Brenton Craig, Design System Lead at Domino’s shares his learnings when it comes to approaching a brand refresh. An awesome watch/listen for any marketers tasked with undertaking a brand project. 

Within 15mins, Brenton takes us through five clear and easy to adopt design principles, what to watch out for, and finally how mastery is actually making the process ongoing.  

Bonus resources from Brenton: 

1. If you’re interested in Flags (Watch): Why city flags may be the worst-designed thing you’ve never noticed — Roman Mars 99% Invisible.

2. More relevant to SaaS (Read): Building Minimum Viable Brand for Startups.

3. If you want to keep up on recent Brand Identities (Follow): @thebrandidentity. 4. If you need to get through a full day brand identity workshop with your team (Drink): non.world

Thank you, Brenton! 🤩

AT: Hi team. Welcome to another episode of Munch and Learn. At some point in your career as a Marketer, there’s a strong chance you’ll get dragged into a brand conversation. So how do you handle yourself, better yet, how do you handle your team? The secret is bringing together opinions and preferences to ensure you create something that’s cohesive, purposeful, and stress-free.

AT: Today, I am joined by Brenton Queen, Design Lead at Domino’s. And before moving into Product Design, Brenton spent a chunk of his career, helping teams and businesses create compelling and memorable brand identities. I’ve personally observed Brenton, not only turn a disastrous brand into something incredible, though, with Jedi like skills, bring teams together around a concept or direction. These are real skills. 

AT: So without any further delay, let’s dive into, today’s mentioned, learn how to tackle a brand refresh. Brenton, welcome to the show. Cool. It’s awesome to be here and thanks for having me. So Brenton, we’re going to dive into the principles to keep in mind what goes wrong and mastery.

AT: Are you ready to do Munch & Learn? 

BQ: Yeah, cool. Hard and fast. Let’s hit it. 

AT: First one was principles to keep in mind when tackling a brand refresh. 

BQ: So I felt like the first thing to consider was that not everybody involved in the process is going to necessarily be a designer, right? And so there’s many ways you can approach and there’s many perspectives that can be had in the room.

And so this principles in mind moment, I felt like let’s just think of something that everyone can relate to and have a set of / kind of principles you can audit against that. Feel like they don’t touch anyone’s realm too closely and too personally in a way so that everyone can kind of look at this in a sense.

So looking at the five principles of flag design, which seems super random, right? But if you think about it, flags are literally the logos of countries. It’s like countries are the ultimate organisation. And they’re these tiny three by five rectangles that represent so many values or, or so, so much culture and heritage and people rally around flags. That’s the power of them but they’re also, I guess, can cause conflict too. So they’re really powerful symbols. So yeah, lots of draw from the principles of flag designs. Remembering these are discussion points. So again, not everyone’s a designer, not everyone’s a brand identity expert in the room. And so these are ways that people can start discussing really simple principles. How’s our brand performing against them? 

AT: Yeah, that’s great. It just gives you somewhat of a framework and structure that teams can sort of base everything upon? 

BQ: Yeah, totally. So to dive into them, the first principle of good flag design is to keep it simple.

So the flag should be so simple that a child can draw it from memory. Which is an interesting challenge, you know, could, could a child draw your logo? Which is a cool thing to have a crack at, maybe bring the kids in and get them drawing. But the thing to think about there is like, is our mark that’s being used or the device that gets used to represent us similar enough that it can be an app icon or a favicon that sits on a website. You know, it’s a real utility moment of like, can our Logomark be simplified? And that really helps with communication and really helps with comprehension as well when people engage with, you know, I guess the hero of an identity system, is the mark so to speak.

So keep it simple. It’s the first one that we can draw from, which is ultimate simplicity. And how can we move toward it or and that pressure test is really the app icon these days. Even if you don’t have an app as a business, it’s just a good pressure test for simplicity’s sake. 

AT: Okay, cool. That makes sense. 

BQ: The next one is to use meaningful symbolism. So the flag’s image, colours or patterns should relate to what it symbolises. Which makes a lot of sense from a brand perspective and a brand identity perspective when you’re utilising graphic elements or when you’re utilising different components or elements within your brand, do they have meaning or is it just purely trend-based or is it purely aesthetic based or is it just, you know, someone in the room that has an overpowering voice gets something in, right? 

So you can really start to question the devices or graphics or ways, or even tone of voice that you’re using. Is it meaningful and does it connect back to a value system? And so that’s a really good one to test. You know, just simply ask that question, but what does that mean? Visually what does it represent? That can be a really good way of getting some subtle communication into all of the various elements of a brand. 

AT: I love this because it can sound like you’re challenging that person by asking what, what does that mean? It can also unlock really what they’re thinking or what they’re trying to communicate obviously, but it does seem like a very healthy anchor to ask stakeholders? 

BQ: Look, they may not necessarily know initially. And so the question, cause it might be an intuitive thing or it might’ve been a reactive thing. And so that could have all been subconscious, some of the meaning that’s occurring. And so when you ask the question, you draw it out. Yeah. So that’s really good and the third principle for good design is, you know, it’s pretty obvious to use two to three basic colors otherwise it’s going to get too overwhelming as a flag which is not to say that a brand should only use two or three basic colors. It’s more, what does that really saying that?

And the thing that to keep in mind is do you have a clear system or a utility-based library of resources? That can aid in content creation. So looking at that principle, three, three basic colors, that’s, that’s a system, right? That’s something that allows you to draw from and utilise when you do start to create content. So when you do start to put out there in the world as a brand. And so that system allows you to maintain consistency across all those different media touchpoints and comms touch points. So that’s a really interesting one to draw from two or three colors. Yeah, that doesn’t work for a brand. No, it’s the principle of a system in place.

AT: I love that. That gives back, right? It may seem initially like you’re giving up or you’re sacrificing, but having that simplicity around your systems actually makes future decisions a lot easier and guides a lot of decisions I imagine? 

BQ: Yeah, well, guide is the word because it can feel restrictive, but it’s really the river banks, right. That allow the river to flow and you have to think of it like that. A system is, is guide rails or river banks that allow momentum and progress, not, not restrict it. If that makes sense as a metaphor. 

AT: Yeah, I like it. Awesome. 

BQ: The next one is no lettering or seals. So you should never use wording on a flag as a bit of a principle.

It can over-complicate it. It has to fly in the wind, obviously. So a word can kind of get you know, jangle up a little bit there, so that makes sense for flag, but what does that mean from a, from a brand perspective? I think in clarity is the real thing when it comes to what’s, what’s the underlying meaning of that there.

Often it’s not what you put in, but what you take out of a composition, a layout or a way of doing things. And that clarity can sometimes be the difference between effectiveness and noise in a way. And so looking at all of your touch points and understanding, okay, let’s dissect it and break them down and try and remove the superfluous and arrive at a place of calm and clarity in each of those different touchpoints and again can be a layout that can be even the typographic system that you’re using, the fonts that you’re using, the color palette that you’re using. That principle can be applied to a lot of those different areas. The principle is to avoid duplicating other flags. It’s like don’t copy, but use similarities, right.

To show connections. So if you think of all of Scandinavia, their flags are identical apart from color variations, which is intentional, and there’s a good system of identification going on there. But I think the real question is or the real kind of value there is context, right? Like, often people feel, or brands feel the need to be super unique or inventive or smash the wheel, right? But it’s about understanding the context of who your audience is and what you’re selling. Do you need to even be unique? Maybe what the consumer really wants is familiarity, or to get them engaging they kind of need to have quick comprehension and so anything that’s too distinct or too inventive doesn’t work with them. So that was really about the context and just remembering, okay, okay, okay. When we’re talking about our brand identity and the system that surrounds it. How does that relate to our consumer, to our audience or to people that regularly engage with our brand and think about that context and that can really help either simplify or help you inject a meaning or just determine how all these components should come together when communicating to your audience.

AT: Yeah, this is great. And as you say, these five principles are very much guiding principles and play with each other. So listening to what you’re saying there often I can imagine people would bring you some inspiration and they would say, Hey, we really liked this. But then from experience, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this is that you then have to guide them to sort of create their own distinction against that. But, then not also go too far the other way, which is pioneering and trying to create something, as you say, that’s unique for the sake of being unique, it’s sort of like finding. You know, some way that plays something that’s familiar. Yeah. But not yet. 

BQ: And they can anchor it back to each other as well. Like you might get this really. Something gets put forward and then you, you question it and you know, it might bring out value. It might bring up meaning. And so that could lead to other discoveries or other ways of doing things, but it could also help you drawing back on something like, how do we systemise this? Or, or how do we simplify this? Or how do we get better clarity when using this? And those things can really help evolve into the right thing. If it is the wrong thing or be ruled out because collectively you’ve assessed it. Yeah. That, that they can sort of aid in that sense. Okay. This is great.

AT: I always love something that’s guiding. These principles I think are very much guiding, though I’m sure there are unfortunately occasions when things go wrong. What are the ugly bits? 

BQ: Yeah, I was thinking about this and I’ve got some. Experience that I can draw from because of myself, I feel like in many situations it’s ego that makes a project go awry.

And so that’s why these guiding principles first of all, that the separate from an typical fields that you would work within in a room. Right? And so no one feels like, you know, their skillset is being. Discredited or attacked or whatever, when someone starts to ask questions around these principles it’s just about looking at what’s the.

What do we think the pinnacle of a brand identity system is, and, and, you know, maybe that’s flags and lets draw out the principles and see how we stack up against them. And so you’re not jarring with anyone you know, or their skills or, or the personality that they’re bringing and designers in particular can get really close to things, right.

Because they deep dive, they get invested in building something meaningful and important.

AT: So with those egos come preference and opinion things that are often subjective. So yeah. What, what have you found work or helps with that situation? 

BQ: Well, look, you’re dealing with humans. Hey, so you have to remember that they have a lens that they’re looking at this through, or they have a perspective that they’re looking at this through. And as soon as you genuinely try and engage with that, people feel understood and they’re not defensive. And you know, that’s a much more conducive environment for collaboration. And so I feel like, yeah, you’ve got to pivot. And not be on the attack with the defense yourself and really just try and be curious and understand what it is that you’re trying to say or that you’re trying to achieve through this particular thing that you really, really love.

Like, why is it, why does everything need to be purple? And then you can start to get bitter about those sorts of things when they come in and you can’t avoid them. But if you approach it from that perspective, I feel like humans open up in that way. 

AT: And the principles, right? Keep reconciling with the principles?

Last question was, what are your tips? I know you’ve got something great to share with this, cause I’ve, I’ve seen this in play, but yeah, we did this at focus, so yeah, What’s your recommendation of mastering a brand refresh? 

BQ: Well, I feel like there’s so many contexts and so many ways of going about something, but remembering that there literally is no mastery and there is no perfection and it’s the iteration and journey toward mastery that is in a sense, mastery, you know, so it was where you’re at and what you’re able to achieve and what, what you’ve done that is the path to mastery. And it’s a bit of a lens shift that doesn’t know apex or pinnacle, or like 100% perfection when it comes to a refresh or a brand system or evaluating how your brand visuals come together.

It’s not about that. It’s about that journey of iteration because markets change. audiences change, dynamics change and brands can’t be static and locked in perfection. It’s not a thing like that and so they’ve got to be evolving and moving with that.

AT: I love that so you can say, I think the word that you’ve explained, the other label that you use is it. Like a playground that you sort of try and create?

BQ: Often it’s just like, that’s the, you know, the, the area that you can begin to explore without limitations, where a project, at some point doesn’t need to start getting limited if there’s deadlines and there’s things that need to stop being achieved. But, that initial playground allows for freedom of thought and freedom of expression.

And that’s what you discover, right? And you get to creative solutions. And then ultimately the challenge is to wrangle all that. Into, yeah, a system and a process of execution. 

AT: Yeah, awesome! Well, Brenton I’m sure if folks want to join the Focus Group Slack Community, or come along to one of the Meetups, they can obviously pick your brain further on this topic. I know it’s something you enjoy chatting about and have so much knowledge to share. So thank you for your time today and joining us on Munch & Learn.

BQ: No, man – my pleasure. It’s been awesome! 

AT: And hopefully we can team up sooner and another topic design-related but cheers again, Brenton and thanks to everyone for tuning in.

AT: Welcome to another episode of Munch & Learn.

When you work in marketing, it doesn't take long to realise that being able to maximise a conversion rate is of high importance. Minimising waste and maximising opportunities is the name of the game to ensure all that hard-earned traffic is converted into sales.

Today, I'm joined by Rishi Rawat and we take a closer look at how e-commerce teams can improve their conversion rate by 20% in 90 days. Rishi and his team at Frictionless Commerce, specialise in radically improving product page conversion rates, and achieve this by supercharging a product story using buyer psychology copywriting.

AT: The most valuable thing Rishi owns is a reprint of an 1897 Sears Catalogue. For those hungry for knowledge, Rishi also has a weekly conversion secrets newsletter, which you can find in the show notes. He's also quite active on LinkedIn, where Rishi is consistently sharing quick examples that you can easily implement on your side. This I can 100% confirm as it's where I came across Rishi and felt compelled to invite on to the show to share his expertise. 

AT: Rishi, welcome to the show. 

RR: Andy. Great to be here. Thanks for that. 

AT: No worries. Okay, so Rishi, it's 15 minutes of fast paced learning for our audience where we'll go through: 

1. How teams can identify they have an issue. 

2. What planning steps are required, and finally 

3. What to keep in mind to ensure you achieve the outcome. 

Are you ready to Munch & Learn? 

RR: I am. 

AT: Great, let's kick off with:

How teams can identify they have an issue. 

R: From my perspective, I am looking at singularly the product page. That's the scope that I'm focused on. So the way we identify if a product page has an issue, or which of your product pages have an issue. The way you do that is you look at your analytics data and you are looking at a very specific metric, which is called the look to book ratio. Meaning how many people came to this product page? And then how many units of this item did we actually sell? 

So you're not looking at the overall conversion rates, but you're looking at the very specific conversion rates of people that bought a specific product on a product page. That reveals to you, which of your product pages if you have 10 of them, for example, are doing a good job with the follow-through and getting the users to convert, and which ones are actually struggling. That's one area that you can focus on. The other thing you're paying attention to is what is the visibility of those product pages. Often times what happens is Brands and Marketers assume that we have 10 products, therefore they're all equally visible, but what you find in analytics data is that you might have a product that's driving 30% of overall sales, but is seen by only 22% of users, but if it's driving 30% of overall sales? I want at least 30% of my users to see it, and by doing this type of analysis, you're able to really see what's going on and which product page in particular has the biggest opportunity. 

AT: I love the laser focus. I have to admit when I reached out to you on LinkedIn and we talked about doing this, you said, well, I only talk about one topic and that's just improving the conversion rate on product pages. So I can see that comes through in how you identify insights as well, because you're so clear in mind in what you're trying to achieve. So is that that's I guess what you recommended teams as well, just to stay very focused on what they're trying to move? 

RR: That's exactly right. 

AT: Because it can get overwhelming, right? When you work in marketing and you're juggling a lot of things. You sometimes are wearing many hats and having that ability to really dial it in is isn't easy. 

RR: I think this is one of the key things that I would just try to underscore again, is that there are 10,000 things that a Marketer can do that the marketing stack is overwhelming. I think we need to move away from efficiency and focus in on efficacy. Really ask yourself which two or three items if I would improve by 20% would have the biggest impact overall and just zero in on those things. I once worked for a client on just one page for two and a half years, and it drove them crazy because they were like, ‘listen, we are a $400 million business we have so many opportunities’. And I told them, I said, well, this page drives 30% of your overall revenue. So I want to continue focusing on this page. And, you know, it's really important to kind of have that laser focus and to just stick to it and not get distracted by all the shiny objects in the marketing universe.

AT: That's amazing – two and a half years. Can I ask how many tests you ran in that period? 

RR: We ran at least 50 statistically valid AB test. 

AT: Okay, so I think we've covered how teams could identify that they're potentially suffering from this let's move into the next section. 

What planning steps are required? 

RR: When it comes to AB testing then obviously one of the limiting factors for us is statistical significance. And so we can only run an A/B test on a page where there is relatively high transaction velocity. If there isn't, then you can't run a meaningful A/B test. In that case, you would have to shift your focus on qualitative analysis and qualitative solutions, not quantitative solutions. But I think the place to start is to identify pages or identify parts of your funnel, where there is enough quantitative data so you can actually run a statistical A/B test. So kind of look through your funnel to see where the transaction, where the trends, what is influencing transactions, and also pay attention to parts of the funnel where people are exiting.

If people are exiting at a point, what it really signals to us as Marketers is that we made a promise to them, which brought them to the page. We showed them some message, but it didn't resonate with them, which is why they exited. So we want to stop that leakage. 

AT: It kind of touches back on identifying if you're also a good fit, right? So you need to have enough traffic to get stat. sig. and so I love it you're often balancing the qualitative and quantitative, so I'm assuming product pages you come across are most times qualifying? 

RR: So that's the thing I mean, in our case, we have a threshold that the product page needs to be driving at least $300,000 annual sales for us to even touch it. So if it's anything lower than a 300,000, then we don't even do the qualitative analysis because our speciality is in getting statistical winners. So our criteria is 300,000 in annual sales and the reason why that revenue matters so much is that if we were to simply base it on transactions, for example, you could be in a situation where you have a product page, let's say a hundred thousand in sales has the right number of transactions because the average order value is pretty low, but a 20% lift on one hundred thousand dollars of revenue is just not high enough for us.

We want to get at least a $60,000 incremental increase in top line revenue for it to be economically viable. So that's why we have a $300,000 threshold. 

AT: Okay that makes sense. So you really looking at that gain or output that they're going to get from a revenue perspective? So you're not just optimising for the sake of it, the small gains.

RR: Exactly.

AT: Because your playing ground is very much e-commerce you're getting that attribution and revenue attribution. So if, say for example that you, you said a team is thinking about going down this. You really want them to focus on revenue rather than just improving some of the more vanity metrics.

RR: That's a really good point because unless I know I've worked obviously with certain sophisticated clients where they actually have such sophisticated attribution where they're able to put a dollar amount to an email signup. So we know, for example, an email signup is worth $17. Well, if it's that quantifiable and it's so defensible, then it's okay to optimise for that goal. But if it's like, you know, we want more email signups. We don't really know what the value of an email signup is, but we want more email signups than I would steer it away from that opportunity, because the great thing about the product page is that I am directly tracing that to revenue and it's defensible.

AT: I love it. So are there any other planning tips that you would advise or how the teams get together or get buy-in or document what they're about to do. 

RR: Yeah, I think one of the most effective things you can do is look at historical trend lines and what happens as a Data Analyst, you are trying to paint a picture for the management team, and they want to see a full narrative arc. Sometimes we go to CEOs and we go to our Managers and we say, you know, here's a point of friction I found, or here's an opportunity that I'm seeing. Out of context, it's not a compelling enough story, but if you draw a historical arc and say, Hey, I've been looking at the data for over the last three years, and I'm actually looking at a secular trend where our efficacy on the product page is going down that then you can then project the impact of that and that gets them to take action notice and shocks them into taking action. 

AT: Joining dots and telling a story. So you mentioned qualitative. Do you like to complement that with the quantitative? Do you work that hand in hand, or do you like to have a certain amount of qualitative? Because I know you say you use buyer psychology. Do you treat that Carte Blanche or do you carry out some interviews? How do you like to get close to the buyer? 

RR: I want to tread on this answer very carefully, because it's a very controversial topic and I’m not pontificating anything over here.

I'm just speaking from, from my own perspective, from my own bias perspective. I'm not a big fan of research at all. I don't like research. It's extremely expensive, extremely time consuming and extremely prone to bias and errors. So unless there's proper setup for voice of customer research or jobs to be done research, we're not involved in any case, I'm not involved in it. So I really liked the idea of quantitative analysis and I think one thing I would mention is that I think you can figure out a lot about the buyer by simply thinking about the buyer.

I like to meditate and think about the buyer and think about the buyer journey and it's really interesting how you can get these beautiful insights without having to interview hundreds of users. There are certainly certain types of insights. Especially, if it's a contrarian insight, you can pick up through interviews. So I'm not saying that research is not powerful. I'm just suggesting that it's very time consuming and it's expensive, but there's a lot you can get to by simply meditating on the problem and just by asking yourself, why would a consumer want to buy this product? What are some of the ways that we are not providing them the information and the clarity that they need to buy the product and just meditating on that. You know, we take a printout of each product page we're working on the stick it on the wall and we keep on staring at it passively all day long. And it leads to these beautiful insights that we would've never had if we simply said, you know, I'm going to spend an hour looking at a product page and I'm going to try to get as me and says, like, again, a lot of great insights come by ideas kind of floating around in the background.

AT: That's really cool. I like printing it out and putting it on the wall, making it tangible. I think a lot of teams should do that potentially just think about this, keep it front of mind and swirling, as you say. Awesome, Rishi this is great. So, so you've now you've worked through those, those first two phases.

You've identified that, you know, you have a problem. You starting to work up a bit of a plan and a solution. You know, you've got this promise of improving conversion rate of 20% in 90 days. How do you make sure you get to that point to achieve that? And I guess I'd love to also hear what, what can go wrong through that period.

How do you make sure you get to the point to achieve that?

RR: This is a very interesting question and, and the way we actually, you know, this is great war strategy, where you land on the shores of the place where it's going to have battle, and then you burn the ship because now the soldiers, no, they have no choice but to win the fight. And by drawing a line in the sand and saying that we will give you a 20% improvement in 90 days, the timer starts the moment the client engages us so we remove all the noise. The other thing is that. And so that kind of focus and clarity and that kind of pressure, it actually is what helps us get good results. What I find is that work expands to fill the time.

So if we were to go to clients, say we will take six months to get to a 40% improvement. We'd end up certainly taking six months, but we probably won't get to a 40% improvement, but by having it very tight and saying, look, we have 90 days to do it and we're going to give you a 20% lift. It's a really beautiful number because three months is enough time where you can actually kind of fully, it's not like a one shot scenario, but at the same time, it's short enough where the time runs out. And so I really liked that focus in, in our case, you know, because we are already focused on product pages, but more specifically, we are focused on just one product page, just the best seller page we've already kind of narrowed the scope long before we even signed the dotted line.

AT: I'm also looking at it from the lens of you obviously have a lot of built up knowledge and so when you're on tools and you're working it specifically or directly. I'm sure there's a level of expertise there though for teams who are trying to do some of this themselves – what can go wrong with doing their testing program or trying to improve the conversion rate of their product pages?

RR: I think one of the things that I can say that people can make a mistake with is one of the golden rules of A/B testing is you want to, and this is, I think of great value. You want to increase the contrast between the control, which is what you have and the idea that you are testing. And oftentimes I find that teams don't incorporate enough contrast.

So it's, it's, it's better, but it's slightly better. This can lead to all kinds of statistical problems. Number one is that the statistical tool is, is fine tuned to actually pick up on big differences. So if what you're designing is and incremental improvement the tool actually has a very hard time picking up on it, which means that the tool takes much, much longer to, to know for certain, if the change was to statistically significant or not.

The other downside of one of the things that teams struggle with is with, you know, if they're concerned about bringing in too much contrast is their concern is that how do we sell this to upper management? And again, I like to tell upper management that we are intentionally bringing contrast because we want to get to a winner faster.

So we're doing it for increasing the contrast specifically to get to an outcome. And so I think one of the mistakes that teams make, one of the, one of the downsides is that we come up with ideas that in order to get political buy-in from senior management teams. We want to make make bigger improvements, but then we get pushback from management teams saying that this is seems too risky.

And I think we shouldn't fall into that trap because if you fall for that trap and you reduce the contrast, you're actually increasing the likelihood that you will not get us statistical outcome, which means basically you would get a null result and you can't do anything with that.

AT: Interesting, so inconclusive and all's lost, waste of time. Sp think carefully about the tests and improvements you make to ensure that they have enough contrast. So these are like, do you use the word, like with the language bets or anything like that when you said working with these?

RR: We, we don't use the word bets, but we call them attempts.

AT: I imagine that would be from your experience a whole bunch of obvious things to you that teams make mistakes with. And so that would either be just through not enough experience or potentially just not enough exposure to the proper techniques, but is there like one common mistake teams make with their product pages that or tests they try and run that you wouldn't recommend.

RR: I would like to talk about something that teams don't do on product pages. I think this is going to be a very valuable lesson. This I think is a billion dollar idea. I'll do a thought experiment for your listeners.

Please think of any product page that you've been to and think of a large website don't have to think about a super small website, a fairly successful sophisticated, large website that you visited and now ask you to. If your friend went to that same page, or if some random person came from Facebook and would the product description change at all and the answer is 0% of being it being different. One of the golden rules of product pages is that they are cast. They are exactly the same. They don't change the description. Doesn't change this to me is such a ludicrous idea and it makes no sense because if you really think about it, the awareness level of the person you're trying to persuade on a product page varies.

If you are selling a blender, there are people that are coming to this blender page who have been researching for a blender for the last six months. There are people who are coming to this Blender page who've done no research at all. There are people who are coming to this blender page, who already have a blender at home. They don't like that blender, they want to find that blender but they need a good, compelling reason to do so. So the whole, these three sets of people that have come through this page, The description is identical for all of them and I think that's a really wasted opportunity. It'd be wonderful to kind of, to some kind of a conversational style finding out from the buyer.

How long have we been struggling with this problem? Or do you have a blender and things and then personalising copy? To match those responses. That to me is the ultimate and I've never found this in product pages except for the pages that I create for my clients but I think it's such a massive opportunity because we're asking the wrong question.

We're saying, what is the perfect product page? That's the wrong question. The question is what are the perfect product pages? There's a different, perfect product page for different types of buyers and you need to figure out a way to create that, even though it's the same product, you're creating a slightly different story depending on the buyer.

AT: I'm sure that's got a lot of teams thinking about how they're approaching their product pages as not just static as being static, but being more dynamic as you say to the buyer and their journey. Awesome. Rishi, anything else you wanted to add on how teams can achieve this to push them over the line and to get them either a going down their own optimisation journey or be reaching out to your team?

RR: So another thing I would mention, and this is the final thing I'll share with them is that big, close attention to the devicetype. Oftentimes what happens is when we design product pages or when we look at product pages and we have conversations about product pages, we're looking at the desktop version of the page.

If you look at your data, you might actually find that 85% of people that are buying from you or that have seen that page are actually seeing it on their mobile devices. Now, if you're not, you need to walk in the shoes of your potential buyers. So stop looking at the desktop version of the page, make a discipline, put a reminder for yourself to say that every week I'm going to spend 20 minutes just looking at the mobile version of my page and read the description over and over again. I think oftentimes we try to like in a snapshot come up with great ideas, and as we mentioned earlier, a lot of times ideas permeate just with time. So just read the description over and over again. If you read the description 20 times, I guarantee you'll have at least seven incredible ideas that will make you more money.

AT: So just keep staring at it don't rush it. You know these are very important pages as you, as you pointed out, a lot of teams would obviously appreciate that. So give yourself the time is what I'm hearing there and be mindful of a device. Are there any other segments that you see teams that missing or they should be aware?

RR: Yeah, So, I mean, one of the important segments is like with Google display ads or Google product listing ads, when you do a search for running shoes, the first set of results styles that show up are actually ads. That directly link you to the product page. Now, someone who comes directly to this product based through a paid search ad is fundamentally different than someone who navigated this product page from one of the inner pages, be aware of these distinctions and then personalise the story also for that, for those distinctions

AT: Rishi, it is, it is much in line, so it's, and it's fast paced.

So we have run out of time today. I wanted to thank you for your time first and foremost we really appreciate it. I'm sure that listeners would have taken a lot from that. If they did want to obviously follow along, they can check out in the show notes, your newsletter and yet you also invite you into the Focus Groups like community Rishi, and, and if any of the members want to reach out to you, then I'm sure they can.

But thank you again for your time and hopefully we get to chat again soon. Andy.

RR: Thanks a lot. That was wonderful. Thanks for your time.

A must watch on Brand Collaborations!

Jess Ruhfus, a talented and experienced Publicist and Founder of Collabosaurus; shares the ins and outs of Brand Collaborations to help you maximise your next collaboration. 

Over 15 minutes, Jess takes us through countless actionable insights for Marketers from the foundations, real world examples, what goes wrong, how to master this invaluable skill set and her predictions. Grab your munch and tune in to hear 15 years of experience distilled into 15 minutes to expedite your marketing career.

Thank you, Jess! 

AT: Hey team Andy here. Thanks for joining us for another Munch & Learn. Today, I’m super excited to be joined by Jessica Ruhfus to talk all things, brand collaborations. Wooo! This is awesome! 

JR: Friday topic of the week! 

AT: I know, right? 

AT: So a little bit about Jess. Jessica is the founder of Collibra source and marketing platform. That match makes it brands for clever collaborations and partnerships with a background in fashion, publicity and marketing education. Jess was frustrated, sourcing core brand partnerships and events, products, and social media. So she launched Collabosauarus in 2015, which is now attracted over 8,000 brands, including Porsche ASOS, Olay, TopShop and one of the largest global retailers in the U.S just won the 2019 BNC 30 under 30 award and entrepreneurship. And has spoken for Apple, Vogue, General Assembly ADMA and the College of Event Management. It’s pretty impressive! 

JR: Thanks. 

AT: I’m pretty excited, obviously for this 15 minutes of what you can share with the audience, rapid fire collabs into collaboration real fast, real quick.

AT: If anyone needs to reach out to you, if you’re not in the community, you can join the community. Jump on in. I’m sure Jess as always is happy to answer questions and help people. So Jess, so we get into it. Let’s do it first off. 

What is a brand collaboration? 

JR: Great question and an excellent place to start.

So I think the word collaborations she gets thrown around in a million different contexts. So very important that we establish what I’m talking about when I’m talking about brand collaborations, because that can definitely get confusing. What I mean when I talk about them is when two or more businesses or brands team up. Create something cool together and then leverage each other’s existing assets to help each other grow. And this could look like anything from social media, content, competitions, and giveaways, limited edition products or product bundles and things like that, or experiential collabs as well. So really it’s about businesses teaming up doing really cool stuff together and helping each other grow with powerful cross-promotion across so many different channels.

That’s my nutshell. 

AT: I think you’re right around this powerful thing, because it, you do, you sort of cut it’s compounding, right? So you’re taking two brands, two audiences potentially, and you’re, and you’re getting that impact. So that’s exciting. Let’s dive further into it. There I’m sure a whole bunch of ways that you can collaborate, right?

Can you share some examples? 

JR: Definitely. I think it’s a common misconception that brand collaborations just happen on Instagram or that they just fit influences or their competition and giveaways alone. But there are so many different ways you can collaborate my favorite types kind of get bucketed into three main buckets, which is social media, products and events inc. experiential. And under the social media banner, that could be things like content collaborations. So teaming up with another business and running a content series or ITV series together, for example, or a YouTube series. MailChimp did that really well with Vice and they created short stories around business owners who use MailChimp.

And that was a really powerful collaboration around storytelling. Then there’s of course, competitions and giveaways, which I would say use sparingly can be effective if they use very sparingly. And then when it comes to product collaborations, that’s probably what everyone’s minds first go to because it’s what all the big brands are doing. Their teaming up to collaborate on limited edition product releases. Or you could even do things like product bundles. So I see this happen around sort of mother’s day Christmas stuff like that. There was a really good one with that Pepe Saya Butter. They teamed. I think it was Sonoma for a mother’s day thing a little while ago, and they packaged their services together and sold it as a collaboration, which is really easy way to create a limited edition product that doesn’t require the whole manufacturing process. 

Products can also be soft products, so digital products downloadables able books, courses, all kinds of different things. And then experiential, which is my favourite and it’s like slowly coming back post COVID, you know, lock downs and everything like that. But there’s a great example with Microsoft that we just saw come to life where they teamed up with a daily street roasters to the collaborate service platform. It was this themed event around the school of surface, Microsoft surface and everything was school themed that they did like you book photos and collaborated with the photographer at the event, they gave everyone coffee to keep your eyes open in class kind of thing. It was very well integrated, it was clever marketing and it was businesses teaming up to work together to achieve something really awesome. So there’s a million different ways you can collaborate. There’s examples for each of those. I’ve got, I can pull out of a hat if you wanted a little bit more description on either one of them, depending on time.

AT: My mind’s swirling, but I think that’s yeah, like the, the thought process and how you can put something together that’s meaningful, right? It’s like, yeah, don’t rush it. Just doing a co-lab because you feel like you need to think about. Like your audience and what would be meaningful to offer them and how that then comes together with that other brand, right? 

JR: Exactly, yeah, collaboration for collaborations sake rarely works, but you know, we’re so much stronger together. And so teaming up with other businesses in a strategic way that has some thought behind it. Yeah. So powerful. 

AT: The budget question. Yeah, sorry to bring it up. Can it be done in a budget collaboration, most cost-effective strategies you can actually do when it comes to marketing?

JR: I think that’s another thing that people shy away from partnerships because of traditional structures around sponsorship when that’s not necessarily the case. As I just mentioned, there’s so many other ways you can collaborate and budget, you know, often there’s currencies other than cash that are being exchanged.

So 90% of the collaborations that happen through the collab resource platform. Don’t involve cash exchange whatsoever. So you don’t necessarily have any budget. You can have a look at what you have from an asset standpoint. So what marketing channels do you have available to you or your clients? What skill set? What time? What resources do you have available? That could be everything from graphic design to photography assets to pay off skillset. I mean, when I started out doing cloud resource and I was collaborating. Yeah, I didn’t have a massive social media community. I had no budget to speak of at all, but I was like, you know what? I’m a publicist. So anything really cool that we do together, I can pitch this to media. So that’s what I could bring to the table. So at the end of the day, you know, brand collaboration is a win-win exchange of value and it’s mutually beneficial, but that value doesn’t have to be cash. It can be leveraging all of the things that you already have available to you in your business.

AT: That’s also very encouraging for teams that I think obviously this goes back to thinking it through and looking for other brands that you could collaborate in a meaningful way where the exchange is bi-directional and it’s not like you’re begging with them to do it, right? 

JR: Totally and I mean, that’s one of the benefits of, I’m sorry to toot my own horn, but collab is the word I say, because that was one of the reasons we built it, because I think traditional pitching, you were sort of spraying and praying and hoping that someone would be interested in collaboration and stuff like that. Whereas on the platform, you know, everyone’s already interested in looking by the time you connect or match with them, you already know what they’re looking for and what they can offer you and vice versa. So the conversation becomes. So much easier because you know what each other are bringing to the table and some creative ideas can come out of that.

And I would say in terms of how the exchange works, it varies so much depending on the collaboration. I mean, every brand has something quite unique to bring to the table in terms of what not only what channels and what their community looks like, but also the skill sets and resources and products or services that they could use and leverage in an exchange as well.

AT: Now that we’ve dealt with the budget question. Oh, it’s getting harder.

What goes wrong? Where the teams fall apart with Brand Collaborations? 

JR: I think I was having a think about this. I think there are four major things I say going wrong in collaboration conversations. And the first one is communication that often breaks down and it’s usually when either one party gets super busy or things just like get hazy and the communication just breaks down. So my biggest point with that would be that relationships are at the heart of all collaboration. So never go M.I.A, if you don’t understand something, you should say. So communication is so key. 

Second to that is having a marketing goal in mind. So something that goes wrong that I see happen all the time with collaborations is that collaboration for collaborations, sake teams are going, you know what everyone’s collaborating. We need to, to like let’s collab. And it’s just like this spray and pray method.

Where there’s no strategy behind it so actually having a marketing objective in mind, whether that they email list growth or website traffic increase, or, you know, building engagement or media buzz, like the Iconic and Binge teaming up and doing that inactive wear campaign was so clever and well timed because it got so much media attention.

So I think having a marketing strategy in mind is super, super important. That’s the second thing that goes wrong is when brands don’t have that. So communicate and communicate your marketing strategy in particular. 

The third one would be not changing up the type of collaboration.

So if you’re collaborating on a limited edition product, every single month, that’s going to exhaust your audience. It’s not going to become new and exciting anymore. Same goes, if you collaborate on the Instagram competition every single month, I often recommend you should be aiming for about six collaborations a year, but shifting up who you collaborate with and the type of collaboration you explore. So don’t keep doing the same types of ones. There’s so many different creative ideas you can explore to help you achieve all sorts of different marketing goals. Build into your funnel as well. 

And then number four would be tunnel visioning on one channel. So I see so many brands still obsessed over Instagram following, and it drives me mental because there is so many other channels and exactly, and you can in a collaboration that one of the great things you can do, which is quite different to influencer partnerships. Is that so much happens outside of Instagram, you can leverage web traffic. You can leverage email list. Cross-promotion Podcast mentions event on stage mentions in integrated sort of branding opportunities. There’s just so many channels you can explore. So they would be my top four, not having a strategy, not communicating, doing the same type of collaboration all the time and tunnel visioning on one channel. 

AT: Yeah, that last one’s a doozy. What we see is a fixation or leaning too heavily into channel first. Right. Rather than being audience first. And so then that goes back to your previous advice. If you’re thinking about your audience and you’re thinking about their audience, we should have some crossover and complement. Then the channel should obviously always be relevant. But by disseminating all of the content and the collab. as well, you can get so much more mileage out of it. I imagine? 

JR: Exactly. Yeah, definitely. And I mean, I think. You know, if you just look at the organic reach rates and engagement rates on Instagram. Yeah, you get so much more mileage out of leveraging it across multiple different channels and building a campaign out of it, rather than, you know, having a collaboration focus around one post or two posts on Instagram, you know, it could be a much longer, more effective campaign that actually drives results.

AT: Yeah. Short time thinking.

Crystal ball time. Where do you think brand collaborations is going to go? 

JR: Ah, this is a good question. If you had asked me at the beginning of 2020, I would have said something completely different, I think, but now I dunno. I just, I was seeing such a huge rise in, you know, moving away from digital and creating these amazing intimate brand experiences, which I still think going to be happening more and more.

I suppose in the future, but not necessarily immediate future. But then COVID hit and things changed a lot with how you could deliver brand experiences. And I mean, there’s still some really clever things you can do around digital collaborations, for sure. But I would say predictions for this coming year.

What I am loving saying artists collaborations. Really taking the stage, which is so great. I don’t know if you’ve seen the Mecca and National Gallery, Victoria collaboration. They release every year where they create holiday packaging in collaboration with one hero, National Gallery of Victoria artist that then they promote throughout in-store experiences and signage plus all of the holiday collection and it becomes very limited edition. It creates so much buzz. It’s so exciting and fantastic for creatives as well to be able to showcase their work. So artists collabs for sure would be one of them. 

My second prediction would probably be around the PR landscape and, you know, PR agency teams in particular, especially with everything that’s happened in the media over the last few years, it’s becoming so competitive and harder than ever to get media placement. So I see partnerships and collaborations actually being a fantastic way to supplement media placements with clever reach, you know, you can team up with brands and achieve more engagement and reach and all that kind of stuff through clever multi-channel, cross promotion in a partnership than you would necessarily in a, in a media outlet. So I think the PR landscape is going to change and partnerships are going to become more and more sort of common practice for publicists. 

AT: That makes a lot of sense. I think that’s where it’s headed and it’s only natural for those guys to think that way as well. All right. Well, yeah, my mind’s swirling, as I said, so I just want to go and implement some of this stuff. 

JR: Well, thankfully I think collaborations again in the past have just taken a lot of time.

There’s a lot that’s involved. Not from a budget perspective, but from a time perspective of going okay, coming up with a creative idea, building a list of brand partners, finding the decision maker at those brand partners. Pitching an idea and negotiating, and then actually bringing a campaign to life which can take so long. You know, it can be months and months and months before things come together. Whereas now, you know, with platforms like Collabosaurus, that time gap is really closing and more opportunities are readily available and quicker to implement, which is really exciting to say. And I mean, we’re launching an app in the next couple of weeks, which is exciting so you can basically do collabs right from the palm of your hand, which so more and more, that kind of stuff is getting quicker. Thankfully. 

AT: Well, I’m glad you got that in. I was going to prompt that plug, but not necessary. I’m a publicist. Now you did mention something earlier, which I just want to reiterate. Yeah, there’s so much in your brain and the platforms they have for people to jump in and, and start to play around with. But I feel like what you’ve shared today is very much sound around and so valid around the foundations before you jump in and before you start to just execute on a once off collaboration, like you described thinking more broadly and strategic. So jump into the Focus community if you haven’t already, just as in there just share with me any links obviously that we can share with the guys Munch & Learn is really fast bite size. So if anyone wants to take this further please reach out. I’ll put all your links and contact details within this, but thank you so much for your time today and sharing your knowledge in this Munch & Learn on Brand Collaborations.

JR: Always happy to have lunch. 

AT: Well, I didn’t, I don’t even know if we got your munch, right? 

JR: Oh, it’s probably Croissants all the way to get into a croissant. 

AT: Oh, we didn’t do a Crossiant… 

JR: I’m all for Pastries so but you know what, I love Peaches also. 

AT: Ha. So this was a Peach of a Munch & Learn. So thank you! And we’ll catch you in the community.

JR: Thanks for having me.

I created a quick visualisation which is now a template on Figma for anyone who wants to utilise.

Hope it helps!

Helpful insight for both team members and managers!

Mark Tanner, Co-founder/COO of Qwilr, shares his learnings around ‘managing up’ and how to build a ‘feedback muscle’. Qwilr, have 1000s customers, 50+ staff, and a Marketing org of six. Mark has worked at large organisations like Google and understands the pressures and challenges that teams can face with communication. 

Recommended reads shared by Mark:

Radical Candor by Kim Scott.
Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler. 

Thank you, Mark! 

AT: Andy here. Thanks for joining us for another Munch & Learn. 

AT: As you know, it’s all very fast paced and bite-sized, and today I’m joined by Mark Tanner, the COO of Qwilr for what is an exciting chat about managing up. Mark thanks for joining us. 

MT: Pleasure mate, very happy to be here. 

AT: Mark COO/Co-founder as I said, of Qwilr, which enables organisations to design perfect proposals, quotes, client updates, and more created in a flash. Great positioning, Mark. Qwilr have thousands of customers, over 50 plus staff and a marketing org of six. Mark has worked at large organisations like Google and understands the pressures and challenges that teams can face with communication. Hence, why I thought of you when it came to managing up, it’s not an easy topic to approach. So I appreciate you tackling this with us and sharing your insights. So if you’re ready, shall we roll? 

MT: Let’s do it. 

What is Managing Up? 

AT: Alright, cool so Mark, first off, what is managing up in your eyes?

MT: I think in my eyes, it’s as simple as that, a part of it and the more complicated nuanced part of it. And the simple part of it is like, how do you have like an engaged, worthwhile, meaningful relationship with your manager where you are not just sort of being like this sort of downtrodden I.C? Always doing what you’re told, but actually, being a member of the team that’s contributing and giving feedback and playing an active role in what goal setting is, what the achievements are, how we’re focused on different things and that’s just playing an active part in that side.

Then, I think the more nuanced and complex part is like what to do when you feel your Manager is like making a dire mistake and I think that’s the harder more complicated part of managing up is when you see that. Hopefully you’re in a positive culture and you can have whatever radical candor or the sort of, you know, things like that.

But like there can still be times where you think that a real mistake is about to be made and you’re trying to think about how to sort of best address that. 

AT: It’s interesting what you say that because it feels like what you’re getting at is that there’s obviously large levers at play here, that will ultimately dictate someone’s abilities to manage up. 

MT: I mean, truly, like you can imagine a perfect organisation where you don’t need to have this because you’ve got a very collaborative, open culture where there’s like two way feedback going on regularly and everyone is correctly consulted the correct amount of time for all decisions, et cetera. I mean, the reality of a busy org though is you do have these scenarios where decisions get made or being pushed to get made and I think often let’s assume with positive intent.

Like they’re trying to do it for the right reasons, but it’s still like, you still feel like there is a mistake that’s about to be made even if the reason I’m making this decision is like, we need to move quickly for various reasons. Like in a startup there are times where you’re like, Hey, we are running out of money. Like we have to make a decision here. We have to move, or we have to have this thing by this date or whatever. And you know, it can be a thing where, where there isn’t a chance for perfect deep thought on a topic and you kind of do need to move on it. But I can imagine, you can imagine when we’re like, you know, managing up sort of happens pretty rarely and you don’t need to worry about too much and I think for some people that can be a bit stressful, especially, you know if you have a big, bad boss.

But on the flip side, I do think that it’s really important in a healthy org to have that capacity and to have the ability to sort of be able to have productive conversations, even if they are difficult ones with your manager and even potentially people higher than that, about sort of important topics.

And I do think that it’s such a big skill. That if you can develop, you know, early in your career sort of how to have difficult conversations and how does sort of have them with people where there is a bit of a slight power imbalance. It’s like wildly, wildly, I think, useful and valuable for your career.

AT: The reason I wanted to open up this conversation with someone like yourself was I I’ve heard it a lot in the research for focus or the product that we’re building with marketing teams. Yeah, it’s a real challenge for a lot of people too, to have that environment or to know how to approach their manager, to be able to get that buy-in or maintain that buy-in.

So I think you’ve really clarified what is managing up. So hopefully everyone is falling along now. And you’ve started to sort of touch on this a little bit as well and how you should approach it. But what if you’re thinking about the building blocks and our checklist? What would you encourage someone to think about?

MT: So the first like matter point is like, you know, you ideally have an organization that is open, like, you know, values, collaboration, you know, open to feedback and where they’re sort of can be bi-directional feedback between managers and I.Cs. And, you know, you sort of have a space during a one-on-one where you can, you know, they can say, Hey, I’ve got some feedback for you about this thing. Hey, I’ve got some feedback for you about this. And that’s like, And honest, open, valuable exchange where, you know, both parties, respect each other, et cetera, et cetera. And I think if you have that, that space, you know, you think you can sort of, this should be better. 

And so I would say that like the first step of that is like, you know, I think it is to, you know, even if you don’t need to like manage up today, you should probably still be thinking about it, like building that muscle and building that trust and building that respect with your boss kind of like ASAP, if you don’t feel like you already have it whether you’re new on the site, know on the scene or just the thing you haven’t really done before. But I do think that like, even if you starts with something relatively small it is a really great sort of muscle to build that feedback muscle of saying, Hey, Andy, you know, I just, I noticed in this meeting the other day, you phrased this thing in a way that You know, kind of shut off debate from a few people and you know, it wasn’t, it wasn’t a big thing. I actually think we’ve kind of already gotten to that space, but I do think that a few people felt a bit weird about it or whatever. I’m giving a terrible off the cuff example, but like, you know, I think having a, not trying to have like a sort of huge, like crazy big bit of feedback, but having a small thing I think can be you know, sort of a good way of just, you know, like that sort of building a bit of trust, building a bit of familiarity.

Such that, you know, when you do have a bigger one to come in, it’s not like it’s the first time you’ve ever given them feedback. Do you know what I mean? There’s, if you, if you’re a first time you ever like having a serious conversation with someone where you’re sort of kind of criticising and challenging and pushing them on something that they have decided that you think is really, really important. If it’s the first time you’re doing this is on some huge topic, like you’re making it a bit harder for yourself. So I do sort of think like, this sounded great. If you can have like, Had some, a little bit of building a little bit of buy-in there and sort of had that cycle of some feedback. The other person has some time to digest.

Hopefully they’re like, Hey, thank you. That was good. That I’m really glad I know about that. And I’ll try to sort of up my game and in that way in future, and it might be a very specific, like, you know, targeted, like you know, tactical thing, or it might be a more of. general cultural thing, like whatever it is, but it’s not like it’s a smaller one, but I’d say like, that’s like my first bit of advice. It’s always nice to start from a base. 

I suppose the second one is when you give feedback or are managing up or structuring this stuff generally, and I said, this is true of a feedback, whether it’s audible down or sideways. So whichever way it is you know, you need to have done a fair bit of processing on your side first about like really understanding what it is. And so if something happens and you feel it’s it’s wrong and it’s bad, and sometimes you can feel these feelings pretty strongly and be like, ah, this is like wrong. This is terrible. And I think you kind of need to let yourself, it can be hard in a fast paced environment where if decisions are really are moving quickly.

But if possible, you kind of need to like, let yourself cool off out of the emotional state and then approach it in a way to do a bit of processing. I go for long walks, but yeah. Have bit of things. I calm down, sleep on it, go for a long walk. I think there would be like, what exactly am I trying to say here?

And so when you, when you go and have that thing, you know, you’re not using combative language, you’re not, you know, ideally you’re attempting not to trigger like fight or flight in them. Right? Like this sort of, which is a. You know, when faced with criticism or a challenge to, you know, the path that they had, you know, something that someone’s like made a decision in their mind, their mind wants to keep on down that path, because that is the easiest path to go down.

If you’re sort of really pushing on that, especially it’s a big decision that that can be harder person. I think you need to have empathy for that. And so you need to try to bring a relatively unemotional, relatively clear well processed bit of feedback to it, if that makes sense. And I think, you know, now you also want to do it relatively quickly.

So it’s this sort of balancing act like, you know, if we have a meeting and I give you feedback, two weeks later, that’s kind of a bit useless. On the flip side, I’d say giving feedback, like immediately after a meeting, when something goes wrong, is also maybe sometimes the wrong vibe. And so again, you know, you should be your own and judge, but I would say that that’s another thing to sort of be mindful of is how do you knowing that managing up and, and, and especially with complex tough conversations is going to be, you know, something of a hard thing for that person to hear.

How do you make it easier for them? You know, how do you do the work on your end, such that it’s very clear what’s coming through. It’s not emotive. It’s not sort of, you know, as much as possible. It’s not sort of seen as a threat or whatever else.

AT: That makes a lot of sense. My mind is swirling. There’s lots in that. So I love the muscle part, the feedback muscle. That’s really cool. 

Building the feedback muscle 

MT: You need to build it. This is why, like, you know, a lot of people have. Well, a lot of good managers have a thing of every single time you meet for a one-on-one, you have to bring feedback for each other. It’s not because every single time there’ll be like awesome feedback to give.

Cause sometimes it’s like, oh, Andy, I don’t really have much feedback for you, but it’s, it’s just, it’s a muscle that you build that you sort of. You sort of, it’s building this trust, it’s this idea of a trust battery and sort of understanding where, where, where you each sit in terms of trust, batteries, analysis of interesting concepts.

But like, you know, I think where you sit on that side and it is a little bit, it’s a hard habit to build. And I think that, you know, all those little tricks about making sure you do it every time just makes it a little bit easier. 

MT: You said I’m not an expert or a guru in this topic, but I, what I sent is that where everyone just needs to practice.

Right. And so, and be open about that. But is there anything else that you’ve learnt over the years you’ve observed or you see other people doing, which you like that’s really cool around managing album or managing yeah. Managing in general. I mean, I think the, I think the, the, the mastery PC, I mean, like the additional reading for this chapter is It was like radical candor is, is, is one of the classics by Kim Scott.

She wrote that book after her time at Google. She’s just, she’s done a second one recently that I’m can’t remember it is that it was, it looked interesting. I should remember that one, but anyway, Radical Candor is the classic just about, you know, how you, about how you have a feedback driven culture. You know, it’s not necessarily a perfect book, but I, but I do think that it has a lot of good insights in there about.

Why feedback matters, why honesty matters. You know, and, and, and Y you know, giving difficult feedback to someone is like, actually, like, without getting too woo, woo. Like a loving kind thing to do, because, you know, we’re all imperfect beings. Generally speaking, a striving to be better and would like to have you know, to sort of improve and get better.

And actually, you know, if you don’t understand errors that you’re making along the way, it’s impossible to improve. And so obviously you then need to work on the way of communicating that that book has a bunch of steps in there, like, but the best book that exists about how to have tough conversations is a book called crucial conversations.

It wools, every startup founder must read it. It’s like, there’s so many hard conversations you need to have in life, whether it’s around like firing people around, you know, when someone has like badly missed expectations when someone is not getting the thing, the thing, promotion, area, whatever else that they want.

When you’re having. Someone’s threatening to like sue you, or you’ve got a customer who’s like losing their mind or like a million other sort of tough conversations. Like let alone also like, like spousal conversations or, or like just, you know, friends and family, like tough ones there. And I am not an expert at all and I still do stupid mistakes or all the time.

But like this book gives you a really good framework into thinking about like fight or flight, you know, which they sort of had this thing about silence or violence, like, you know, people sort of retreat into this silent mode through a degree of criticism and then sort of stop piping up, which is like, again, terrible for like, if you’re employing someone and they are just like, you’ve kind of shamed them into this, like this silent vibe we used to get, you’re not getting any value out of them.

Like this is a completely ridiculous thing to have done. And in the violence part of like, you know, this sort of this sort of angry reaction and sort of. And it may not be like, you know, big yelling and shouting in the meeting. It can come out in other ways. But again, this sort of, this triggering thing of fight or flight is like very real.

And I think that that book just has so many useful frameworks and ways of thinking through conversations and way of framing them. It’s like, it really is like, it’s a very, very, very good book. It’s a super American, super American self-helpy sort of style. So like, I’d have to wade through a little bit that side, but it’s not long.

I think the audio book is actually like six hours or whatever so you can punch it out in an afternoon if you have hyper keen. 

AT: I know this is a bit of an awkward conversation to have openly, but I love what you’ve shared today is that is it. You need to have that transparency and openness.

AT: No one is perfect. I know that I’ve made endless mistakes in this regard. And I think the reading, the books and trying to learn from other people’s mistakes is a really crucial one. So I’m going to get those links off of you. I’m going to share it with the community. You pop it in the links in the show notes, but I have to thank you for your time. It’s such a topic, a great topic that a lot of teams struggle with, and it did seem to strike a chord in the community. So I appreciate your time, your openness and hopefully we’ll catch you another time on Munch & Learn? 

MT: Mate, would love too! 

AT: Awesome, thanks Mark and we’ll talk soon. Thanks to everyone and we’ll catch you at the next Munch & Learn.