Robert Craven interviews Dan Sodergren - Flock
In this GYDA Talks, Robert interviews Digital Marketing and tech media expert Dan Sodergren - investor in FLOCK. As a digital marketing consultant, Dan has worked with social, mobile and gaming clients ranging from high growth start-ups to well-established household names like O2.
With active experience in topics as varied as gamification, geo location, augmented reality, social media excellence, and PPC, at FLOCK Dan is in charge of marketing and innovation. FLOCK itself being the digital transformation of a client's consultancy business in early 2018.
In the interview - Robert and Dan discuss remote work company culture, diversity and inclusion, what to do with a non-diverse agency, the future of digital agencies and the agency world right now.
In more depth - Robert and Dan discuss:
Company culture post COVID-19
Is WFH sustainable?
Zoom Doom Gloom culture
The agency world right now
The reason for staff churn is not surprising
How you get the staff you deserve
How you need to "show don't tell" your culture
Why we built FLOCK
Diversity problems in agencies
What to do with a non-diverse agency?
Diversity is now possible with remote working
The danger of when you recruit similar people who say 'yes' to you
My concern for "Agencies" that can't see the wood for the trees
How you have to look at share values. Not the differences
Recruitment playing a key role for the future of agencies
The Future Worker
The future:
Data is the new CO2
The future of marketing is without agencies (if and when the platforms decide to lose them)
You won't be around in 3 years if you are not doing tech
You have to have a tech stack which will define you
The issues around the lack of understanding of the future
Do not build your own AI
You must be doing chatbot marketing in house
The future of voice - with soap and Alexa
Voice activated search = brands don't matter
Be worried about Frictionless Marketing
Reposition as a place of innovation.... a data agency... digital transformation - build a product
Transcription:
Robert Craven 01:00
Hello, and big welcome to the GYDA Talks today. I'm absolutely delighted, totally delighted to have with me, Dan. That's the easy bit and I think is roughly the right pronunciation. Now, Dan, you will have seen him on the BBC. You'll have seen him on the ITV .Now you will see him all over the place because he's one of these guys who just appears. And what's lovely about Dan is he is quite I don't use the word spiky I think he kind of isn't, doesn't play with a quiet way to play the decent but he just digs into things great. So hello. It's actually great to have you with us.
Dan Sodergren 01:44
Thank you. Yeah, I am a personality types if you like them is EMTP NTP. So yeah, I do have a tendency to pry into things. Sometimes on the BBC. They gave me another backhand. But I think it's a backhanded compliment. They say you're really really cute and I'm making complicated things. So you really simple and to duck almost dumb things down to folk. I always joke of course, that's, that isn't an ability. It's just about that I am quite stupid. And I just can't explain it.
Robert Craven 02:12
But you do lots of stuff. I mean, just give everyone who don't know you or people that have only just seen you standing up in BBC and Manchester. It's very, very digital. What actually just give us a brief description of data and what you do.
Dan Sodergren 02:30
Cool. So one of the key things that I do at the moment happened quite a few years I'm a futurist for whatever better terminology, and I specialise in technology course design, I've specialised in the future of work before it became a kind of big things because it is now help a lot of startups grow with my work at the landing. The landing is the second innovation hub in the BBC. Or couldn't be the city should say where the beach is based, and a lot of say, on the radio and on the BBC, which Greg talked about the BBC stuff. But thank you for doing so. And I do an awful lot of talks nowadays on digital transformation. And I used to be a social media marketing trainer by trade and help people start businesses as well, about a decade I'm quite old. So I've had about 9 or 10 businesses. So some people would say serial entrepreneur, my mum says serial failure, because she's mean. She's also quite right. I should know Jenny, sorry. Jenny has always a gag idea in my training sessions. But yeah, I mean, I'm seeing only a couple of times that I managed to get onto the beach in Mexico. So you know, I tend to do things a little bit ahead of the curve. So I tend to be about five or seven, or sometimes even 10 years ahead of other folks. And that hence why I've now been tagged as a futurist, because of a lot of my past failures. And now things that are happening. People like Daniel, right. And I was like, Yeah, but it wasn't right at the right time.
Robert Craven 03:57
Being right and being at the right time, which I think is the piece so let's just go straight into the future. So the majority of people listening and watching run digital agencies. We're recording this not quite post COVID, but a Glastonbury weekend. And it's been a crazy three months. And yeah, I mean let's just start in a way in a farewell.
Dan Sodergren 04:33
But if I can kind of give you some people on the call goes, Oh, well done. And you're a tech guy and you're a futures. You teach people about digital marketing after two years. I we own agencies, I also own an agency myself. So my first business was something called thdc, which is a hemp trading company. So that was like 25 or so years ago, 5 years ago, and it's still going now. And it was trying to teach the world become a better place and go against climate change because hemp is a really great crop. So that I can literally pull the heck out of me with the reasons why it's happened. And now call CBT. It seemed in, I think they're starting to come on the floor. So you know, that's a massive industry and opposite effect. So that's great. So did that 25 years ago. The reason why I'm telling you that is because I've done that. And I've done pretty well with some in the marketing part of that a load of other people came to me said, Dan, can you do marketing for me? Or for us? And I said, Yes. So that became something called spear fish and spear fish was a marketing and arts and events company. Before we have things like Google and other things, and Facebook, and you know, we can't create these things, you have to do something with people that uninstalls before the whole cardholders, you people 1000s of people in rooms or 1000s people in rainforests or in a rainforest overplayed. But anyway, in forest and other things, some of these things have now become the next generation. Some of the inspirations for some marketing campaigns, people like Bob for companies, and we did things like DJ competitions before they became a thing and breakdance competitions for brands. And then they took it over and Redbull. And all we were with some pretty cool brands, and it grew and grew. And I I sold that agency back to the other guys and grew to about 23 people. And I sold that agency back to the other directors and I went to Mexico, and then promptly lost loads of mines wonderful story there. But I'm not for naps, definitely not for this epidemic fiscal. That's a different call. But it is part of life. And then it's I came back and I had to do something. And so I told the story of spare because I was actually asked by an old client, come to university and talk to the kids about what you do with Spearfish and how you grew your agency and how I got. So I did, they love that talk so much someone from the council was there, I said, Look, can I do the same thing, but can you also tell them how to do the marketing. And that became a company called great marketing work. So that became another marketing agency where I would train up people in social media marketing, digital marketing stuff with actually guerrilla to start off with, then digital marketing, social media marketing.
Robert Craven 06:55
JC Levinson, Guerilla Marketing.
Dan Sodergren 06:58
This is how old I am. So that was back in the day. And that's definitely an experiential stuff. And we went to the hearts rather than the mind and all this kind of cool stuff. And that was exactly well taking social media marketing, influencer marketing, all these new things are actually not new. They're all based on those. They are classic guerrilla marketing tactics. So the logical progression was guerrilla marketing, using psychology, all these different things went into digital because digital, it was such a great play area for that kind of movement. And also, because the amount I'm obsessed with data, so don't freak that leech and I find it fascinating. And psychology I found fascinating. So that can be great afterwards, the pretty pretty well, however, I don't I mean, it's still going to Yes, I became an international speaker. And that's how I got through to the BBC and other stuff and other stuff. That's how people might have seen stuff that I've done, right. However, I got very ill doing that, because I worked myself too hard, I got type two diabetes. And so reason for this for this story, I like spent set. So I got to talk to me today. And I had to get rid of it through diet and exercise. And I was on a programme and ICV programme about is fast fix diabetes. But that was like a two month process of eating a particular type of the shape the hazard. And basically, I had to lose two and a half stone in two months for myself to get rid of type two diabetes. So why do I tell you all that now that is all an analogy or a moment there. It's all a story way of learning something. And what I really teach people now is about transformation. Be that digitally, be that mentally be that physically. So I've literally went through a physical change. And the main process behind all of it is mindset, and the culture and only you have personally, but in your company, this is the key point. So talking about the future, talking about what are the future for agencies. The key thing for me and my understanding is digital transformation. But you know, the old joke, isn't it? What made your agency what made the industry digitally transform? Was it the CTO, the CEO, the CIO? Or was it COVID? Are we all know the answer. Coronavirus, has made more people digitally transform than the last 20 years me talking about the fact issues.
Robert Craven 09:10
And what's been going on is all this stuff that we thought we couldn't do. Like we couldn't run a business remote, we'd have to keep the office. Now everyone's saying Well, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll take the bounce back loan or build a extension home. So that became my office. And then we'll get rid of three floors of the office or two floors of the office. And we'll just agree that everyone meets up Mondays or we'll all get a hotel room and everyone will meet up on a Monday and you're 100,000 quid a year on rent and everyone seems happy now the question for me let's just go down this hole for a start. Okay, whether that's actually sustainable is it if one thing that for three months, everyone working away from the business remotely having their little pub on a Friday night they don't question. As the owner or the Managing Director, having individual zoom calls, teams working together having their meet. There's one thing doing that remotely for three months. Yeah. But is it actually sustainable? I mean, in terms of almost like in terms of mental health, for people who signed up to be in at work 8:30 and leaving a 5, to suddenly be working on their ironing board while sitting on their bed?
Dan Sodergren 10:28
Okay, well, there's a couple of helpful because I'll just number what I would say, not only from a your flock point of view from a bad culture setup there, but also legally, you know, don't be doing that on your board. And also very bad for your back. You know, getting standing desks in people, you know, so there's a couple of things that it doesn't make you smile. You say I was writing this stuff about future of work and months ago, and then all of a sudden, it's like, it's exploded, and it will, but it was happening before. So remember, people, I mean, I was remote working before I've been in remote worker for a decade without knowing it was remote working? Yep. Because I was a business consultant. I was a trainer. So my house was partly my office. That's the way it was, this is the hybrid about a new kind of hybrid flexible model that's been mine for 20 years.
Robert Craven 11:13
Fantastic.
Dan Sodergren 11:21
So then you look at people like Chris Hurley, he's a real advocate. And it's always worth looking on Twitter and stuff. But he's been an advocate, of course, his company helps people remote work. So it makes sense now before, but he's got a really, really good point. You know, if you look at the percentages of from last year, also, and I think it was something like 4 or 5%, in the US were remote workers with class themselves 100% remote workers, which is a tiny amount. Now this revolution has happened. And your question is really good on, is it sustainable? The answer is, yes. Because people have now seen the benefits of remote work, you weren't allowed to see that before. Now, the reason they weren't allowed to see before is not any kind of me, you know, kind of some people get a bit gets a bit almost political as well, it was because the bosses wanted to see over my shoulder. And that's the problem with management and all these things, which, you know, funky got it. But I know a lot of agencies that wouldn't have that kind of behaviour. Anyway, you know, and most successful businesses can't micromanage and won't micromanage. And they got rid of that middle management structure along with it. Now, you've been given the benefit of it. Now, you don't have to do the two hour commute. I think people have forgotten or not forgotten, they realised how horrid happens. Yeah, a lot of people might have suddenly thought they're a lot more productive. Now, we've got to be careful here, from the stats that we've done with your flock, but other stats that are much bigger things that are behind it, about 20% of people cannot or do not find working from home to be productive. Yeah, but we've also got to be really careful. And that's just number you know, number one, all remote work. They need people around them to do stuff now. But the other thing is, we're not working from home rubber at the moment, we are surviving a global pandemic. Yeah, at the same time as home schooling, juggling three jobs. Someone else has gone on furlough. So therefore you're doing their bit to and having the stress and utilising new technologies and new situations we haven't done before. I'm quite lucky because I've been using Zoom stuff. For years. I've been telling people to do secret stuff for years. Now. Probably got this. We've only used it now. We've used zoom so much. We've got zoom glue. Yeah, and we're not an open sea is just keep all these bits of Technology have existed for a long time like decades. Yeah. And now because everyone's come to the floor and started to use the new law. We're not yesterday. We're not doing it in a nuanced way. So if you're still doing zoom meetings, and they're an hour long, you shouldn't be Zoom meetings should not be an hour long.
Robert Craven 13:49
Friend of mine, Adam Harris, can I did this doom gloom thing with him. I say, good. God, you know, like, it's like painful, because you can just see people, you can see people saying, Yeah, that's really interesting, Dan. I'll just go to show you my picture for half an hour, I got a cup of tea. Which is brilliant is how can you make your Zoom meeting with a client, the best meeting they have that week? You know, and if you actually flip it from another bloody Zoom meeting, to what can I do to make this one to one session, one to 10 session, one to 20 session? Awesome so that people come away from it and go, that's great. I understand what I need to do. I understand what's going on. I feel energised, I can now move on. And that's about being hate the word not being proactive about how we make this thing happen, as opposed to another meeting. You've not got the agenda yet. Yeah. Oh god. I mean, the meeting? I don't know really?
Dan Sodergren 15:05
Exactly right. So this then brings in another point, which is, again, comes down to company culture is an upset, right, I have the joy of working with lots of tech companies only the landing and seeing them grow. And that's our job media innovation tech centre there. That's the point of it, but also investing in a few. And also, I built a few as well. A few companies that were doing stuff in AI things before I became a thing and follow Grey was with a SASS company. So I've done a lot of building of like Sass products and working with coders and things. Now, the thing is, with all this stuff is if we utilise the same technology, doing the same boring meeting for that, it's going to be doubly works. So we so in tech, as I'm sure everyone knows, especially dangerous people, you don't do that you have a whiteboard in front of you, you have a 15 minute chat. Now you can do exactly the same in zoom, there's absolutely no reason why you can't I don't understand why people don't but the day is also you don't have to use Zoom. Zoom is just like the Hoover isn't it of the world or vacuum of the world, you know, it's become this thing will do zoom. It's like 20,000 different ways of doing this. Don't have to do it. Oh, what about teams? Well, okay, that doesn't actually break down the wall does it? So you use hopping use different ones, there's loads of ones out there, just like you would be for your agency. And you said, Oh, emails getting a bit boring. What else can we do? There's loads of stuff, there's millions of tools you can make, you can use to make emails more exciting.
Robert Craven 16:25
Now after what you're saying is in the same way, you don't meet in the same room at the same time, every time of the week, you go, let's meet at Starbucks, let's meet upstairs at the cafe, a hotel, shake it up, people are refreshed.
Dan Sodergren 16:42
Have the whiteboard there have an interactive whiteboard, there are millions of add ons, you could put not only on Zoom, but other ones that are async technologies out there. A lot that uses zoom actually, is to have zoom on just continually and just go up and chat to people. A lovely thing in hoppin is a brilliant function, which is actually much more about events and things. But if you're a large company, and then it has this kind of like almost like a Chat Roulette function, where you vote, you've only got three minutes, but you've bumped into someone. So it's actually like bumping into them in the office. And it just randomly picks people based on keyword analysis, it randomly picks me put them together.
Robert Craven 17:15
I worked at a tech company in Bolton of all places. And they had an Indian partner. And in both offices, they had computers, those computers with like a wheel and a stick sticking up from it. And you could click and say I want to talk to Fred in Bangalore. And the little computer on wheels would go off instead of standing in front of Fred and say, Hello, Fred. And then you talk to Fred and and you could actually have that kind of thing going on. Yeah. And I think it's just you have some great things that you can actually do.
Dan Sodergren 17:54
Absolutely, there are.
Robert Craven 17:55
This is drilling down a bit more into what's going on to digital agency. So let's just be clear about what's going on for digital agencies. Five years ago, so digital marketing agencies, performance marketing, maybe some SEO, maybe design, probably not full service. Some will be but five years ago, Google was the only gig in town. There's nothing else it was Google or us. Now there's loads of different platforms. Secondly, there's loads of second so there's now Google there's now been there's no YouTube, there's now ticked up as you can go on. So at the top level, there's no longer the only gig in town. There's a whole bunch of sub level players, whether that be HubSpot, whoever it is, to those kind of intermediary, Uber, I'll intermediary players, or interfering bass can also come with me Come with me do everything with me and everything will be okay, you know, like your market. Then you've got a really weird bunch of customers from that highly educated know exactly what they want. They've been in the game for a long time through to a whole load saying, Oh, I've got a budget of 100,000. And then to do it on social media, whatever that is. The world is changing. I mean, the world was changing already. We've had this raw, Red Hot Raw, Ginger poked up us to make us actually wake up. We never realise how good we had, you know, four months ago. It's really difficult getting customers now you realise how easy it was used to go by net and catch customers. You know, and so everyone's kind of woken up to that. So the question is, how nevermind agency clients, but how do the agencies navigate? this maelstrom that surrounds them because nothing is staying still, nothing.
Dan Sodergren 20:08
Yeah, absolutely. And again, I'm gonna come back to it is actually usable? It is the company culture matters. Yeah. And in we would sort of we did. We've been doing company code stuff for quite a long time a couple of years. And we actually have agencies as one of our sub sectors, and they were one of the hardest people to crack. Yeah, because most of them said, Our agency is amazing. And our people are amazing. And we don't need any help, we don't need to analyse it, because we know we're all great. Yeah. And it was that kind of level of arrogance that you get from I'm not just saying it's Manchester agencies only, but I know, Manchester agencies particularly well, and we are very, very good at creating agencies that grow up to about 6 people, maybe up to 10. And then they stay there, they stay there for a good five years now, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that. I've been relieved, I was paid by the government to kind of try to help them scale. So that was my job. But they don't have the scale, if that's your lifestyle, digital agency business. Nothing wrong with that, ask it if you want to scale it, right. And sometimes they merge together. But the churn rate, you have employees in those kinds of agencies, it is very high for lots of agencies, and there's a reason for it. And it is the culture that they create. And that's normally created by the top boss. And this is the bit that's going to be controversial and make, as it always is, whenever I go and do talk to people, especially agencies, and I say this, they all go not as Oh, you're a meeting? And I say, Well, no, it probably is you, if you're worried about it, my short version, too. And you're the ego of the person at the top and the creative direction, and the fact they're creative, and they want to do all this stuff that normally kind of hamstrings growth, and it normally hamstrings, the culture that I created. It creates a certain kind of almost backwards culture. So you can use all the cool tools in the world. But if your culture is, I've still got to ask my boss before I can get sign off on that before. I'm not 100% sure if I can be agile, or if I can change my mind, though.
Robert Craven 22:08
Yeah, so that's just it. I mean, just yesterday, someone posted on my thing? I don't understand. I shouldn't do. I don't know who they are. I don't understand. Careful, yeah, I don't understand what you mean, when you say you get the staff you deserve. And it's like, you get the staff you deserve, because you recruit them use the jobs, but you tell them what your values are, you behave in a certain way you reward them in a certain way. It's all about your behaviour, they don't come to go.
Dan Sodergren 22:45
It's those two, the two things you said there, which is you know, it's not only about the recruitment, and there is a problem piece about the recruitment strategy sometimes which there is because they tend to recruit people that are like them. And so yeah, he's, you know, perpetuating this thing. And there's also recruiting people that say yes, a lot to you, because you're egotistical, and it lodestar and all this stuff, you can get rid of all that stuff by using data, not just using your hunches, but by using data and values. And we amazed how many people haven't done Belvin tests or haven't done, you haven't done your Myers Briggs stuff. And don't get me wrong. I'm not saying it's infallible, and it's baseline, a 1960s stuff. So maybe we've got to look back at the bias situation there. But if you haven't even done that, if you haven't done the soul searching of who you are as a person, what are your values? What are your motivations? What are your drivers, what's your purpose, and it's just money, which he can meet a lot of people, that's fine. But if you are working in an agency, and then someone says, Here's more money, you will leave the agency. And that in Mt dimensions, there happens a load and then everyone learns about the fact that everyone's wages are going up. And you can't afford a data scientist or a computer programme because they cost so much money. And it's like, because everyone keeps swapping, everyone keeps being mean, and then agencies will nick each other's clients, and then they'll form a new one. And then there'll be another hybrid. And that's how they grow and how they mould. Now, it's almost like the legal work to go work in legal profession. So and that's right for it to just the same principles. Now, we're going to have is right now that is not going to work. I hate to say it, but that way of having a culture your culture you have created in the past is not going to work in this new normal in this new post covered because I truly believe this, well, I might be wrong six months time everyone go down the road, that's normal. But I think employee power is going to be a lot higher. Yeah, and employee brand means your employer brand will be more important than you think. So if you are not seem to be a nice place to work, or a good agency and don't just give me a classical Glassdoor rating that you've read the word on the street, because people you will not be able to hold everyone together in the office space as much so you won't be bullied them to work for you. And we're afraid to say a lot of the time it is literally bullying and then rewards and recognitions. That seems to be The culture can be great, and especially in small agencies, because they say, we've all got to work hard. We've all got to do this page, it's the best thing to do isn't the best painting we're gonna make. Let's all do it together as a team, or work till two o'clock in the morning. Great. And we'll do it again tomorrow.
Robert Craven 25:15
Can I try and connect some bits here? Because you go to an agency and you say, Why should I buy it from you? What makes you different from the rest of the story? I always tell us, I went to a exhibition, global digital marketing show in London 32 digital agencies, every single one had a pretty young boy or girl walked up to them say hi, I think I need some help from a digital agency. And they all want Why should I buy from you and they all say we deliver value for money. What makes us different from the rest is we believe in the customer and we have a unique culture equals a ping pong table. And then you look behind them and there's a picture of people climbing trees or putting ropes. Okay. So there is no differentiation. Okay? Even now, you know, you despite everyone talking about value propositions and propositions, the differentiation is still there's a one came out today actually from Manchester, and is this new cool marketing brand, you know? And it's got four white guys, you know, outside some posh building, it looks like an album cover.
Dan Sodergren 26:47
Yeah, I still may be wearing bras, you know, maybe not groves anymore. That's my sort of their business.
Robert Craven 26:55
We really get to understand our customers and strategize off the ties and monetize. There is no differentiation. And not only thing different they will say is it's our culture, we have a culture, look at our look at our company, dog, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla bla, if they fail to be able to differentiate how they present their offer, when everything tells you if you don't differentiate people aren't gonna buy from you. Then why should they have? I mean, is it is it by definition today, so the foods are very destruction because they can't see the wood for the trees.
Dan Sodergren 27:38
That will that's exactly what is happening in Manchester. I don't know if it's same everyone I imagine it is it seems human nature. So you have a carbon copy agencies, it's most probably like the second time or third time they've done it. Or they've just grabbed a couple more recruits and graduates and done it up. I think that just might be life donors might be businesses, and that might be the way to do it. But they won't, they don't tend to scale very much, tend to change very much. And after a few years, they tend to break apart or they'll be bought by someone else now amalgamate. And it'll be the same thing again and again, again. And that's of course, why you have that you know, the horrific districts you have for diversity inclusion in the industry, because that's what happens now. I'm very lucky because I work in tech. So if you make a tech company that does that your piece of technology you create is fundamentally worse. Because it is, especially things like AI and other stuff. They're just stats behind it. Yeah. So if you don't have a diversity in tech, then you will suffer. And you will suffer financially, because we're not because people like you not to the MultiPoint just the piece of tech won't be as cute. Yeah, now.
Robert Craven 28:43
There's now evidence coming forward saying that, you know, diversity in thinking and diversity is about to become like authentic is about to become a really overused word. And that's really bad, because it'll become almost like strategy, it'll become almost meaningless, because people will just use it all the time to sound like they're talking about something, when in fact, they actually, like the difference between hashtags and action.
Dan Sodergren 29:10
Absolutely, right. It's my thing, then I come from a technical point of view is quite simple, really, your unique selling point diversity at the moment can be used as a bit of a black washing or white washing your gender from washing, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. And I, what, the Black Lives Matter movement, hugely important. If you haven't noticed our keyword analysis, it happens every four years. You know, it seems to be Oh, my goodness, it's an election cycle. Who doesn't care? You know, black lives always matter. Being Brown, I have a vested interest in that. You know, that's the point. But if you start to just get behind black lives matter, because you know, it's trending and you know, you should say something, but there's still no black people on your board or still no black people in your group or friends or in the company, then that's a much bigger thing. It's not the fact that you are racist now it does. doesn't mean that it's just you have to be proactively looking to diversify your workforce. Personality wise, yes. Race wise. Yes. gender wise. Yes. age wise. Yes. neurodiversity, especially, yes. And personality types? Yes. The one that the reason why I invested in flock is because what we talked about flock is the value system that's underneath it, not your brand and values, you know, 55% of footsie 100 company have integrity as one of the three brand values.
Robert Craven 30:31
Now, what they've done is they've hired a censure, I've given them 4 million quid and told them to write a statement.
Dan Sodergren 30:39
Whatever, I think you might just think about the whole thing. But either way, the outcome is the 55%. Because it's a standard. So we know that that's nonsense. Yeah. And we know that just because you've got ping pong tables. And just because you've got beanbags, we joke with me and McHale joke, but it's actually in our presentations. So this isn't culture, because it is, what COVID has really shown us though is that when you explode the office and they scattered to the wind, that's when you know, if you've got a company culture, that's actually when you know, because if you have a positive company culture, and people like working with each other, and they have the same values, and they share purpose, then productivity goes up, it doesn't go down. So if your agency at the moment, you're not doing very much, and you're not liking each other, and you don't want to turn up to zoom meetings, then you've done you work somewhere else. That's the problem. And what you're going to have is the boss that would normally say, Hey, don't worry about it, I'll buy you a beer, and come on, Buck up, we're gonna do this thing together. He ain't there now. So the of the, what we call the sticky middle, and I worked in cultural change in loads of place, especially in universities, and some of the public sector it's the hardest, because it's a matter of what we call the sticky middle, these middle managers whose job it is to make you more productive, and to make sure you're okay, but actually, in reality, their job is just a stop change. Because if you know if we suddenly go remote, what does the office manager do?
Robert Craven 32:07
I've a bit like yourself ruffled a few feathers. And one of the things I ruffled feathers on was saying that Simon cynics Start With Why doesn't really apply partly because Barclays bring in a censure to figure out what their purpose is, the more importantly there is, I've never found any evidence. And remember, this has now been kicking around for something like 20 years at, I found no evidence whatsoever in the business schools that says that companies with purpose, that purpose, cause and effect means that they are more profitable, or more sustained.
Dan Sodergren 32:53
Oh, it's okay.
Robert Craven 32:54
Well, lots of correlation. we don't have a cause and effect thing. So that's my point Number one. Point number two is, as I look around me, I have a computer mouse. I have a phone. I have some flyspray. To tell you about my office. I have a water and a water bottle. And I have a calculator. Yeah. All the things which I bought recently. Yeah. At no point did I say, I wonder what this company's purpose is? Before I buy the mouse? No, I'm not saying I wouldn't buy a pair of Toms and lean towards a pair of Toms because they're a cool brand, or Patagonia, and so on, and so forth. What I'm saying that the weight of the belief that purpose is the ultimate thing. And so you end up with very interestingly, the company I know, the agency I work with, which is incredibly diverse, I think 7 out of 100 are white males, and everyone else is from a diverse background. They went searching for their purpose. When the consultants were on purpose, you know, and they never found and they had to write big documents, and they had to do research. And of course, they just wanted to run a great agency with great people doing great people having a good time. And looking after each other and creating. So they didn't have this purpose that could be branded, and they felt like they were lost. They felt sub optimal because they didn't have a anyhow, my point is is is it evidence? Is there evidence between diversity and effectiveness?
Dan Sodergren 34:46
So if there's evidence, I don't know from the digital agency point of view, I do a lot of work with the with M MVA also with bi MA in Manchester, and they've done some brilliant research and how bad the situation is. In Manchester, wherever we pretty diverse, pretty cool, funky, but it's still a quite a dire lack of diversity in neuro diversity and other things, it isn't great. So we've got to do a lot of work. And I think there's lots of reports saying that advertising agencies as a whole, there's a lot of work to be done. Your point is, if they do all this work, is it gonna make any difference? I can only tell you from a tech point of view, because that's what I specialise in. Yes, absolutely, fundamentally, because your product is better. You're not doing this in a premium. I, the reason why I got into wanting to do hemp stuff and other things like that isn't because it's not only is it green and better for the planet, it's actually a better product. Hemp plastic is a better product, and it's biodegradable, but it's slightly more expensive. But the whole point is, is it's only more expensive, because if you don't use it, so therefore you need to start using more of and then the costs come down. And that's just life. It's just the world and cosmetics, fundamentally better products if you put hemp in it because it's better for the skin, are you with the details of all these things. Now, same thing with diversity inclusion, by the way, just by complete luck, not to be like my actual views by human design, you know, this society that we work in a more diverse and the more inclusive it is, it becomes a better society. Same with a company. Same with the products you create same with everything. But this literally might be just nature, the more diverse the ecosystem is, then the better it is if something bad happens, because that's something bad if you're good if you're only growing one crop, and then suddenly this weevil comes on eats that one crop. It's called mono culturalism. It doesn't work you just become broke. So it's the same thing. If all you're doing is making adverts for white people who are straight blokes, and it's not picking on a straight white blondes, it's just whatever you need to do, everyone you've got to pick up. If you just got to do that only, that's all you gonna do. Vanilla is the only flavour you're gonna do, then you're gonna have a problem if people start saying I'm not that fussed about. Now, you're also I think we're gonna not because you are a legend. So I'm not gonna argue against you, because you're a legend. But I think there's a big difference between b2c and b2b and most agencies with marketing themselves and marketing themselves to other businesses. And that's a much deeper moment of questioning around purpose and worth, because you need a differential factor as an agency. That's just marketing. However, if it was this, did I buy this just because it was bright blue? Or is it because it's a certain major something? Or is it because they give lots of money to charity, I don't know. I just bought like a bright blue. But that's a water bottle. However, I also have another one as well that I know I only bought because I know the guy who started it. And it's all about tap water. And I take them to places and they give me tap water and something else, because they give money to charity. And that's the reason I bought that. However, you're talking about an employee rather than an employee brands are going to be much more important because you will not get the right people working for your company very, very soon. Because generation Z and millennials all think this is important. And they won't work for you and you won't have a company. So give you a great example. Again, my apologies isn't tech, but it does work in marketing too. So Facebook, small business, going forward for marketing. Right? Did Facebook just do a new term? Mark Zuckerberg, the boss, who's you know, quite egotistical, whatever it is egotistical, but he's quite powerful in the organisation? Yeah. Did they just do their you turn on political advertising? And the fact that you can now turn it off? You don't have to be looking at their political ads during this election cycle? Did they do that? Because of pressure from Trump? No, he would have wanted it to keep going. Was it because of Joe Biden? Especially not? Was it black lives matter? Maybe. But actually, the real thing about it is that own employees, their own employees started to leave. Because they didn't want to work for Facebook anymore, because they saw it being bad, and having a bad culture and on top of everything else. So I look enough's enough. We're not gonna work for you anymore. But Facebook can't exist without its workers. And it's got 1000s of them. And it's got a massive employer brand. So just imagine how if you have a small agency with 30 people, and only one data scientist, and then your data scientist leaves are you gonna get a new one? Well, you better have a really good employee brand that can talk about diversity and inclusion and understand.
Robert Craven 39:17
So in a way I'm rattling the cage in a independent business, and an independent business I have no problem about we need to get our values working, we need there needs to be a sense of belonging, there needs to be a sense of family and as a family, we need to support and look after each other and make stuff happen. So I've got no problem with that. I think my problem is just this blanket assumption that everyone has to have a purpose when in fact, sometimes it's actually self evident. You don't need to go searching for it because and so on, so forth.
Dan Sodergren 39:57
Yeah, I think, I mean, you shouldn't have written Shep Brown. values build brand values are useful for your marketing. But brand values aren't your underlying values anyway.
Robert Craven 40:05
Is this an internal piece? Okay.
Dan Sodergren 40:14
Personally, what I would say is, I don't think that's the bit you necessarily need to shout about, because that's the bit you should show. So I always makes me smile when we talk about flock, because we show what our values are, why who we work with, and how we work, our purpose, but we don't normally necessarily talk about our purpose in flock, because we don't really need to what we've created is a tool that helps managers help people who are remote working and look at the values of each individual, bring them all together as a team, and then create a culture map, which allows you to say, oh, looking at autonomy schools, Rob's gonna find it a bit hard to work from home, right, he needs to have twice as many zoom calls or, you know, photos.
Robert Craven 40:54
An agency is talking about the formula. They don't work it down your throat package if while Grant who they are and what they do. But you know, when you walk in through the door, there is this, you know, like this, the definition of culture and culture is what you feel as you walk in through the door. There is a sense of this is interesting. I'm not quite sure why I mean, okay, it's got all the usual trappings there, the beanbags and the screens and ...
Dan Sodergren 41:25
The things on the top.
Robert Craven 41:26
Yeah, absolutely. Oh, the compulsories Star Wars game, you know, that kind of stuff. But there is something different about how meetings run, you know, about how kind of shallow the, it's not the top down why American management style of it is culturally really different.
Dan Sodergren 41:56
If you get into it, lots of lots, you can say you've got the bits at the very top. Yeah, whichever one, you know, we always use the iceberg analogy. So that you can see walk into the office, people are smiling, actually, kind of your eyes, probably, but actually to get that middle topic, because you can all see, obviously gonna have lots of other things like what are the behaviours? And then under that, what are the real habits and actually underneath that is it's one of the values. You can talk about all you know, we do Scrum, we're agile, do all this different stuff. But actually, it's something a lot deeper than that. And in agencies, it does technically does count from the box, it comes from the board. And that's why when you look at diversity and things to say, Well, lots of lots of black, we employ lots of black things. Yeah, great, cool. How many are on the board? Well, no, it's not okay, that that's actually showcasing do something or any other thing. That's, I suppose the other. I don't know, I promise I won't get too geeky on this chat about it. But the other thing about that I get sort of about not about diversity and inclusion, when I talk to marketing aides, especially is that their lack of understanding around technology, and the future of technology, that is an Achilles heel. So I think culture is hugely important. But if these guys don't get a hold or a handle, especially, ironically, especially in digital marketing, and don't get a handle on this stuff pretty quick, they are going to be obsolete in the next two to three years.
Robert Craven 43:26
There are hammers, they find nails, they hit nails, whatever it is, isn't now they hit it. Whatever you are, I'm going to go do Google AdWords because that's what you need. So you're talking to somebody who runs a 10 or 15 person agency, they've kind of broken through that six number that you talked about. You take them out there or whatever it is come out of the pub. Remember, when you went to the pub, put your arm around and say listen, right? Here's my advice or my tip for you. Because I think you and I both kind of aligned that in 18 months or three years time, agencies are going to look very different from how they look now. So what do you think? I mean, do you literally say you run a 10 person agency? You got eight white males and two sort of women here?
Dan Sodergren 44:25
No.
Robert Craven 44:26
You need to go out and employ your next three recruits need to be more diverse, or do you say mate, you need to get your mind sets or does that mean what do you do to help them?
Dan Sodergren 44:42
I know it sounds a little bit a bit mean on me. My job and I do get kind of asked a lot isn't diversity inclusion Manager I'm not a diversity inclusion manager for that company. I'm not their HR plus. They should have at that Stein someone who's a people person, and that people person should already be telling the board that that would be a wise structure, not because of any reasonable fact that it's better for the business to exist later on. And it's a very employee ran at that size of business. They shouldn't have someone who's a people person. If they weren't, I would anyway.
Robert Craven 45:18
Let me just flip that around to you. I ran a meeting. Earlier on this week, I had 10 agencies in the room from 10 to 75 Staff all over northern Europe, actually, primarily UK. And I said, Okay, let's just go around the room, you know, how many black faces are there? Because what's going on right now is really important. And we need to just get some sense of the diversity. And how many women have we got? And everyone just you just saw the top of everyone's heads? Because, not a single partner of 10 agencies, averaging 50 Staff. So that's 50 times 10. That's 500 staff. There were a handful of non white faces. There were a smattering of females, hordes of those 10 agencies, or white males. So what do we do with these people? I mean, what do you not? I mean, they're all set, because they said, as you went around it, oh, well, I come from stunk. You know, you don't know if you're much diversity installed, you know, oh, well, we're in Cornwall, down in Cornwall, you know, beggars can't be choosers.
Dan Sodergren 46:39
It's right. So I'll give you a couple of bits because it literally it's exactly saying this is some industry stuff that we the Manchester Association and the via vi M ad, that was a great resource. We found out there was about 400 people that filled it out and 92% of people write in all the industries talking about ABS. And about 48% were under 35. You think oh eight, for example, straight as well. Average time the industry is about 12 years. Now. I can drill , I can send you the report. And when you start drilling into more, it's easier to keep them worse and diversity won't be the great news that we've got is this remote work means that old argument of well Cornwall doesn't have any black people in it. That's not an argument anymore. Because the world does the old argument that Scotland well in Scotland, we don't meet autistic people. We don't meet people with Asperger's. Well, that's not true. You can go and find them. Right? People working from home and especially coders and these other people again, I know I come from a tech background. So creative might not be the same. You might have a team that say we have to meet together. Cool. Do it once a week, cool. Still have an office. But that doesn't mean you can't say that our talent pool is only three miles away from us now. Because it isn't anymore. Because it isn't. Yeah. And that's just a lie. Also, there's a huge lie in the creative industries and in the tech community as well. Which is the reason the talent pool there. Because there is, yeah, if you want to become more gender diverse, it's easy to do you have a chat with Becky Taylor, there's a lovely lady who just think cool tech returners, and there is 1000s, there are 1000s of women that are getting into tech and are returning to tech, and will be great coders and do stuff and work in tech. There's no excuse to say, Oh, well, we just can't find them. No, you can't find them. Because you just look at your friends. Now. It's also maybe it's not an issue for you. And I can't teach you that it's an issue for you. But I can guarantee you, your company will fail more will be less successful, because you aren't diverse. Now, what's really important, this is really, really important. If you are running a digital agency right now as a creative agency right now. And there's 10 people in and two of them aren't working on tech products, or four of them aren't working on tech projects, and data analytics and AI stuff or machine learning stuff. You're not gonna be around in five years time. It is literally the same as 10 years ago, and people are saying, Oh, why should I think Google stuff? Why should we be doing SEO? We don't do that chill down. I'm not here to persuade you to do it. But I can guarantee you that newspapers won't be as important. Because they're now on. Yeah, I can guarantee you billboards won't be as important well, they nail on. None of this stuff, sadly, is just my opinion is just data. It tells you where the future is. And the thing that we didn't know with COVID was is how quickly this future would now be upon us. So this is a great one for you. I'm done. If you saw today's literally today, boohoo basically mentioned is you know, boohoo and the online clothing people. Yep, As a company now yet tech company technically not really kind of get born with digital how much they are employed tech people blegh really like first republic grow massively. They've just bought a waste. Yeah, I don't know how old you are. But the waste is, for me it was a brand that I'm obviously not being a girl, but I'm a brand I know very well, they bought them today. Just bought them out of recession and warehouse, just drop them.
Robert Craven 50:27
But the logical extension of that sticking to this notion of data and tech is the role of the agency will be redundant because Google, or Bing or Facebook or YouTube will go straight to the agglomerate. Or they'll go straight to the institution directors or they'll go straight to the government and they'll have one relationship, and then they'll bounce stuff out. And underneath that they'll create an AI product for $10 a month, you can have your Google AdWords done by a piece of AI, which has worked on 25,000 cobblers shop in city centres.
Dan Sodergren 51:05
Right. Cool. So whoever has the most data wins this game. Yeah. Now, if you haven't if your agency hasn't understood that yet, you're in deep trouble.
Robert Craven 51:17
The art of surveillance capitalism by Sean?
Dan Sodergren 51:20
Yeah, absolutely. Movie. Data is the new oil. But it's actually it's not data is actually co2. That's how much it would be like if there's a whole book in that proposition, which I've been wanting to write for three years. Now, if your business isn't agile enough, who doesn't understand that that is the case, then you're it's all audio for you anyway, the only reason that Google and Facebook and these other people haven't made that move yet is because they're making more money off the industry and the ecosystem than them actually doing it. Yeah. And I know they'll break the ecosystem if they make such an aggressive move. However, there are when I first started in this gig, but 10 years ago, there were something like 1018 42, SAS products that were made for marketing technology, in that markets energy space yet. Now, there are 9042. Okay, this is SAS products, that sole job is to help you with your marketing. Yeah. So this means you have to have a technology stack as all creative agency digital agencies now, what will define you, in the future will be the only which SAS products you use not only for your HR with block, block, but also with everything else, email, all this other stuff, but the AI underneath it, and please meet don't build your own, you have your five years too late. So are using IBM Watson at the moment, if you're not, you're going to be in deep trouble, are you and the other feedback marketing Robbins people talking about as well is so many people are being sent to I know a couple of agents in Manchester, they're brilliant at this. They build things for their clients that work in their marketing proposition. But it's almost like it's a separate company. It's almost like they build them something separately. And then they give them it and they say this is this for you. And of course, it helps with the marketing, but it's almost a product in itself. It's like a skunkworks project. But it also helps in the marketing, it becomes a lead generation tool for everything else. That's the future. You think if you're not doing stuff with chatbots. Now, if you're insane, this is your three or four years too late anyway, I was standing in front of another stand up one more because everyone would have been pissed off when I did I didn't know who I was never asked me but a lot of Palmolive soap people, Imperial MP Well, that's my smitten Western, or whatever they call massive company, like a lot of adages. And they did this event in Media City, an extra landing, and they brought in cross all of their global marketing people. And they were having all those chats and stuff back in the day when you're at these events. I came on as keynote. And I chatted to them. And they said, Well, you know, what about voice? What's your view on voice? And I was like, Well, the thing about the voice, which by the way, is a another future of marketing, this play of frictionless marketing, nothing about marketing. Amazon will own all this stuff. So your Imperial leather product will never be bought. And they just didn't get it. And they were like, well, what? No, no, no, it's a great opportunity for us because we're going to we're going to have these dashboards, it's our brand on and people are going to push them because like no one's going to do that. What you're going to do is be in the shower, and you're going to shout Alexa or your changes name from passersby chatter that I don't have an Alexa by the way because I think fundamentally a very dangerous piece of technology that was just mining your existence. I don't know very good for marketing. Very worried political reasons for the future ramifications. So you also say Alexa against giardia. You actually get the Imperial leather shock and of course, Amazon will create something that's a bit like your product and it will own that They'll send it to them instead of just like TK Maxx do when you go into you might think you've got a bargain, but it's just a brand they created that looks a bit off, that has a silly name, but they can say is anything because after now and your buyer, that's the same your world we're going to enter for marketing, it's really scary for agencies is this frictionless marketing, where it isn't about shouting at people. And it isn't about advertising to people, it's nothing to do it. And that's really scary is marketing agencies at the moment think they can enter a party and just start talking and people are buying stuff for them. But what we're finding now, of course, is, even if you've done it with champagne, people don't want you to. Long, long pause, because I think you're right. So that leaves me with two questions before we run out of time. First question you can do whichever order you want to do. The first question is, so if you had top tips or advice for digital agencies, what would it be? And the second question is bearing in mind all of what you've said. What's Dan doing? And what's Dan working on? Answering whichever way you want to do it. Okay. So my top tip, if you have an agency that ties into the second point that I was down doing now, I would start repositioning your agency as an innovation place a place of innovation. If you are still talking about being a marketing agency, start thinking about being a data agency, start thinking about being an innovation centre, start utilising clever pieces of technology that can give a tremendous amount of value, which is an advertising and marketing. Yeah, because that space is going to rapidly disintegrate. But it really is, and I know people don't like it. But the Dan is, it's the same, it's what's going to happen. It's what happening in the marketplace.
Robert Craven 56:59
So getting in line with digital transformation.
Dan Sodergren 57:03
Absolutely. So getting London's transformation, which individually exactly what I did. So I removed from teaching people about social media marketing, and doing social selling on LinkedIn, and b2b specialism and all this kind of stuff. From about three years ago, I've been doing it for about a decade and I looked, actually I talk about digital transformation now, and about culture and mindset. Because actually, that's how you change, that's how you do it. Now, as a digital agency, you're certain you might be sitting there going, well, we can't do that cool. But you can start to adapt what you do. So you can start building things. So your tech team can be building something, and then you have a SaaS product. And it might be sitting there scratching your own itch. It might be so nerdy 20% of the time, but they have to be building a product. It can't just be a service anymore. Because as Robert rightly says that service side of it. All Google need to do is decide one day, this is the landing page where you put in your keywords, I mean, look at your website, and this is your campaign for you. Because they got the data now, they can do it tomorrow. I'm amazed they haven't. I'm slightly disappointed. They haven't if I'm honest. But you've obviously got their own reasons why not? My guess is one of the reasons is Google wants to be an AI company. So it's just keeping the data flowing. It's just keeping because that's just money knows its cat. It knows its IP. Now at some point, just like my I built SAS product called Follow ground. And halfway through our build process, Twitter did basically did a U turn, I used to go crazy. I remember that might be racist. It comes from a film with Renato from anyway, they did this massive region, and they just closed down with FiOS, they just turned off the data. And so that company just absolutely spin and Facebook will do the same. And they do quite a lot, Twitter, LinkedIn, all these people do the same thing. So you've got to be really careful only when you're building these new pieces of technology that you start looking at. Okay, what am I completely reliant on? You know, what would happen if that disappeared? And it's that way of thinking. And that's that culture point, which I think at the moment, digital agencies especially don't have they have a go get the clients give the clients what they want stuff. Let's all fight that's all. Let's do that. I'm not sure that's going to pan out, especially when marketing budgets might start drying up. There is a huge move for lots of companies start doing all this stuff in house in house. They've also got two data scientists and a load of techies inside their own building. And you don't have one at all. Then you've already lost I wish it was more of a positive thing. So that's the positive thing is yes, the positive thing is hire people based on the future capacity of technology. Because it isn't going away so AI stuff, voice stuff, even augmented reality. I know I'm had an augmented reality containers guy, so I know I met him. I talked about augmented reality a bit of it all those bits of thinking they are going to happen now. And in this post COVID world, with, you're going to be using technology more than ever before. And data is where the money is. So just refine your focus into data. So to edit all that rambling out. So that's not the first one. The second one is what's standing now, following my own advice, you know, I read these books, and I make these calls, and I try to predict the future. And I've done pretty well so far. And I can see that the next bit that people are going to need help with is digital transformation. So that's what I do, you know, the talks about to online into a focus in lots of sectors. But the key bits of that, for me is the culture is changing the culture, hiring the right people who are then really good at working from home and remote working and working as a team that and scaling your business and having growth mindsets, there have been you want to have not necessarily the people who are have got the best TVs, you want to have the people you want to recruit the people that have the right value system, underneath it all that similar to you. And that's exactly why we built flop exactly why were used flop, no one invest in flop without them during the flop test. Because we don't want an investor who doesn't have the same values that really doesn't have to be a valued fit. You don't work for flopping due to the fact that you don't need to buy supplies to the flock test, people get a blood test. On that note, if you would like to do the flock test, which is a very, very simple, it takes about 10 minutes. And it just analyses the values of that person. By the way, it doesn't use AI, it's not socially scraping, it cannot come out with a negative based on assumptions. It just tells us what they says but then create a filter map, if you'd like to do if you've got a small team or took a couple of you up to about 20. And then I can arrange maybe up to about 20 things. If you would like to do it for much larger agency. My advice is what people do full time. Do it on your core team. First, they're not on your leadership team. Do your float test on your leadership team find out who shares the same values. And the reason why I invested in rocking and reinvesting in flock is my wife did it in her company. And if they listen to flop, they will have saved about 120,000 pounds, because they employed the wrong person who wasn't a good fit. And three months later, that person left and they lost them. So a couple of other main clients, it's not important. So that's what I'm doing now is I'm helping that little startup grow and hopefully do some pretty cool stuff. Because people are important at the end of day and company culture matters.
Robert Craven 1:02:41
Absolutely brilliant. I'm going to draw a line there and say a really big Thank you, Dan, Dan's details URL, email address and all that stuff at the end, so you can catch up with Dan, I'm sure he'd like to talk to you. It's been a really great conversation. And anyone who's still listening at the end, that's fantastic. Because between you and I, I think we've kind of slapped a few heads in a really positive way, actually, because it's positive. It's very positive because this stuff had hurling straight towards us. It's like that thing about your the light at the end of the tunnel may actually be an express train coming towards you. I think that it's one thing dealing with COVID We've actually got to lift our heads up and go. Okay, so how do we make this agency survive Christmas 2020 Nevermind 2021. And it's not going to stop. It's just not going to stop. But I think it's incredibly exciting right now incredibly exciting.
Dan Sodergren 1:03:47
What we can do is you and again, reiterating what you're saying that there is the key thing that we can build back better to take this time while you're also separate and think okay, the office of the future, we're going to be doing this with it brilliant with the people of the future. What are we going to do with it? How can we build back better because you're absolutely right. It's Christmas this year, and it's 2021. That's what you should be planning for now to make sure you scale and smash it for them and plant those seeds. Now, as you rightly say good luck.
Robert Craven 1:04:18
Brilliant. Thank you very much indeed. That's absolutely been a wonderful interview. Thank you very much, Dan. My pleasure.