Episode 45 Interview with Bianca Sidelsky
English (US)
01:00:00.080 — 01:00:03.160 · Speaker 1
Not every brand should be doing innovation all the time.
01:00:03.200 — 01:00:06.760 · Speaker 2
It does. Innovation start and strategy begin.
01:00:06.800 — 01:00:11.600 · Speaker 1
Creativity also has to fit within a certain structure and within a brief.
01:00:11.640 — 01:00:12.520 · Speaker 2
That’s real creativity.
01:00:12.560 — 01:00:18.040 · Speaker 1
So that’s real creativity. If you’re not answering the brief, then you’re just.
01:00:19.160 — 01:00:22.560 · Speaker 3
Welcome back to the cave. And today with me is Bianca, who is.
01:00:22.560 — 01:00:29.960 · Speaker 2
The group strategy and innovation director at PhD. Bianca, that’s a very cool title, but welcome.
01:00:30.000 — 01:00:32.240 · Speaker 1
Thank you so much for having me. Carl, it’s good to be here.
01:00:32.279 — 01:00:41.440 · Speaker 2
Yeah, likewise. Um, so first, let’s start off. Who is Bianca and where did she come from and why is she so involved with media?
01:00:41.840 — 01:02:50.430 · Speaker 1
That’s a that’s a great question. So I absolutely adore my job. Um, a lot of people say that I’m a bit obsessed with it, and I’m okay with that, um, passion obsession with it as a Landler. But very interesting. In South Africa, we don’t really have a media course, so you can’t really go to varsity and study a media course, which is a bit of an issue.
So I had an interesting route into, um, into what I do now, and I’ve worked in every part of the industry. So originally when I finished school, I actually studied graphic design. Um, and wonder what Laquan does and finished, uh, finished my BA degree in graphic design. And I thought, well, my favorite turtle’s SL magazine.
So I’m just going to phone the editor and ask for a job because, you know, that’s what you do. And I started there and yeah, from Independent Publishing went into magazines, went into commercial products of magazines. Um, at that time we’re talking and I’m showing my age here and we’re talking pre Facebook and pre social media.
So if you wanted to do something as a brand that wanted to get involved with youth, and obviously we have such a young um population, you would do custom publications. So I got involved with that and got involved commercially with that, then went into ad sales at media 24 and worked on touchline, on shape, on women’s health and then across all 53 titles where my role was kind of the the conduit between the sales teams and the editorial team.
So it was a very interesting role because it was kind of balancing commercial and creative and and from there I went to go work at FNB. So as FNB runs currently, still does as um, there’s a division that runs as an internal media agency. And I went to be a strategist there. And then about nine years ago I got a call from PhD, and I’ve been there ever since and very happy.
So kind of that’s like my, my role into media. Um, and it’s a small industry. It’s almost very incestuous. Um, but it’s a, it’s a great industry. And yeah, I absolutely adore it. So that’s where I come from.
01:02:50.430 — 01:02:58.390 · Speaker 2
Great, great. Cool. So tell me, where does innovation start and strategy begin? And aren’t they the same thing?
01:02:59.090 — 01:03:53.610 · Speaker 1
Um, so I wouldn’t say the same thing. They definitely have a symbiotic relationship, and they need to work together, but they are different. And I think the difference is with strategy. It’s very analytical. It’s very it’s very much the science. It’s a theory, it’s the principles. It’s knowing the rules.
So you can break the rules. And that’s where innovation kind of comes in. So innovation is not just doing things for novelty sake and new and shiny and and trying something different. But it’s really trying to almost prove a hypothesis that if you’re doing something differently, are you going to get a better result than just following the rules?
And innovation has many ways that it can play. It can be new to brand, it can be new to category, it can be new to market. But they definitely work closely together. But they they play, like I said, symbiotic roles. But they’re not the same thing.
01:03:53.770 — 01:03:56.730 · Speaker 2
Not the same thing. Maybe one before the other.
01:03:57.010 — 01:04:40.430 · Speaker 1
Um, I think they need to work together. And, um, most importantly, it always comes down to the problem to be solved and the objective. Um, because the thinking sometimes has to be led by strategy. The thinking sometimes needs to be led by innovation. It can sometimes be about the objective, or we’re also in as much as we’re in media, we’re in client service.
And we have our clients and our which are brand managers and marketing directors and CMOs. And we have to understand what makes them tick and what makes their businesses tick and, and make sure that we lead with the lever that’s going to, to enter us into the room in the right way.
01:04:40.750 — 01:04:44.270 · Speaker 2
So, and work towards their objectives and their strategy.
01:04:44.310 — 01:04:46.030 · Speaker 1
Exactly. Exactly.
01:04:46.190 — 01:04:59.520 · Speaker 2
And as someone that’s fostering innovation across the group. Right. That’s that’s part of what you do. How do you do that? Because it’s so easy to say, oh, we must be innovative. but how do you go about doing that?
01:04:59.760 — 01:06:28.060 · Speaker 1
So it’s a big role and it’s something that, um, you really have to, to give people an opportunity to, to fail. And not to say that that’s objective is to create an environment with enough support that if you’ve tried something that doesn’t work out, that you can get the learning from it and move on quickly.
So I think that’s something that’s really important to create an opportunity where people can speak up and put their hand up and say they had a thought, or they had a conversation and almost take her take away the hierarchy that that often exists because good ideas can come from anywhere and just create an environment where you can feel passion.
So a lot of what I do is, um, I run a quite a few different sessions called like around creativity and innovation. And it’s you can sometimes get caught up in like Excel Cells and the boring stuff. It’s going with that. Yeah, and we know that that’s important and it pays the bills. But it’s also such an exciting environment.
It’s all about human behavior. It’s about entertainment. It’s about how people behave and and they think and how they connect. And we have to remember that and get excited about that. So as long as you bring that to the forefront and bring it back to consumer behavior and even sometimes not use the word consumer, but people and like, how do people behave?
And everyone knows that. Yeah.
01:06:28.100 — 01:06:51.180 · Speaker 2
That means and and where does the the ROI on innovation stand. Right. So so say I’ve got a client and I really want them to do something innovative and media or creative something. And they’re looking at you going, but you’re the expert. You’re supposed to guarantee some sort of result. And now you’re asking me to play with my money.
How do we talk to ROI and innovation?
01:06:51.180 — 01:08:19.010 · Speaker 1
So I think it’s really important to look at the data And what we’re trying to do is it’s not an educated guess, like innovation can’t just be like, oh, I’ve got this mad idea. I don’t want to try this. There has to be some sort of hypothesis and theory that you’re proving of a potential outcome, and you hope that you can maybe just control the minimum results.
So yes, it’s sometimes very scary, but I also think it depends where that brand is in its life cycle. Not every brand should be doing innovation all the time. It depends. Like brilliant basics is also very important. And so if and also it depends on the the personality of the brand and what they stand for.
If they’re a brand that just has no appetite for innovation, if you’re going to push it all the time, you’re going to hit a brick wall. But there’s also different levels of innovation. You can sometimes have something that’s hugely impactful and a huge stunt and never been done before, and you tick and completely insane.
And like those, those are those times where you present it and you kind of go, well, I’m either going to be thrown out or I’m going to be promoted. But either way, um, or you can sometimes go sometimes innovation for other brands can just be doing something a little bit different that they haven’t done before.
Maybe for the, like I said, the category or the brand and that’s okay. Like just it doesn’t. It’s an evolution. It’s not a revolution. And it’s it’s and.
01:08:19.010 — 01:08:21.890 · Speaker 2
Sensible, sensible steps. Yes. Innovation.
01:08:21.890 — 01:08:42.010 · Speaker 1
Yes. And hoping for an outcome. Because at the end of the day, if you aren’t going to have a business result that you’re chasing, you’re not going to have a chance to do this again because their company won’t exist and their brand won’t exist. So it is sensible innovation and like proven a hypothesis but based somewhere in data.
01:08:42.050 — 01:08:51.570 · Speaker 2
Yeah. So then it’s grounded in in something real. It’s not just, you know, I had a really good idea last night. Yeah. You know, we’re not we’re not the Mad Men of the past.
01:08:51.610 — 01:08:58.950 · Speaker 1
No. And you need an insight and I think creativity also has to fit within a certain structure and within a brief.
01:08:58.990 — 01:08:59.830 · Speaker 2
That’s real creativity.
01:08:59.870 — 01:09:10.110 · Speaker 1
So that’s real creativity. If you’re not answering the brief, then you’re just maybe spitballing and brainstorming, but you’re not where we’re still in a commercial environment.
01:09:10.150 — 01:09:19.710 · Speaker 2
Yeah. Okay, good. So let’s talk a little bit about the media landscape today. It’s it’s very exciting. It’s a bit of a roller coaster.
01:09:20.150 — 01:09:24.510 · Speaker 1
It’s one way of putting it. It’s a bit it’s insane. And there’s so much.
01:09:24.630 — 01:09:36.910 · Speaker 2
Yeah. So I mean, how much has it changed since you were talking about magazine days to now? Where do you think? Where do you think we are and where do you think we’re going? I mean.
01:09:37.030 — 01:11:50.350 · Speaker 1
So I think it’s also interesting because, you know, every decade there’s big headlines of this. This channel’s dying, it’s about to be dead. And, you know, everything’s going to change. And and it happens all the time. And but if you look in history, Most of the time it’s cyclical. So, you know, you can work out like where the patterns are when you look at it retrospectively.
But in the end of the day, we always are going to have progress. But we have to look at what the human behavior is in terms of the human behavior. No matter what the technology provides, the human behavior is always the same. Are you watching something? Are you listening to something? Are you seeing something or are you doing something?
And I think that framework of those four things you can always put in any other channel, any other medium, there’s always going to be something new and there’s going to be something that happens. Like, I think, you know, if we had had this conversation a couple of years ago and we had spoken about AI and you’d probably would have gone, this person’s insane, like, let’s move on.
But now it’s so, so, so normal. So it always changes. And I think the thing about the media landscape at the moment is because there’s so much choice That, um, that that lens on what’s happening in the media landscape is so important because you can get caught up in novelty. You can get caught up in what’s what’s new, what’s exciting, what’s making the headlines.
But once again, taking a step back and sometimes seeing a little bit boring, maybe. And like looking at the logic of does it actually answer the brief? And is this just something that’s making headlines and it’s maybe going to be popular? Is it going to be a very quick two week chain that’s going to burn out, or does it have longevity?
Is it something that we should be looking at from a long term point of view, and does it speak to our audience? Because you always have to start with who that audience is. And will that audience connect from a human behavior with this, this channel? Um, and sometimes you get it run and sometimes you don’t.
And that’s okay. Yeah, that’s totally fine. Um, but yeah, it’s changed. It changes all the time. And I think we should stay away from fearmongering.
01:11:50.470 — 01:12:12.760 · Speaker 2
I absolutely agree with you. I think we should always be looking at the exciting part of how things are changing. Um, and remember our audience. Uh, because often we get wrapped up in other countries, uh, drama around media or or something. Um, and to that point, I mean, you’re working for a big global group.
Do you have those kind of conversations?
01:12:12.800 — 01:15:40.890 · Speaker 1
No. We do. And that’s what I love about working for FD is because PSG is obviously owned by Omnicom. But I’ll just have a like a random thoughts and I’m like, oh, this is kind of interesting. And I know maybe 1% about it and I’d like to know a little bit more. And all of a sudden I found this, this whole group of people that are almost like mega nerds in terms.
And that’s a good thing. I consider myself a nerd nerd, and I’m happy about that. But that will know everything about it. And I can ask like simple questions and they just know so much about it. So that’s what I’m like. I love and we have that. We have all of that connections and we’ve got that network. We also are, um, something it’s very important to, to PhD, something called Omnium.
And that’s proprietary software. It’s it’s based on like 18 principles and how we kind of like order everything that we do and put it in some sort of like, logical way and make sure that we tick in everything off. Lots of AI agents built in, lots of collaboration, lots of data, all and really important, all in a secure sandbox.
So, you know, making sure that we have our clients, um, safety and, um, personal information like clean and protected at all times. Um, and yeah, it’s a very interesting we do and to your point of like, South Africa is such an interesting place because we’re the most unequal society in the world, the highest Gini coefficient.
And sometimes we say that without realizing what we’re actually saying, but it means that we’re not. Not everyone’s like everyone else. We’re so different. Yess! And we’ve got nuances for South Africa and we can’t always just follow like the big headlines. Like there’ll be a huge headline of TV’s dying.
Yeah. Yes, there has a linear TV in South Africa. In the last two years there’s been a decline 100%. I’m not going to argue with that. Is TV a good place to be? Absolutely. It’s still exceptionally strong in this country. You know, we’re a broadcast media country. TV, radio out of home like, still speaks to majority of our population.
And if we look at local programing, you know, half of 7 to 9:30 on free to air, you can’t really beat those audiences. There’s not many places that any time of the day, you can reach an average of a million people in 15 minutes, like, you know, altogether as an average. And at the same time, it once again comes back to that human behavior.
The human behavior is watching. Video content is growing. We just have more places to watch video content. South Africans have one of the highest percentages. Or I don’t know if we should be proud of this, but we’ve got one of the highest number of hours of screen time per day in the world, so it’s quite scary.
Um, but we we are consuming a lot of video content. So yes, there is a slight decline in linear TV and linear TV, you know, the traditional free to air and, and cable TV. But people are viewing video in lots of different formats like that. We’ve one of the TikTok and that grew in South Africa faster than it’s grown anywhere else in the world.
So that behavior like permeates everywhere. So yeah, I think we can’t get caught up and we once again need to look at the data and and not just use ourselves as the litmus test.
01:15:40.930 — 01:16:10.830 · Speaker 2
That’s true. I mean, I’ll often get asked this question about, well, we don’t want to be on TV. TV’s dying. I mean, Well, look at where your audience is. First of all, there’s a lot of boardroom execs. Don’t watch CBC, but that doesn’t mean they’re their customers not watching the CBC. I mean, it sounds very basic to say, but we’re still dealing with that out there in the market.
Um, but the other point is good luck getting a million viewers to watch at one point in time on a digital channel.
01:16:10.870 — 01:16:11.750 · Speaker 1
Exactly.
01:16:11.990 — 01:16:15.110 · Speaker 2
Um, as easy as TV does it.
01:16:15.350 — 01:17:30.410 · Speaker 1
And sometimes it is cost effectively. Because TV is not necessarily a cheap bar. You need sufficiency budgets to go on TV. And if you don’t have enough money, I would say maybe do something else. But if you do have that, that enough money in terms of that figure of sufficiency, it actually becomes a very cost efficient, even CPM by when you compare it to digital.
So, um, and it’s weird because sometimes you look at the content and you look at yourself and you’re like, this content is so weird. Like, why is anyone watching it? but it doesn’t matter because there are people watching it. There’s people that love it. There’s people that are given their attention. And so it’s not only volume and reach in that which leads to awareness, but you’ve also got attention that’s leading to impact.
And then you’ve got frequency because people are doing it so often. So like you’ve really got this perfect trifecta and this beautiful environment. And like I said, it’s not the answer to everything, but it cannot be ignored. And it’s really a strong medium in South Africa. We love telling stories, South African love stories.
We’re very emotional and an audio visual allows that. So TV is still very strong and I think will continue for a long time.
01:17:30.450 — 01:17:45.129 · Speaker 2
But also, I mean, maybe you won’t agree, but look at the example of traitors in the UK. I mean, the UK was also seeing decline in audience. All of a sudden a show comes along that flips it on its head and gets multi generation
01:17:46.740 — 01:17:51.540 · Speaker 2
Appointment viewing back up exactly. Just in a month.
01:17:51.620 — 01:18:31.300 · Speaker 1
And people, it’s just the right type of content. It’s even very interesting to look at the most popular shows on Netflix and insight from a South-African audience point of view, and we would just assume that, oh, it’s definitely the big international titles. It’s not the most watched content on Netflix in South Africa is local content, yes.
So, you know, if people want to resonate, they want to watch things that resonate with them and that they feel comfortable with and like exactly that. It’s about the content. It’s about that experience. It’s about the connection. It’s about watching something that you just enjoy. And and there’s nothing wrong with that.
01:18:31.620 — 01:18:48.000 · Speaker 2
Not at all. And I’m going to segue a little bit. What do you think about brands now creating their own content and things like this, like podcasts that’s being now adopted into mainstream media and how everything’s kind of shifting around content in that respect.
01:18:48.040 — 01:20:36.500 · Speaker 1
Well, I think content is like content. It’s always been king and it will continue to be so. And I think as long as it’s part of the journey and it’s delivering value, and there’s a very fine line between are you disrupting or are you part of the part of the journey? So, you know, we always want to stand out and we want to be remembered as brand.
So how can if it makes sense, then do it, you know. And I think there is always a, an entry point in terms of what branded content can be done. And um, but it’s there’s no set formula. And I think it all depends in terms of the last cycle, the attitude and like the, the attitude and the appetite for doing things differently, for being bold, for taking risks.
Um, but yeah, I think it’s a its earned content is one of the best, and word of mouth is one of the best forms of advertising. So if you can get that through owned content and branded content that really resonates and speaks to and can live on and doesn’t have a media cost associated to it, and maybe even you can flip it on its head and like your providers are paying you to, to have that.
That would be like, amazing, right? So, um, and maybe I shouldn’t say that as, like a paid media person, but that’s the end of the day. We, we, we want to have content that, um, that is part of entertainment, whatever that entertainment means. And it doesn’t always have to be positive. Yeah. Like it’s not everything has to be happy and it’s okay.
Like if you look at that, the the content that does really well, like a lot of our local content is actually quite violent and deals with real issues, but it still has audiences and eyeballs.
01:20:36.500 — 01:21:12.790 · Speaker 2
But reflection of our society as well and allows people to process things, you know, and I think that’s from a filmmaker point of view, I’ve put that hat on. That’s why we love doing it, is exploring that human condition and that’s why it won’t change. Like you said, audiences will always want to discover stories.
They always want to see themselves and stories. They want to relate. They want to be part of something. So if brands understand that and like I said, don’t disrupt that, but embody it somehow and can get, I don’t know, association with that, then then we’re winning.
01:21:12.830 — 01:21:24.430 · Speaker 1
And add extra value to the experience because people are looking for connection and looking for experiences. And if you can enhance that and just make it better, you’re going to be embraced and remembered.
01:21:24.630 — 01:21:41.270 · Speaker 2
What does it look like in the future? Like you mentioned AI a little bit earlier. And you know, I’ve worked with media planners. I’m not a media planner, but I’ve worked with some very clever people and how they optimize things and how they show the wastage and how they do this. But can’t AI do all of that today?
01:21:41.830 — 01:22:14.650 · Speaker 1
Okay. So it’s a very interesting question around AI. And I think it’s really important to embrace AI. We, um, PhD really believes in the power of thinking, and what AI allows us to do is open up some more time for thinking. So there are certain jobs and there are certain key competencies that AI is always going to do better than a human.
It really depends on what we put in. So the prompts are really important. You know the old adage, which I won’t repeat now but yeah, garbage in, garbage out. But okay, there we go. But um,
01:22:15.690 — 01:22:48.749 · Speaker 1
yeah, definitely. You use AI. It doesn’t mean that like, your job is going to be, um, taken over. The thing with AI is often you can look at something that AR produces, and if you don’t know enough and you’ve got just a surface level understanding, it looks fantastic. It’s written well, it makes a beautiful story.
It sounds fantastic, which is all good and well. But then when it comes to the execution, it’s actually not possible often. AI is only as strong as its input. So that’s why the real inputs are so important. And
01:22:49.830 — 01:23:30.870 · Speaker 1
that’s why I like using, like I said, our AI systems in Omni because we know it has real inputs. It’s got like proper studies involved, proper marketing science involved, um, all the case studies. It’s real because often sometimes it’ll just talk about something that does not exist and cannot exist. Now, the worst thing is if you’ve sold that onto your clients and now you have to execute and those things don’t exist, what are you going to do?
So I think there’s always a role for AI to play. And I do believe that when people say AI is not going to take your job, but the person using AI will take your job, and I think that’s the best approach to it. Yeah.
01:23:30.910 — 01:23:32.630 · Speaker 2
So learn to use the new tool.
01:23:32.670 — 01:23:33.350 · Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:23:33.430 — 01:23:41.680 · Speaker 2
Um, so that you can do your job better. Exactly. Um, I like that. Yeah. So it’s it’s not a threat to anybody. Really?
01:23:41.760 — 01:24:19.840 · Speaker 1
Yeah. Now it’s interesting because if you look at different industries that are going to be affected by AR. Marketing is one of the most affected. I think there’s a stat of about 65% of marketing and tasks can be done by AR. But that’s kind of exciting because imagine opening up 65% of your diary. Like that sounds like a pretty much like a dream to me.
It doesn’t mean that it just makes you puts you in a position to get to territories quicker and to kind of move past the fluff and really do the deep thinking work and the deep human connection work, which is what it’s all about.
01:24:19.880 — 01:24:30.840 · Speaker 2
Yeah. Amazing. And if you’re a young person and you’re watching Bianca on this podcast, you’re going, how do I become her one day? Where would you tell that person to start?
01:24:31.000 — 01:25:25.460 · Speaker 1
I think the most important quality is if in that media strategy is if you’re curious, if you want to know how things work, if you like to look at things. If you like to. To dig. If you like to read. If you like to experience real. Human experiences. I think it’s very hard to to do a role like this, which in the end of the day, connects people.
If you remove yourself from human experience and it’s very difficult to do this role just or in this industry to we’re in a very social industry and it’s very difficult to do this if you’re just behind a spreadsheet and you just about the theory, you actually have to be out there. You have to ask the questions, you have to put your hand up, you have to try things.
You have to make yourself a little bit scared to do things that you don’t know how to do. And, and just yeah, like I think curiosity is the most important thing.
01:25:25.500 — 01:25:27.900 · Speaker 2
And find where that data meets the real world.
01:25:27.940 — 01:25:28.660 · Speaker 1
Exactly.
01:25:28.700 — 01:25:36.100 · Speaker 2
You know. Yeah. If you’re not sure what the marketing space you’re working in looks like, but you know all the stats about it, go walk it.
01:25:36.140 — 01:26:07.120 · Speaker 1
Exactly. You can you get a feeling about something And especially in a country like ours, like we discussed earlier, is most of the time. You will not be the target audience. It’s most of the time. So go and speak to the target audience. Ask them what matters and don’t assume and and be open to being wrong.
Yeah. And yeah, just like looking and seeing and and always putting your hand up. Always, always putting your hand up. I think is the best way.
01:26:07.520 — 01:26:11.200 · Speaker 2
I’m going to go backtrack a little bit now to Bianca.
01:26:12.440 — 01:26:23.680 · Speaker 2
What is a media agency PhD. One of the top ones in the world. Omnicom. All these big names, lots of shareholders, lots of. But in essence, what are you doing?
01:26:23.800 — 01:29:10.890 · Speaker 1
Okay, so I think the best way to describe it is we look at connecting audiences with brands. And we do that through paid space, either in space or time. So what that actually means. It’s an ad unit. So if it’s on TV, we’re making sure that that 32nd TV ad that you’re seeing in between your favorite programing shows up in front of your eyeballs, because we’ve decided that’s where it needs to happen.
So that’s the in product. Similarly on radio and billboards, anything on digital? Um, anything on influencer on e-commerce. So it is quite intensive. It’s not just the securing of the space, because the security of the space is the actual purchasing, and that’s the media buying. There’s a couple of steps before that.
So the first step is the media strategy. So that’s really looking at okay so what is the problem to solve and how can we solve it. So something like we’re a number two brand. How do we become a number one brand. Can we become a number one brand or can we just do better as a number two brand. And where that’s the media strategy and it’s looking at how do we grow?
So FD is obsessed with growth and we’re obsessed with growth of our clients. But the media strategy is all about that, that growth. I’ve never answered maybe, maybe an Eskom brief, which I’ve never received. Um, I’ve never seen a brief that says we want to sell this or we want less sales. You know, it’d be like maybe Joburg Water at the moment, but it’s a it’s a touchy subject.
Um, different. But um, so that’s the media strategy then the media plan. So the media strategy also will say, okay, well the best way to connect with this audience is this way. So it’s either this channel through speaking to this audience like this. So it’ll be TV ads that are long and storytelling. Then their actual media plan is all the details.
So they it’ll have every single spot that you’re on TV or every single ad units. Are we doing stories on Instagram? Um, how long are they going to be? How many of them? What is the content plan look like to be so like all the the details comes in the plan and then the media buying is the actual purchase and the procurement.
Yeah. Of making sure that it happens. And then obviously it has a loop of of reporting and PhD. We’ve got like almost another loop because we’ve got a very strong digital team and we’ve always had that for many years. So a lot of we we have specialists and we have campaign manager managers that make sure that the actual digital campaigns happen.
So they physically work in platform and are making everything happen. But the big definition between media agencies and creative agencies, creative agencies come up with the creative. So it’s what it looks like and the finished product. We put it in front of people so that they can connect with it.
01:29:10.890 — 01:29:19.450 · Speaker 2
Good. That’s really good. A really good description of what you guys do and you yourself in that organization. What what is your day job?
01:29:19.490 — 01:31:57.460 · Speaker 1
My day job is very much as I run as a strategist and a buddy, which is a business unit director. So I work across multiple clients. And so that’s one part of my job. So that is making sure that the full team that works at FD, from strategists to planners to to to buy all of our buy in actually. What’s great about PhD is because we’re part of Omnicom.
We focus on strategy and planning, and we almost like a boutique agency at scale. And then all of our buying is actually done by our sister agency, OMD and Omnicom. They are like a floor below us. So I make sure that the strategy, the planners, the the full teams know exactly like which direction we’re, we’re moving in and what the attract and cover the actual brief, which is much more difficult than you would assume.
I have a lot of contact with the key clients and like CMOs and key clients that making sure that they are happy because like I say, at the end of the day, we are there to service our clients. And they they’re our clients and I don’t it’s it’s not always, but at FDD. If you’re a strategist, you most likely also a client lead in South Africa, in South Africa.
I’ll just say that it’s not like pure classical. Like I just write strategy and I’ll see you when we do the the post campaign analysis. And I’ll just listen to that. You’re kind of involved in the whole way. Um, also very involved in media owner relationships because we can’t actually do anything with art media owners.
So media owners are people that like, own the TV stations or radio stations or digital platforms or whatever the case may be. So a lot of my day to day job is is doing that in terms of the client side. And then, um, I look at trying to chase excellence, not perfection, but excellence. And I think there is a difference in terms of best practice, um, across PhD.
So a lot of my time is spent like reviewing documents and reviewing approaches, having chats about like how it’s going to be done with that? Senior strategist. Um, and making sure that we’re on the right path before we do a lot of work that might be completely wrong. So that’s what a lot of my day to day job is.
But I really like I think I said it right at the beginning, but I really do love my job. And I feel like so privileged to work in this industry because we get exposed to so much.
01:31:57.540 — 01:31:58.500 · Speaker 2
Yeah. And learn so.
01:31:58.540 — 01:31:58.820 · Speaker 1
Much.
01:31:58.900 — 01:32:00.180 · Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, all the time.
01:32:00.220 — 01:32:00.740 · Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:32:01.060 — 01:32:02.100 · Speaker 2
It’s incredible.
01:32:02.460 — 01:32:49.080 · Speaker 1
And what’s great about the industry that I work in is you can have lots of conversations because you know, a lot about lots, a little bit about lots of things almost. Um, so you know, you’re not necessarily you’ll never know like an industry as well as your client will. Of course not. But you’ll know enough to actually have a robust conversation and understand how that ecosystem works.
And those like those learnings are like, almost like priceless, because you get to be in those rooms of multiple clients at the same time, obviously not conflicting clients? Obviously not. But you almost have multiple jobs at the same time, and you can sometimes feel a little bit schizophrenic because you jump around from different categories.
But there’s learning all the time. And that’s what I love about it. Like, I’m a very curious person.
01:32:49.920 — 01:32:56.200 · Speaker 2
Okay, great. And with that curiosity, you mentor people, I’m assuming now?
01:32:56.240 — 01:32:56.480 · Speaker 1
Yes.
01:32:56.480 — 01:33:19.520 · Speaker 2
Yeah. Um, in your business. And what is that like? How do you how do you balance this, um, mentorship, agency life, crazy media, you know? I know it’s changed since the 90s, but it still feels like that sometimes. Yeah. And work life balance. Yeah. And new generations with different values. What is that like?
01:33:19.600 — 01:36:16.170 · Speaker 1
So there’s quite a few questions in that question, but that’s okay. So I’m going to just start with that I think. Well I know that PhD has always and still does value. Like we know that the most important asset to to PhD is our staff. So in terms of that mental health, it’s always been a very big discussion. And it’s something that we really do do.
So in terms of flexibility of of working in and out of the office, of having health checks, wellness checks, check ins, it really is all in place. And we’ve been doing that for for many, many years. And because we know it’s really important and we take it seriously, that’s it. We’re also there to do a job. So my approach is communication.
So you can’t have someone who comes every single day. And there are people like that that have an issue. I sometimes I’m very jealous of much younger generations that have incredible boundaries that I probably don’t have, but it’s kind of a a give and take and a bit of luck, a juggle. So you kind of need to be very intentional about your planning and about what you want to get out from your job.
and what are the tasks and what are the outputs, and how are you going to get to that? It’s totally fine to say today it’s just not happening and I’m going to do something else. And I can’t really do deep thinking right now, and that’s okay. And having that self-awareness. But you have to have that, that balance.
At the end of the day, you still need to output and produce something and also put your hand up if you’re like saying, you know, I’m not coping. And at the same time, you know, life happens and health and family always comes first. It really does. But you have to make those decisions like you can’t, you can’t be 100% everywhere all the time.
So that’s why the planning is so important. Um, and then for the mentorship, you know, like so I do mentorship formally, informally at work almost every single day. And one of the greatest joys I have is when I finally see that moment and I’m like, oh my gosh, this is incredible. Like, it just clicks and I get so much joy from seeing that, and I absolutely love that.
So I and I’ll always share knowledge like I don’t believe in. You can ask me anything. I’ll ask. I’ll say things like steal with pride. I’m like, you want my dick. You want to take things. You want to take the principles. That all means we all get together. We’re not a collective of freelancers. We work at an agency that should all be chasing excellence.
So I completely believe in that. And then, even in the last couple of months, I’ve been involved in an industry wide mentorship program called Her Collective, and that has been run by Kirsty Coulson. And what’s been amazing is she matched up 20 women mentors with 20 mentees.
01:36:17.250 — 01:38:41.780 · Speaker 1
And so it’s a like, I’ve actually feel like I’ve got. So I’m mentoring someone at the moment, um, that doesn’t work at PhD but works in the industry. And I feel that I’ve actually gained as much as she has from being a mentor as she has from a mentee. We have really robust conversations, like honest conversations and and once again, look at like what the human truth is like, what is it that we, we’re battling with?
There’s a lovely program in terms of a guideline of what to do and what to speak about. And it’s not a huge investment arm, but it makes such a difference. It’s like it’s two hours every month, which is not like a ridiculous, you know, you can you can fit it in and it’s doable and it’s split up into that, you know, the two single hours and you can decide if you want to do it face to face or online.
And we do what we try and do face to face if we can. Um, but it’s I just feel it’s so important to like, give back because I’ve gained so much from this industry. And we do have a knowledge gap, and we do have a skills gap. We have a lot of very senior people, and we have a lot of very junior people, and we don’t have much in the middle, unfortunately.
And it’s not just a it’s an industry wide issue. Um, and what often happens is like FD is obsessed with growth and obsessed with training people. And we get completely green juniors and we train them up for a year or two, and then they’re poached by clients or their brands. So but you know what? At the same time, we’re like, we’re so happy when there’s that growth.
Like we’ve had receptionists that have literally started from like one of our receptionists used to work in a sushi restaurant before, and one of our planners was like, you know, I keep on going to this sushi restaurant that’s up the road and there’s this great person there. And I just think she’s got so much more than being like a waitress at a sushi restaurant.
And and then there was an opportunity for her to become the receptionist. And then from that, she became a campaign administrator. And then she became a planner, and then she became account manager. And then she actually left to go to another agency. And we had that moment where we were so happy, but so, so sad at the same time.
I think maybe it must be like I’m not there yet. My kids are, but younger. But I think it must be that moment when your kids leave home where you’re just so proud because she’s done so well and that’s what we’re about. And we want to do more and more of that.
01:38:41.820 — 01:38:54.700 · Speaker 2
And isn’t that just also so part of our industry, where again, you’re curious and you’re spotting people? And that background she has from working in the sushi restaurant will probably serve her in her career forever.
01:38:55.060 — 01:38:55.740 · Speaker 1
Exactly.
01:38:55.780 — 01:38:57.900 · Speaker 2
You know, so exactly. That’s such a great story.
01:38:57.940 — 01:38:58.340 · Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:38:58.420 — 01:38:58.700 · Speaker 2
So.
01:38:59.380 — 01:39:07.380 · Speaker 1
Yeah. And our pleasure. We’ve actually had quite a few, like, we almost look at, like what we’ve done with a couple of receptionists like, and how they’ve grown. It’s been fantastic.
01:39:07.460 — 01:39:08.900 · Speaker 2
It sounds like a documentary.
01:39:08.940 — 01:39:12.620 · Speaker 1
It could be, it could be. May we know who to speak to.
01:39:13.180 — 01:39:23.500 · Speaker 2
So a little bit in closing, if you could tell all the brand managers and marketers and CFOs watching to stop doing one thing tomorrow, what would that be?
01:39:24.180 — 01:39:26.500 · Speaker 1
Stop using yourself as a sample group.
01:39:26.620 — 01:39:27.060 · Speaker 2
Oh.
01:39:28.750 — 01:40:07.110 · Speaker 1
So you know, because otherwise you’ll never be. Most of the time when we’re sitting around a boardroom table and we sit around a marketing table and we’re very privileged. We’re not the target audience. We’re a stressful time. We we’re not we’re not the audience that we’re speaking to. For majority of mass market FMcG brands are no different.
If we sell any electric carts and yes, then maybe we’re their audience. But, um, yeah, I’d say stop using yourself as a sample group of one. Look at the data, interrogate the data, and, um, yeah, just get better outcomes.
01:40:07.270 — 01:40:10.510 · Speaker 2
Yeah. Great. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us.
01:40:10.510 — 01:40:10.790 · Speaker 1
Thank you.
01:40:10.790 — 01:40:14.470 · Speaker 2
So much. Fantastic chats. And yeah, we’ll see you again hopefully.
01:40:14.510 — 01:40:17.750 · Speaker 1
I hope so. I really enjoyed my time. So thank you for your time. Thank you.
01:40:17.790 — 01:40:22.550 · Speaker 2
And if you guys have any questions drop it in the comments below and we’ll try to catch you.
