and joke and people, you know, I'm a little bit fun engaged and stuff like this. But we put a lot into thinking about this and it went. It went really well. And then there's a really cool story about Virgin might come up later. And that was the moment we were like, we could become one of the best at this if we put our minds through it. And I think, you know, we start to speak to Virgin Media, NatWest, Vodafone. And I was. And we were like, I mean, to be, you know, bright. We remember being a boy, like, we're just going to do this now. And actually, yeah, that was 2013, I think 2013, 2014. But that was a real pivotal moment. And that then got me chatting to people all over the place, basically. So it was all good fun. But that, you know, when you talk about pivotal moments, that was definitely one of them. [00:08:42] Speaker A: Yeah, that's amazing. And that chain reaction of like, you know, that customer, then that first true event, Dublin, then LinkedIn the chain reaction and the. In such a compressed period of time, you know, you're talking about activities there, which I think people that would be in your shoes doing that stuff today, that's like a two, three, four year journey, isn't it, for people that are doing well? So that must have been wild, that all happening in such a short period of time. [00:09:09] Speaker B: Yeah, and I think that's. That's true. There's a really cool phrase that I'm going back to talk about. F1. Ross Braun is the most successful person ever in Formula One. He's the really good book about Formula One business strategy. And he talks about, look, happens with preparation. Look, his preparation meet an opportunity, right? And he used to Easter plan the relationships three years ahead for Ferrari so that they could keep the same tires that no one else had because they kept Helping them win the races and shoe back of the course. And you are right, it was condensed but it was four from three and a half years in the making. That moment. [00:09:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:09:45] Speaker B: We used to run just as a side thing, we used to these things called Pizza and Peroni workshops locally in Liverpool. And before employer brand said so the first Wednesday of every month we should invite every, any business in Liverpool to come into our offices in Liverpool and it'll be Pizza Peroni Prosecco for the girls. And it was meant to be an hour. You come in at R4 on a Wednesday and we'd be there to midnight talking about digital marketing and me and Brad be doing all this and making stuff up and all that kind of stuff. But it was brilliant training for us. Yeah, I love that I look back, you know, we were always good on our feet but that honed us, I think that sort of refined it. And then the talk track for Talent Connect was lots of inspiration and thinking that built up to that moment and. But you got right that sort of compressed Voyse was a bit mad. [00:10:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I can imagine. And I think it also probably highlights, Dave, the fact that if you feel like you are riding the kind of crest of a wave, you, you clearly scooped up those opportunities and you ran at them just as fast as they were running at you as opposed to kind of, you could probably take a little bit of a back seat, do one, chill out on the other, you know, but you've clearly gone. So like you say, it didn't come as luck, but making sure you scoop up those opportunities and you, you run harder than, you know, probably critical. Something I'm really fascinated to understand a little bit more about is that you've been involved in the pitching process for projects Small, Medium and Gigantic for years and years. There must be some interesting stories in there. So kicking off with. I was just interested to understand, you know, is there a pitch, you know, is there one standout for you probably to kick off with maybe that you're most proud of not because you necessarily won it, but because what you put on the table, you know, was there something that was particularly stood out that was special about. About that one? [00:11:46] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna briefly tell you too. I mean the, the one, the one that I think really defined who we were and what we became was just before an employer brand agency really. And so we just moved into the offices in Liverpool and it was the moment we grew up. We literally moved into. We grew up with suddenly a bigger agency and we felt different. And in Liverpool, they were building a new arena and the tender went out. And I remember, I remember saying, like, we have to win this. This is going to be the heartbeat of Liverpool City center kind of thing. You have to, have to win it. But we were the underdogs. Like, we were like, you know, we. They went out to three or four, maybe five bigger local agencies if you like, in the Northwest. Yeah, we're going to win this. And it was a proper tender. So it wasn't like doing proposals like you have and we'd never done one. And we're like, what do we do with this? So we actually brought in a tender management company in to help us with the process. So this was like a grown up who'd done big tenders in construction and all this. We're like, how do we do this? Like, what do we do? So he gave us the process, we followed and we applied our creative and conceptual experience thinking into it. And I'll never forget, it was a big brief. It was like end to end. How are you going to do it? And they wanted some creative ideas and you have to submit it digitally. So we were like, okay, how do we, how do we stand out here? Like, how do we create some moments of magic that will help us, you know, influence the decision? [00:13:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:34] Speaker B: And they're like, we're gonna make a book for this present. So we're gonna create a beautiful big bound book which, which you open. It smells brilliant. You go through the pages, it explains it, it's personalized, it's tailored to everything. [00:13:49] Speaker A: And this would be a physical book, you know, the submission would be digital, but you're. [00:13:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And it said digital learning. We're like, no, no, no. And we had it delivered. We had it delivered in a box and you opened it and you opened the visuals and we did, we did the making of visuals, like scrappy big sheets that turned into the designs of the site. Right now, SEO in there, all this kind of stuff. So it gets submitted and we'd all work through the night to get this done in about a week. We'd never done anything like it. And it was beautifully done, all designed, hardback, printed everything. God knows how we did it. So that goes in and we get shortlisted to the final two. F3. It was great. Now at the same time we were doing our own first conference in Liverpool, right? And the pitch date was the day after that. And me and Brian, everyone are like, oh no, we can't go out now after the bloody conference nor this. So we have this conference coming and then we have this, the biggest pitch of our lives coming. And we got. We were like, right, what we're going to do? Like, we've got to energize the team. Like, how do we go the next level? So we were like, right, we're going to. We're going to design the whole site and we're going to make massive billboard leave behind things that are going to be in that room so that anybody else comes in goes, oh, my God, have you seen what they've done? So we could take the wind out of their sails when they entered the room. Do we think about all this kind of stuff? So then before we did, we're like, right, I said, right, I'm going to get a team together. So we got the whole team together. It's about 19 of us at the time, 20 of us got them all down. And I said, right, we're the underdogs to this, right? This is our moment. And I played them. The highlights of Liverpool's Champions League 2005 Istanbul. [00:15:35] Speaker A: No way. Just to roll everyone up, get everyone into the zone. [00:15:39] Speaker B: Nobody believed at half time, no one believed that they could win this. But they just needed one thing to go in their favor. This is now. We are now within the penalty shootout, right? We've come this far. There is no stone unturned to make sure these go in. And we just. We remake that. We've done, we looked at it and we did. The team did design work and didn't go to sleep for 24 hours. They literally didn't go to sleep, right? I remember leaving the office. I had to leave. I come back and they were still working the next day. And this was the morning before the pitch, right? And I remember coming in going, I've had an idea, an idea. And they're like looking at me going, oh. And the pitch is like in, in an hour's time. And I was like, right. I was like, every, every mini book that's going to each stakeholder, get on LinkedIn, find their tone of Voyse and we'll do an opening letter on the top of the book that's written in their tone of Voyse and why this is important to them. Wow. And so we go down. Bear in mind, we got the conference the day before. So we go down, we go down and we do our stuff. We come out with exhausted, we go straight to baby blue and we get. We've got a few sherbets. Two days later, I'm off, I'm off and I'm with my kids who are younger. I'm in Bubbles play center down down in New Brightworth, not far from where I live and I'm in the ballpark. I get a phone call and we've won it. And I was showing the team and the team were in tears. [00:17:10] Speaker A: Oh, amazing. [00:17:12] Speaker B: So, so that, that taught us every detail matters but focus on the experience and do something that's unexpected and think about the details and the race isn't one on the track. Yeah. And that was an amazing thing. And one more I'll tell you was to be grown up a little bit Now. This is 2017 and we just started going to America and we got an rfp. So we learned how to do all this and then we got an RFP for a major airline over there. And Jules, who's had a strategy. Jules is great. She just arrived and we'd hired her from consumer branding worlds because we used to have this thing called the Moneyball strategy which is hire people from outside of our world to bring fresh thinking in. [00:18:01] Speaker A: Yeah, love it. [00:18:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And Jules, literally we had seven days to write this rfp. Right. And it was, they gave us loads of information to distill it down. It was very sort of strategy heavy as well. We didn't have all the components. That's why we brought Jules in because she was a proper grown up and within seven days she, she sort of helped us and worked us to create this rfp. Got submitted. Right. Stuff. We never, I didn't have got through to the final stages. I'll never forget. Right. I've never forget I had to fly to Dallas to meet Bry. I get there in the morning. We, we work on the pitch deck itself from the morning till 3 the next morning. Right? Yeah. We wake up at 8, we do the pitch at 10 in Dallas and then I flew out and I flew home. Yeah. And, and we won it. But listen to this. This is hilarious. This is not hilarious, but I learned something from this. So we win this pitch and we're all like, oh my God. And the next day I'm in the office, I get a phone call and it's. I can't remember the guys, Richard or Steve, whatever his name was, and he's like, dave, how's it going? I was like, it's, it's the stakeholder. I'm like, oh, I was so excited. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he goes, David goes. We, we love the way that you thought about it. We loved what you and Brian and Ryan are coming and blah, blah, blah, blah. So but there's just one thing. I was like, what? He goes, you said the word in the pitch. And I was like, [00:19:34] Speaker A: he did like it. [00:19:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And he said, look, he said, I haven't got a problem with it. He said, or because she are of Master Brand Agency, their account director said the F word and they got. The agency got sacked the next day and I do not want that to happen to you. And I was like, I won't be on the account. Don't worry about it. That is brilliant. [00:19:56] Speaker A: Wow. One swear word got them. [00:19:59] Speaker B: You know what it was? So when I talk. I was talking about Personas in. In the pitch and when I talk about Personas, I used to say, candidates don't really give a about this stuff. It was just like it. And I'll say it if I'm on stage talking about it. Yeah. [00:20:12] Speaker A: It's not really. It's not very aggressive, is it? [00:20:14] Speaker B: No, no, no. But oh, my God, that was like, I'm not doing that again. [00:20:21] Speaker A: That is brilliant. So I love both of those. Those stories. The first one just, you know, obviously going back a few more years. [00:20:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:29] Speaker A: But that level of, you know, there was just. There was clearly great leadership involved there. There was people going above and beyond the call of duty, staying awake 24 hours, you know, using matchsticks to stay awake type stuff. And then the big win came. Did you notice there was a. Was there a shift in the culture from that moment? As in, you know, if the extra effort goes in and we raise the bar, good things happen. Like, it sounds as though there was all sorts of magic that was wrapped around that scenario. And it sounds like there could have been a culture shift moment internally from that point onwards. [00:21:07] Speaker B: I think that's very fair. I think so. I think there's a couple things. Newton Office in change. I mean, you know, if I think about the team that we had around us at the time, I mean, fair play to them, they really cared about it. And also this project was a. That project, that arena project was very much like, if we win this, we go up a level, you know, and interestingly, the technology we used to build that ended up helping the SaaS platform we created for career websites and with the Nationwide deal. But you're right, I think we grew up, but we realized, I mean, I said it before, the, you know, the race isn't one on the track. It's in the details and. Yeah, it's in the things that you start up and you need. I talk about. I used to talk with the team about going on The B, not the bang. So Colin Jackson used to talk about when he was doing the 170 hurdles, when it, the start is where you can, you can get ahead. Yeah, you can do that, you can stay ahead. And he goes on the beat, not the bang. So he took up starting gone. I used to say to the team, we go on the B the moment we start. The moment we get it, we start. [00:22:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:22:14] Speaker B: And everybody bought it, collectively, everyone bought into that. And I think, you know, I think I've said to you before, like, I'm obsessed with how sport operates. What does that mean? Business and formula ones, you know, a thousand people fighting for a hundred of a second. [00:22:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:33] Speaker B: And now RFPs and pitches are won by small percentages and you have to, have to think of every single detail and then what you believe in and what you feel and think and how you, your philosophy around these things. So ours is very much about the human experience and how do we develop that all the time. Surprises, unexpected times and the whole, the thing is the team thoughts like that. Now everyone's that way. And it's not just RFPs and pictures, it's clients experience. [00:23:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:06] Speaker B: Now how, I mean, in the early days of pH, you got a website of us. When they signed the paperwork, we'd send them a money tree and then when the site went live and send them feed for the money tree, really. And that was just a little playful thing, you know. So thinking about all of those things are really important. But you're right, the team, the team came and added to all of that and we just learn and evolve and it was a big moment. I mean, it was a big. I mean, even now I'm kind of getting goosebumps thinking about it, just remembering it. [00:23:43] Speaker A: I love that. So, so flipping the script a little bit from that, that those are the great stories, they're, they're great success stories. You know, you've been in the game an awful long time now. Well, not that long. I'm not saying you're old days, you've been, you've been through enough to have some war scars. What about pitches that you fluffed, things that went wrong, Things that you just walks out of that room and you, you know, head in your hands like, what the hell happened in there? Are there one or two of those examples? [00:24:14] Speaker B: Oh, Christ. There was one where someone was running for local councillor and he owned the solicitors. And I said, so. I can't remember what I said. I said something and I was like, you can use that in your politics. And Brian Looked at me and he's going, I wouldn't have said that if I was you. But that. That was only a little thing. He just looked at me, the lift and went, why did you say that? I was like, I don't know. And, but. But yeah, there is. You know, I think it's a. It's a funny one as well, you know, because, like, if I think about the effort that goes into these things. Yeah. You know, and it's, it's, it's, it's. It's a lot. You know, there's a lot. And then you get to a moment where you might have 60 minutes. We've got to create an experience and land it really, really well. And it's not just one person. There's different decision makers with different priorities and all this kind of stuff. You learn this as you sort of grow up doing this. You know, you put a process and an experience map around it and then you. Off you go. In terms of where it might. We might have missed it. There's a couple. I remember one. So me, Nat, Jules, John. But like, there's a full. So we called it a golden triangle or diamond, you know, four of us, whatever. A four thing. Square bit, border square. And we were. It was for a big pitch in. It was in Switzerland and it was for a company that creates the ingredients that go in fragrances, you know, an aftershave, perfume. And got the brief. And it's a bit hard to understand exactly what they were. Like, it was quite broad and what we didn't do was tie it down enough and we got to speak, but that was on us. And then I remember us all being in office and the work we did was beautiful. Like, it was amazing. Lovely ideas. Beautiful. And then I remember it was coming up to Covid and me and Jules were flying to Switzerland and she. She wasn't quite sure. So we flew to Switzerland. And we wake up the next morning, we had no WI fi, we couldn't get the final visuals and all this kind of stuff. It's a nightmare. [00:26:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:25] Speaker B: And we. We went to this place. There was a massive vineyard next to it. I'm just picturing it now. And we went in and we sort of walked from. John had to dial in. There was tech issues. Everything just felt clunky, you know, things that we could have prevented. But the visuals were amazing. But we just didn't connect it. And I mean, connect it in the room, but we didn't. It was just a sequence of ideas that looked amazing. [00:26:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:54] Speaker B: Wasn't a Cohesive strategy around it. Yeah, we learned a lot through that because there's a lot of ideas or creative work we've done, whether it's for pictures, whether it's the concepts of clients, but never see the light of day, there's loads of them. And so with that one, it was very much like we didn't work hard enough there to really interrogate the brief or challenge the client to be clearer. But really that's on us, not on the client. That's up where it was incredible. But we didn't connect it. We just didn't connect it at all in terms of how does this thing sit together? Together and weren't together. That was one. And we walked out of that because we were excited about the visuals, but we walked out like, oh, I feel like I've been kicked in the nuts after that, like, what happened? So that. That would be definitely one. [00:27:44] Speaker A: Probably. Probably a huge. I bet it was a huge learning process as well, wasn't it, Dave? As in, you know, sometimes you do have to have those, like, those kicks in the, you know, in the regions for you to actually think, God, yeah, you know, we needed that learning experience. And we got so carried away with the. The visuals. And we're all hyping each other up so much about the visuals, the strategic or operational, whatever, other bits that you felt like you didn't connect so well on that particular pitch. But I bet. I bet there's a lot of learning to be done in those moments. [00:28:17] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you learn from. You probably learn from losing more. I mean, one of the things that I've always done is even when we've won work, I'll debrief the clients and say, why did you almost not choose us? And there's learnings in that, but the. That one especially. And there's. There was. I tell you what was interesting that we learned, and it made us double down on how we think about was in Covid. Through Covid, we had two massive pictures, massive tech company and a massive. The FMCG company. And they were on the spin. They were close to each other and put amazing amount of work. We lost both. And I was like. We were like, what's going on here? Because we know we'd normally. We were winning, like three out of four pitches. We would win consistently. And I was like, what's going on here? And then it's. And then. So, you know, we did a bit of a few workshops and I was, you know, speaking to people and stuff like this. And it was through covert and it suddenly hit me. We lost one of our superpowers. And one of our superpowers is being in the room with people and the chemistry that we built and how we connected and then seeing us think and act live. [00:29:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:29:30] Speaker B: And so it was like a light bulb went on me. It made me realize how much us as people and how we connect, it just makes a difference whether they even think about it or not. You know, you build that relationship, that chemistry and the relationship room. So we had to really think about that through Covid and doing it through the screen. And it wasn't about the screen. It was about before we got to the screen and after the screen. And it was really. We had to do more before and after the event as well. [00:29:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:29:59] Speaker B: So that was important. And then we doubled that down. That's always been a massive part, like of. Of where. Where we went with it. So that was big. That was a big moment. And then we. We had another big one big defense contract and we won it. Yeah, yeah. [00:30:13] Speaker A: And. And with that. So it's interesting. I want to come on to the rebrand in a little while, but was that during COVID Was that when a lot of these, you know, the human magic rebrand, everything that human magic kind of stands for, particularly kind of, you know, what's going on now in the world with remote, with AI, etc. But do you think those moments during COVID really started to reinforce and bring to the full that human magic kind of thing? [00:30:42] Speaker B: I think. I think what's interesting there is. I mean, human magic is a brand change. You know, it wasn't thinking that, but it definitely. It definitely, definitely, definitely reinforced. This is about human experiences. [00:30:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:30:59] Speaker B: And we've lost it because technology got in the way. Yeah, yeah. You know, so. So what we have to do is you have to think about how does it become an enabler, not a blocker, you know? Yeah, listen, let's look what's going on in the world right now. I mean, how we think about that is wild at the moment, but I do always believe the part of the magic of pH, and it's such a cliche. It was the people and how we worked and the experience between us and the chemistry between us working inside a PH and how that felt for people and then how we make them feel part of that. So do really, really believe that that human connection and still do is obviously fundamental to it all. [00:31:40] Speaker A: So important, isn't it? So important on the. So just the last one, if you don't mind, on the pitch from. Has there ever been A pitch that's almost like on the. On the borders of ridiculous. Like, have you been handed a request before that's like, yeah, this is what we're looking to achieve. This is the direction we're looking to go. Something that's just sideswiped you a little bit. As in, this is in a bracket I've never worked on before. [00:32:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really interesting. I did a. I did. I did a podcast with Vicki Saunders a few years ago now. [00:32:14] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I know Vicky. Great. [00:32:16] Speaker B: Love Vicki. Dead smart, lovely lady. And then she. The. I don't think clients have really appreciate the effort that goes in to what agencies do to try and win a piece of work. [00:32:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:33] Speaker B: You know, in a world that talks about candidate experience and employee experience sometimes, and I think not so much now, but I think a few years ago, businesses didn't really give a shit about. Felt like they didn't give a shit about the end season. They just throw big briefs out of us and go, right. And then they go, and we want to see what it looks like and we want you to be bold. So they're saying, yeah, all the experience we've got, the case studies we've got that are similar to your challenge don't prove it. You're now going to ask us, and we don't even know who you are yet, to do a strategy and creative. Creative concepts and execution to show you what it could look like because. And you're either going to go, oh, I like it, or oh, no, I don't like that. [00:33:13] Speaker A: Yeah. So basically, yeah, Ghost write me an autobiography without ever meeting the person. It's about basically. [00:33:19] Speaker B: Great analogy, mate. It's a great analogy. That's what used to happen. And, yeah, like that, that. Those two pictures I tried to talk about before that, that arena one, we probably spent 35, 40,000 pounds worth of time doing it. Wow. Yeah. You know, and I think sometimes people forget that. So you do get. You get briefs that can ask for so much. Yeah. But tell you very little. [00:33:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. [00:33:53] Speaker B: You know, like, I'm sure you've been there yourself. Like, you'll go, okay, give us a, give us an idea of like the budget for this. Okay, so are you buying Ford Focus? Are you buying a Ferrari? Where's the balance of the budget here? You know, and it's like, no, no, but just, just show us what you think you can do with it. We'll do with what you know. So that was years ago now. And actually, you know, but again, the agencies have got to educate A little bit. And then. But there's been. There's been moments like, there's a couple. I remember Jules going up to do a pitch in Scotland, and there was two of us. I didn't go to this. And they walked into a room, and they walked into an auditorium. 100 people. 100 people making a decision. [00:34:37] Speaker A: You're joking. 100 people. [00:34:40] Speaker B: I mean, come on. [00:34:43] Speaker A: As soon as there's. As soon as there's five or six, you're getting into dangerous territory, aren't you? [00:34:47] Speaker B: It was like a theater production. We had another one, a tech company in Camden, and they were like, just bring some theater to the. To the. To filter. We had one. We had one. Had one last year. I can't say who this is. I wish I could say this is. [00:35:10] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:11] Speaker B: And. And it was one we really, really, really wanted. And the brief was develop. Our EBP talks about how you're going to do research, different regions, blah, blah, blah, blah. We put loads of work to the RFP submission, personalized it all. We got. We've got into the pitch. The pitch started. The stakeholder goes like, we've done all of our research. We just want to know how you do it. And we were like, you've done all your research already? [00:35:34] Speaker A: They've asked you to do. [00:35:36] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm so off. Our pitch is built around how are we going to do the research? Wow. [00:35:41] Speaker A: And they've already done it. [00:35:42] Speaker B: And then it's got. Oh, no, we've done that now. We're like, what? [00:35:46] Speaker A: Yeah, you've spent about 20 grand or [00:35:48] Speaker B: whatever it is, airlines on the planet. So we're like, okay, you know. You know, because I was with Jules, you know, Nat was involved, and so people we've worked with, so it's almost like we can wear instinctively because we've done it forever together. And to be fair to Jules and that, like, we. We navigated it around and yeah, we got. And actually that. That pitch, we lost, but we won 3, 2. That was a whole other thing. So we. We won on the score. But one stakeholder decided because they've met somebody in an event somewhere, that they were going with somebody else or something. Or something wild. So they. They do go wrong, but you have to be then rational about it. Yeah. Have to go. What do we learn? Because again, every time a Formula one car comes off the track, they plug in and they debrief what happened. They look at what the data's telling them and what happened. How did the driver feel? They talk about. About it and it's not about individuals, it's about where did it go wrong in the process or the experience. [00:36:51] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's how you make the improvements, isn't it? Like incrementally. So just, just on that topic and I know like in your entire career, you know, so many things have gone brilliantly well. There's been so many successes, so many wins. But looking at maybe some of these things where you had to learn the hard way, they're also really interesting to understand. So in that same vein of kind of, you know, the more challenging periods, you know, has there been and this is across the board, you know, not necessarily in a pitch process. Maybe it is, but maybe, maybe it's more broad than that day. But you know, has there been a decision commercially, creatively or with an individual person that you would go back and change? You know, if you go back these last 17, 18 years and you could change one thing is. Is there one thing that you would change? [00:37:40] Speaker B: Loads of things. Christ. One of the things that sort of sticks out out for me was so, so I mean there's loads of things pre covered but I think we, we were accelerating in the build up to covert Bright gone to America, start to grow more in America and covert hits. Everyone's like what's going to happen? I remember being in the garden because we had a great four weeks in covert. I was drinking beers in my garden all the time. Yeah. And then, but so we, so we go through Covid and we're like what's going to happen? And you know, we trade it through the first year, no problem. And then the second year we started to grow again and we just kept winning work everywhere. Right. It was crazy. I remember, I remember going on holiday, going to the airport on a call and we, we had, we just won four new deals and we're like, who's gonna look after this? Oh yeah. The big thing that really hurt us there was we grew too quick and it. And the sustainability of quality. Where are we investing our money to keep focused on the clients? And I think we dropped, we, we made some, we went in the direction of travel different ways there. I'm not going to go into loads of details but when you grow fast, is it sustainable? And what is the infrastructure, processes and experiences that get put in however something that was important. But then I would argue then we, we, we, we were like. And we over engineered ourselves then in terms of process and I think we lost a little bit of the soul of what made us who we were and our instinct that have been trained and built through the experiences that we had. And it was like, it has to be done this way. And I'm not a process person. I get it. I understand it. And actually made a big difference. But it also lost a bit of agility. We lost a bit of our human connection internally and externally. Clients, I mean, that was learning. And then the other thing is, I was chatting to Nat about this the other week after the course and we were just talking about red flag clients because they're. They're always out there. But then the other thing, if there's one thing I wish we'd done more, was celebrate the moments in the agency world. You know, you'll notice it's like you. Something great happens and you're on to the next thing immediately. [00:40:13] Speaker A: Yeah, straight. [00:40:13] Speaker B: Yes. West. We paused and celebrated some of the moments that we are. Because they're gone. [00:40:21] Speaker A: Yeah, so true. So true. Yeah. You. You so often, in my experience anyway, that you've got that. That few hours of elation of like, wow, this is. And it sinks in. But then immediately you've got this. This mountain in front of you that needs to be climbed to actually achieve the word. But you're right, it's. It's such a good point. And how would you. Did you think that would have just been sporadic celebrations? Do you think you would have put something in place to kind of reward, you know, individuals more? Is there anything in particular you would have done differently? [00:40:55] Speaker B: It's funny this because I remember our old chairman, Charles, great guy, minds with Jeremy Clarkson. Logan's a bit. And he used to say, david, put a celebration budget in, but get a celebration budget in the P L and all this. And we did. And we still didn't spend it. But I think. I think what's interesting there is, if I look back, I think, I mean team celebration for sure. Obviously, big moments like the echo, you know, all the different things we've got and talk about. Yeah. But I think also, like, how can you. I remember years ago, we used to have values and every value had a different color poker chip to red tip. Like was big, passionately pioneering or something like that. And we. So we'd have a. Basically at the start of every month, every team member got the four color chips and a black chair. Right. And we would say to the team, if you see someone demonstrating that behavior, you give them that chip for the month. I love that. Yeah. It was peer to peer stuff. And then the one with the most colored chips of each color, there'd be prizes. And we used to sponsor Date dinner dates for the. For families or partners to go out with their boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever. And we pay for a couple hundred quid behind the bar for a bloke who wanted to go out and piss with his mates and stuff like this. And I guess, you know, thinking about that concept, that was a few years ago now, so we first moved to the new office. But like tailored small moments of celebration are probably especially the unexpected. So reward the family, reward, Reward the partners. LinkedIn used to do that really well. I think, I think if there was to look back at that, I think it's think about. Yeah, moments create moments of magic and a moment of magic can be a small thing but have a huge impact. [00:42:43] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I love that. So Dave, talk to me a little bit about the rebrand. PH Creative to human Magic. I remember, I remember seeing it, you know, because I've. As we all have in the industry, you know, PH Creative always such. Just a beacon, you know, in the industry. Everyone knew it, it was there. And I remember the, the rebrand happened. I loved it and immediately it's two words. But it meant quite a lot. I mean even me as an outsider, zero context to why it was done, how it was done, etc, but the timing of it I thought was pretty genius. But anyway, over to you. What was what? Just talk to me about the rebrand. Why? Why did it happen? [00:43:28] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's interesting how you just talk about it actually. So new. So there's. There's a time where new. Some new ownership came in and Brian. So we had Happy Dance, which was the career website. Yeah, Bright. So Bright kind of left us, took Happy Dance. Happy Dance was separated out of PH and some new investment or new owners came in. There's a period of change and there was, there's. There was also big shifts from AI and tech and a massive drop when you. When you start to look at the market and what was going on, a massive drop in engagements of people in the workplace which is driven by multiple things. And Jules have mentioned a couple of times, started to look at, Started to feel that this was all happening and see it in data and with our clients and the sort of new owners alike, they, they wanted to do something that was fresh. And we talked about a RE brand of PH and it was, it was, it was a bit. You can imagine internally there's all kinds of discussions going on because there's a lot of brand equity and ph there still is, to be fair, you know this. We did a lot of cool stuff but it was felt it was sort of felt at the time and we all got behind it like we need let's. Let's make a change. And Jules had not. I've been read an article about disengagement and the power of humans and soul, and it was an HBR article and it just sort of started to crystallize about. Well, in a world of disengagement and trust has fallen off a cliff and the acceleration of AI and tech and it's so much noise around it. Yeah. What about the humans? And that started to. To sort of play. So, you know, PH is creativity and craft and strategy came in even more so when Jules came along. But human magic was more about that. But actually what about the human experience and connectivity, sense of belonging and all this kind of stuff? And it felt like a real good moment in time based on what the world was doing and sort of micro strategic shifts that were going on. And so I remember Jules coming out of room, right, we're doing it, we're going to go for it kind of thing. And that's where human magic started. And it. And it was interesting because if I go back to my health club days in the mid-90s, we used to look at creating moments of magic and we used to do things on a Friday. It's Friday. Used to give the fitness team 5 Crunchies and used to have to give crunchies out to people in the gym and celebrate something with them. It was all about moments of matching. [00:46:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:46:16] Speaker B: And I used to talk about with clients in PH days, look, if we could wave a magic one, what's the number one thing we're solving for you? And it just felt like consciously, subconsciously, these things would come together and the world was changing and everyone's over AI and technology and by the way, you know, I'm all for it. Yeah. [00:46:36] Speaker A: It's got its place. Yeah. [00:46:38] Speaker B: Yeah. But humans do the remarkable kind of thing. Humans are the magic. So, yeah, that's. That's where. That's where it came from. And then we had to do it, which was a night which was hard work. [00:46:50] Speaker A: Yeah. But I was going to follow up basically because I must say, like I said a moment ago, I thought it was a genius move and I thought the timing of it was brilliant. And I thought it meant. I thought those two words just meant a lot of things. I could. I could imagine how internally it would have landed really well culturally, you know, in the business externally and. And everything else in between. You spoke a little bit about the brand equity that was in pH, which must have been enormous. Like walking into rooms with the PH badge, it's kind of. Everyone knows who you guys. Guys are and everything that kind of precedes you. [00:47:28] Speaker B: Did you find. [00:47:29] Speaker A: Was. Was that ever a struggle? Did you ever walk into rooms where people didn't know human magic and you felt like, you know, have we made. We made life difficult for ourselves a little bit here with this or not? [00:47:44] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I think. What. Okay, so I think, I think. Let me think, let me think. I think we used to get invited to every RFP we got to. I mean, we went. That was 14 years in the making. [00:48:00] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:48:00] Speaker B: So it was an RFP knocking around. We typically. We'd be in there. That makes life a damn site easier because if you get them and you're good at winning them, which is what we've been speaking about, and life's a bit easier. So that I, you know, if I look back, I mean, I got the change. The change was, you know, the change happened and it was for the right reasons. But, you know, could we. Could we have navigated that shift in terms of the link between PH and magic? That. That's for another day. What I've. Looking back, though, people buy the people, not the badge over the door. [00:48:43] Speaker A: Yeah, of course. It's really true. Yeah. [00:48:45] Speaker B: And I think, you know, now that I'm not there, you know, and still being connected to people who aren't there anymore, people are saying, where's such and such gone? And what are they? You know, they. And I know of people who've reached out to individuals because it's. They trust them necessarily. The badge, you know, and it's like. And even like, if you, if you've got an account director or strategist on a project and they leave the business, the client gets nervous because they know that person can work. But it's like in anything, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually think that's going to become more and more and more and more and more important. Yeah, I agree. You know, because ultimately, I think trust has got a real problem at the moment. [00:49:33] Speaker A: Yeah, without a doubt. And I think as well, something that I'm acutely aware of, Dave, is like, teams are getting compressed. You know, companies are probably hiring less and they're relying a hell of a lot more on the people that are there and, and are surviving as well. Because. Because there's a lot of team members that aren't surviving. There's, there's, you know, there's cuts that are being made, but the people that remain, they're now probably Doing the jobs of two, three, four people, aren't they? So the reliance on those people is kind of through the roof. We're at the tail end of things. But before I let you go, I really want to get your opinion on a few things, if possible. So it's more along the kind of the route of future and predictions, if you're up for a little bit of that anyway [00:50:22] Speaker B: week, the way things are going at the moment. [00:50:28] Speaker A: Oh God, yeah. Well, don't. I mean, I'm a Chelsea fan. So look, we're sharing a little bit of misery at the moment. Don't worry about that. But, but I know what you mean. You know, even looking ahead six months is scary at the moment. Where, you know, it used to be, it felt quite comfortable to, to predict 12, 18 months in advance. But that aside, you know, if we look ahead, you know, whether it's one, whether it's two, three years, whatever. But what, what do you think a world class employer brand actually looks like? And what's, what's maybe the sim, you know, similar characteristics that we see today. What's potentially completely different, unrecognizable. [00:51:09] Speaker B: I mean there's a, there's a, you know, to think about, but there's a few things inside of all of that. Even like the, it's interesting, there's a lot of noise at the moment, people calling EVPs and employer brand different things and we get, we get hooked up and we get obsessed with different acronyms and all this stuff. And ultimately we're just trying to, we're trying to express what the culture and experience is like at work in somewhere basically. We get, we get mixed up in it all. Think there's too much of that? I think so if we look at it. Okay, let's break this down. I think AI and technology clearly is going to have a massive impact in all this. And you know, there's a big unknown, big unknown of where that's going and how it's going to create experiences and how do we think about that? Think so. I think that's going to have a big impact. Where's it going? Who knows? What I would say is I always like looking in outside world. So if you look at, in the consumer brand space, much bigger than the employer brand space and you look at what the, what the agencies are doing outside there. [00:52:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:52:20] Speaker B: And I'm not going to name brand names, but there's, there's one, the biggest network on the planet just, just launched their own internal AI agent. [00:52:29] Speaker A: Wow. [00:52:30] Speaker B: Okay. It's very much Self service with humans choreographing it. So that's interesting. In, in. Okay, that's happening over there. What does that mean over here? And then how are internal teams and employer brand? Because, because people still think of as employer brand as like this external thing and actually, you know, it's much more powerful. It's built from the inside. And I don't think strategically we're using the research we get are developing an employer brand to strategically guide the business. We're doing the research to say how do we express what's going on in the business? What's the research telling us to say? We're weak here, we've got tension there. Strategically. What are we going to do to fix that then? How do we express that? So I don't think there's enough of that going on. [00:53:16] Speaker A: Yeah, [00:53:19] Speaker B: I think also the too static, you know, it becomes this thing that lives in like a deck, you know, but it's, it never, it never changes. Like we do any. We used to do an EVP and it would take Christ knows how long to do and then it sits on a shelf or it's the same for two years, three years. Yeah, yeah. That's not what, that's not what's going on. Because if you look at the business, [00:53:40] Speaker A: it's constantly moving target, isn't it? [00:53:42] Speaker B: The only consistency on the planet in any company at the moment is acceleration, change and transformation. AI. And then you've got the humans that are in the business wondering what the hell is going on and this gaps get bigger, right? [00:53:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:53:55] Speaker B: And so you can't have an EDP that took you eight months to put together and then goes the same for two years when the business is changing every quarter and the speed of change isn't slowing, it's getting faster. So how can you have an EDP that talks about something where the research started a year ago, it's still the same in three years and the business is completely different. So you can't have things that are static anymore. So that's got to change. We've got to be more. We, we've got to use the research that we take to strategically guide the business. And then when we talk in practical terms, you know, I talk about AI will do the repeatable, it will do speed and efficiency, it will take insights and do stuff. But humans will do the remarkable. And I still think, you know, if I talk about experiences, human interaction, influence, judgment, imagination, creativity is where the human is going to really add. But like, like if I'm talking, you know, we're not talking to AI. AI is creating a bit of distrust as well. Like, I don't know about you, if I look at LinkedIn, there's loads of posts that look, I mean it's everyone's. [00:54:59] Speaker A: Oh yeah. They look and feel the same. Yeah, yeah. [00:55:03] Speaker B: You have this subconscious second guessing. It's like everybody can write like a genius all of a sudden. [00:55:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:55:10] Speaker B: And it becomes, it's like that old thing, marketeers ruin everything. Is AI going to ruin certain things? Yeah. [00:55:16] Speaker A: And it's. And it's like this. And you can see why it happens because it kind of, the system seems to fuel itself. I think, Dave, as in you, you've got, you know, these commentators that are telling everybody that. Right. Unless you post three, four, five times a week, twice a day, the algorithm won't like you. And so there's these, you know, people want to become noticed and they want to grow a community and a following. They're told that they need to, you know, fuel this engine with a load of stuff. They're almost forced, a lot of them, or feel like they're forced into this. Like, I need AI to kind of help me with 85% of this process. But like you say the moment you read one of these posts and it's got the term, but here's the thing, or it's got one of those elongated like dashes or whatever, you just know immediately. I'm also, I'm really pleased you said what you said about the internal or lack of internal focus that needs. There needs to be more of it with employee brand. I was talking to Stephen Brand, Rolls Royce. Yeah, I thought you'd know Stephen, really good guy. Probably four weeks ago, and we were talking about the fact that employer brand could be so much bigger as a [00:56:27] Speaker B: function, without a doubt. [00:56:28] Speaker A: And, and more effective. Like, like if you look at certain parts of a HR or internal comms process that EB typically doesn't touch, just as a, as a case in point, offboarding, as an example, employer brand typically doesn't go anywhere near it, but 100% what, what comes out of those conversations that can kind of nourish and elevate what's actually going on culturally, what needs to be improved, you know, but again, that's one case in point. And there's, there's so many other case study examples, but I think, but you think there's still that there's an ROI problem, you know, because it clearly has impacts. Demonstrating that ROI has always been tough, hasn't it? Like, you know, we've Spent half a million quid on our global employer brand on the Careers site, on the content that has it delivered. You know that it has in abundance because great things have happened. But the connecting of like solid dots. Do you think that's something? [00:57:32] Speaker B: Definitely part of that, mate. I think one of the biggest challenges you have in employer brand is there's that much tech and that much stuff that is interconnected. [00:57:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:57:40] Speaker B: Getting to measurements is hard and demonstrating ROI is hard. But I do think some. I was chatting to someone the other day actually because I keep, I come back to. I keep see it say people change the names of the things. Drives me nuts. Or adding more acronyms and just drives me mad. You know, great branding and comms is about simplicity and clarity. You know, people brand this and blah, blah. And I'm like, oh my God, not something else. Yeah. If you take a step back, right. And you know, people talk about employee brand strategic and it's got to be business strategy and it is, we would just take a step back for a second. You know, the, the people that, the people that work in employer brand, like Stephen, you know, various clients, if, if they're strategic about their role, the first thing they'll do is they'll listen really, really well internally. But what they, what they are getting is they're trying to cut through a lot of noise to discover some of the right signals. And typically what we do is we take the, the signals that allows us to express the culture and experience. Experience of the organization. Yeah. What we need to do is take the signals and help the business understand how to drive the culture forward to achieve its goals and then create a today and a stretch aspiration evp. [00:59:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:59:07] Speaker B: What we're not doing is there's loads of good stuff in the middle there that we're not leveraging to demonstrate our value. But because it's called employer brand employment, it's not as valued as much. Yeah. Shifts in gears and, and people like Stephen, I, you know, they see it, they're doing it, but it's because it's an employer brand and an evp and we used to thinking about it being external thing for me that is like, that's like Blockbuster Betamax video days. [00:59:36] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:59:37] Speaker B: It's old school thinking and the jobs market is getting tougher and tougher and tougher. So there has to be a shift. Otherwise people that are doing these roles aren't going to survive. So we got to be, we need to elevate what we do. Forget what it's called for a second, elevate what we do, what we bring. [00:59:57] Speaker A: Yeah, such a good point. Such a good point. Dave, you've been brilliant. I knew you would be, but you have been and I massively, massively appreciate your time, mate. Thanks so much for. I feel like this is my Piers Morgan moment where I've got the, I've got the crunch. I've got the crunch interview with the main man. So, yeah, you know what? [01:00:16] Speaker B: I've loved it. I could talk to you for hours, mate. I loved it. Yeah, really, honestly, really enjoyed it. Really enjoyed it. [01:00:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it's been, it's been brilliant. Well, look, maybe the first of, you know, maybe we'll do another one. We'll speak about that separately. But you've been great, mate. Thank you so much and yeah, really appreciate you, you jumping on the, the podcast. [01:00:35] Speaker B: It's my pleasure, Chris. Good to see you, mate. Take care, Take care.