Ep 56: Demonstrating the value of marketing with Rachel Davies, Hoare Lea, part II

 
 
Podcast cover for episode titled 'Content, Climate and Thought Leadership'

Welcome to the new season of The Built Environment Marketing Show.

This episode is part II of my conversation with Rachel Davies from Hoare Lea. If you've not checked out part I, I'd advise you to before listening to this one.

 

In this episode, we cover:

• How we can gain more credibility as marketers

• The importance of innovation and creativity

• The role of AI in marketing

• Prioritising quality over quantity.

Resources and links


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Transcript

Ayo Abbas  00:00

Hi, just before we get going with the show, this is episode two of an interview that I started with Rachel Davis from Hoare Lea. If you haven't listened to Episode One, you might want to check that out first. So that this episode makes sense by

Ayo Abbas  00:17

looking at the women in sport, and you know, this girl can and stuff, I mean, they think it's an amazing marketing like each. And you're just like, wow, like, they've just made it look so exciting. And you know, like, yeah, just taken a lot of kind of the reasons why women were avoiding sport and taking them they're taking those reasons head on, and I'm tackling them and you're just like, This is really good. And they've made it incite, exciting, invigorating, you know, some of the best ads across the piece. Yeah. fantastic and gritty. And yeah.

Rachel Davies  00:51

I think that, we could learn a lot from that in our industry, because what's to say, a career in the built environment could not provide. Let's stick with the young women profile. You know, it's a career where you, you can travel the world, it's the career where you can make a difference to everyday people's lives. It's the career where you can shape where people live and play and work. It's a career where you can help with climate, with demographics, with old age, with sexism with security. I mean, it touches all of people's lives. So why can't we speak about it in a much more exciting way? And I think there's a lot we could learn from how sports has done it.

Ayo Abbas  01:41

Yeah, definitely. And I think the thing that's it is, it's just yeah, we've got to find a way of making it look, you know, actually show how amazingly exciting is because I think a lot of people don't realise it exists the career let alone you're gonna want to join. Okay, so. So that particular kind of campaigns, and what's the what's the kind of latest big thought leadership or areas you're looking at the moment what themes or climate change is obviously one of them

Rachel Davies  02:17

Yeah, lots on climate change. In fact, we're just working now with our friends over in Tetra Tech. So the audience might not know that Hoare Lee was acquired by Tetra Tech two years ago now, I think so we're part of this bigger family, potentially, really big. There's about 27,000 people worldwide. So we're just beginning to work with our partners in touch ticker in what we call the high performance buildings group. And we're looking at creating an ESG thought leadership piece, which will risk not necessarily respond, but it will time with the big cop conference. So we're probably looking to go in Jan, January 2024. With that, but that's bringing the global expertise together to talk about ESG which is another subject matter that's it's just slowly being politicised at a time when it's the last thing we really

Ayo Abbas  03:20

Yeah. Yeah, I still can't get over the fact that 15 minute cities was politicised. I understand that.

Rachel Davies  03:32

That was that lady who was on The Apprentice wasn't it? I've forgotten her name

Ayo Abbas  03:36

There was a couple of people.But there was also like, there's like people campaigning against it. And you're like, it just means you can walk everywhere and get to what you need. Really quickly.

Rachel Davies  03:43

Yeah, you wonder how these things get misinterpreted?

Ayo Abbas  03:47

No, I understand. Take it over she's not

Rachel Davies  03:57

conspiracy theorists who were

Ayo Abbas  03:59

Yeah, and the whole thing about net zero and whether or not you know, let's just kick it into the long grass. You're like, don't do that.

Rachel Davies  04:05

There won't be any long grass. So let's we focus on it.

Ayo Abbas  04:10

No. Greenery. Yeah. For sure. So you also do your own kind, I suppose do like a big event like designing the Future Conference, which I saw which looks amazing as well. Which was in May, what was that about? Tell us about that?

Rachel Davies  04:25

Yeah, Design of the future, is particular love of mine. It's one of the highlights of the year. I don't know if you remember the Christmas Lectures from the Royal Institute. Yes I Do Yeah. Okay. So as a child, I used to watch the Christmas Lectures. And they were really the inspiration for designing the future. And the Royal Institute. I don't know if you've ever been is an amazing, amazing building and the theatre that they have there is well it's petrifying because it's so have intense it's like a cauldron everyone is you can see the whites of everyone's eyes, you're on a fault change. Yeah, and it's quite intimidating. But it was designed to be a space where people would demonstrate their products and innovations to an audience and the audience should be able to ask and so everything is honed in down on the speaker, not on a lovely plasma screen where PowerPoint slides can reside. It's right on the person. And so we, we try and bring together five or six speakers and a really interesting host. And they have eight minutes to give a little nice, thought provoking talk on something that has relevance to the built environment, but doesn't necessarily have to be led from a built environment point of view. But should there's things that we should be thinking about. Not pie in the sky stuff, that's probably never going to happen. But things that are maybe 2, 3, 4 years ahead of us that we ought to make some time to think about. So we we, this year, we had Mr. Rajan hosting, he was absolutely brilliant. What what, what a great guy, he was fun. He was on top of it, you know, just sharp.

Ayo Abbas  06:23

It's really fast. Yeah, yeah.

Rachel Davies  06:27

And then we had all sorts of different talks and we also have some actors coming in, which scared the living bejesus out of everybody. And we it was great. It was great fun.

Ayo Abbas  06:38

I guess in a way, I'm gonna say it's like your own TED Talks in a way? I don't know. It's that kind of small. Yes. They're not small. But he's like, kind o

Rachel Davies  06:46

in that kind of thing. But with participation from the audience, lovely. Current ones crazy experiments. So we've blown up

Ayo Abbas  06:55

every year or is that an annual thing? You do? Or is it?

Rachel Davies  06:57

Yes, annually? Yeah. Yeah. So we're planning for next year's events? At the moment?

Ayo Abbas  07:04

That sounds very cool. They're trying to come along. is so cool. Expanding is expanding your horizons again, right, I think, because the industry gets so insular. And so kind of such and such as doing exactly the same thing. So the fact that you're gonna try different things, I think it's really lovely.

Rachel Davies  07:26

We don't have a good track record. Maybe we're behind in digitalization, we're behind on climate and we're a big cause of climate, the industry could do with gets a different perspective.

Ayo Abbas  07:39

Absolutely. So you do have a podcast? I'm going to ask a bit about that, because I love podcasts, obviously. So how did it come about? And, and how do you do it, what sort of guests you're gonna

Rachel Davies  07:48

cast, like probably 100,000 companies up and down the country came about in lockdown. Because we, you know, like everyone world was turned on its head, and some of the more traditional routes to getting in touch with people or connecting with them that just disappeared or just make them a lot harder. So I'm a parent, you're a parent, no school juggling work, you know, we just needed to provide content in a in a way that people could consume it, whenever they light so it could, suit their schedules, and do something a little bit different. So that's where it sort of came from really, and a bit like designing the future, the event and a bit like our client magazine, we try and get guests on who have something interesting to say that's related to the built environment, very rarely are they a client, it's not a salesy thing. It's a discussion with someone who's got something in shows actually certainly

Ayo Abbas  07:48

are really interested in let's let's have a discussion about it like that. It's nice. Yeah,

Rachel Davies  09:05

we've had all those all sorts of people on there. memorable ones include NASA astronauts who were talking about when you you're up in space, and you look back at the earth that you just immediately become sort of a an advocate for sustainability. And you see the whole different perspective. That was really awesome. We've had people from Pinewood Studios we've had people from later living sector we've had people from you know, academics who are doing something really interesting and cool we had a guy from a phone call gravitricity who look at gravity as a renewable source of energy. So all

Ayo Abbas  09:51

sounds really interesting

Rachel Davies  09:53

Yeah, Yeah,

Ayo Abbas  09:55

seriously out there

Rachel Davies  09:58

So is it It's just an interesting listen to do in your own time. I mean, you'll know better than most, you'd have a bit of discipline, haven't you about podcasting in the sense that you've got to have a steady, steady stream, and you got to keep on top of your quality and giving, you know, your listeners what they're after? So certainly, you know, their hard work, we, it was another thing added into our marketing mix,

Ayo Abbas  10:30

burn as well, people are gonna go and get like, it's like, no, because actually, there's only about this amount of people that actually listen to podcasts actively. Yeah. It's much more about tapping into that than it is bringing in your existing market or target audience in because it's like, there's not everyone listens to them.

Rachel Davies  10:49

No, I'm not, you know, a format for me, it wouldn't be my first choice either, you know, I prefer to read, for example, so I'd rather take a long read rather than listen. So, no, it's it's harder work, as you say. Slow burn is a good way to describe it, I think we'll, we're still going, because we're still lots of interesting people. And it's a good vehicle to hear from those people that, you know, it's just, you can get into bit more detail, you can get a sense of the person who's, who you're talking to, rather than sort of, yeah, so we keep  going. We'll hit that breakthrough, you know, viral moment, I'm sure.

Ayo Abbas  11:36

Hi, Ayo here. And as you're a listener to the show, I just wanted to tell you a bit more about how I can help you get your built environment marketing done. If you're looking to set up a company podcasts or trying to figure out what content you want to create for an amazing campaign that really engages your audience. Or even if you want to get your business more up to speed in terms of how they approach digital marketing, and how you get kind of senior level people on board with workshops and training, then do bear me in mind, I'm actually a marketing consultant, content creator and trainer. But I work specifically with built environment firms, just like yours. So I know the best practices and approaches, but also, most importantly, how to apply them to our sector. You can find out more about my work at www.abassmarketing.com Or feel free to drop me an email at ayo@abbasmarketing.com. And of course, there are links in the show notes if you want to find out those addresses. Anyway, you can find out more about my work at Abassmarketing.com. There's also links in the show notes too. Thanks for listening. And now back to the show.

Ayo Abbas  12:49

I don't think I have ever had a viral moment

Rachel Davies  12:52

not with regard to the podcast anyway,

Ayo Abbas  12:55

I've done all this kind of stuff. It's never really worked. I'd still say to people, it's like, you know, people are like, oh, you know, I'm like, well, actually, if I get like 400 downloads a month overall, for the whole series. I'm like, that's like 400 people who have me in there ears that's that's really good. I mean, you kind of think about it. It's not 1000s. And you're like actually do I need that. And, and what Yeah, I think that also, I think podcasts one of those things where people come up to you. Oh, I listen, and like you don't realise and they come up to you and I have start having conversations. And it's just, it's another channel, isn't it? And I guess it's just that we consume content? Yeah.

Ayo Abbas  13:39

But yeah, but then it can feed into all your other content channels anyway because you've got, you've got them all as well. So one more question Do you like, because you produce a lot of high-quality content across the piece?  Is it done in-house? Or do you work with consultants? what's your what's your mix are agencies?

Rachel Davies  13:56

Yeah, I mean, fast proportion of it is in house. Wow. That probably explains the size of the team. Because, you know, we've got people who who can write who can design, who can animate? Who can strategise. Yeah, you know, we've got and communications professionals. So we've got the mix internally, which I know some people would never look at that model. But it works really well for us. You know, thinking back to the rebrand for example, Mr. Bean's has done a brilliant job in creating all the branding assets that needed to be used. But there was only one graphic designer at Hoare Lee. There was no way we could implement a graphics branding piece with one designer. And there's also no way that we could work on a job by job basis with Mr. Bean because I would have bankrupted Hoare Lee within about a month. So that is that You know, that didn't work didn't work very well, for us. Sometimes we do outsource where we haven't got the skill. So in one of the thought leadership pieces, we worked with an illustrator Andy Council whose's a Bristol guy, and he, we chose him one case, we loved his style, but to he also has done some murals in hospitals. So he, you know, he was just a good relevant illustrator. And we also work with a firm,  can I name them? We work with a firm called Longitude who have helped us in the editorial sense, and in the interviewing sense of getting to clients, contributors, influences sponsors, who we want to talk to about the thought leadership. So they've helped us with with that, but for the most part, we do do it ourselves. And I think that's good. Yeah, we understand the business. You know, we know some of the things that can be successful, some of the things where we would get pushback and why and where so yeah, it works. It works for us.

Ayo Abbas  16:16

Fantastic. Okay. My last question. So what do you see as the biggest challenge facing marketers at the moment?

Rachel Davies  16:23

Well, I think if I focus on our industry for a minute, I think there's still not enough marketeers at the top table. So I don't think they have as much influence as they should. And I think that's going to be an important step change. For built environment, interestingly enough, when my team and I were looking at what could awards could the team, the marketing team enter in the industry? There's not a single award category in any of the big industry awards, that pick out good marketing? Can you name one?, can you think of one?

Ayo Abbas  17:14

No, the only awards are separate ones.

Rachel Davies  17:17

So I thought, well, that in itself tells you an interesting story, doesn't it? The value of marketing in the construction industry. So I think that's, you know, that's quite a small, not small, it's a big challenge. But it's, you know, it's very specific.

Ayo Abbas  17:36

With what we're just, we're just not, we're not seen as the top table, we're expense, that's what they see it. That's, that's it rather than a value add on .

Rachel Davies  17:45

Often, that's the case. I mean, I have to say the Hoare Lea leadership have been very supportive here of marketing. Hence, I've got 50 people, and but I know that's not the case, everywhere. And one of the big challenges that, and we've touched on this in terms of the steam stem recruitment, struggle will be how we elevate this industry, to attract really good people and retain really good, good people. Skills sort of blurred out there, you know. So we want to keep really good people with us. So there's definitely a big communications challenge and a marketing challenge for all of us. And then more generally, I think, obviously, economic situation is maybe a little bit flat. And so we've all got to respond to that accordingly, but hopefully, certainly for us is going to be quality over quantity every day of the week, and I'd say there's probably some more usual things that you probably hear all the time, what's AI gonna do, etc, etc.

Ayo Abbas  19:01

Ah that's the next thing?

Rachel Davies  19:04

Yeah, I mean, I'll stick with those two, though.

Ayo Abbas  19:08

The AI thing is such an interesting one. It's one of those where I do want to do a full show on it, because it's like, actually, I mean, but I really could take a lot of the repetitive stuff away. And I think like we say, you know, but the whole process aspect of what we do isn't probably up to speed as, as in terms of Operation, operationally, right. I don't think it's that but then, yeah, and there was, yeah, there were some bad content coming out of AI as well.

Ayo Abbas  19:39

I thought that was really weird, really strangely ah I did an AI? Ah,

Rachel Davies  19:47

yes. It's really gonna be interesting, but again, I think it's just how you work with it. Nothing's gonna replace the human creativity and spark

Ayo Abbas  19:59

and that idea of peace when you bring people together. That's the magic of what your team does. And that's that's not AI. That's those conversations actually. No. And, you know, that's how you get the amazing pieces of content, isn't it?

Rachel Davies  20:11

Absolutely. AI would never have said let's let's illustrate a robot on its knees as if it was a hospital. That would never come out of AI  that only comes out of a crazy human person’s head.

Ayo Abbas  20:25

Uh, you know, let's, let's finish the interview there. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure

Ayo Abbas  20:38

Thanks so much for listening to the built environment marketing show. Don't forget to check out the show notes which will have useful links and resources connected to this episode. You can find that on Abbasmarketing.com. And of course if you liked the show, please do share it with others on social as it helps more people to find us. See you soon.

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Ep 57: Top five marketing mistakes firms make, Ayo Abbas and Stephen Drew

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Ep 55: Content, Climate and Thought leadership with Rachel Davies, Hoare Lea