Giga to Nano: A CMO’s tale of crafting brands large and small

Lindsay Rogers • 00:05

Hello and welcome to the Brand Hunch podcast, where we explore ideas and hunches around how marketers are growing great brands. It's a look under the hood at how much is marketing science and how much is built on a hunch.

In today's episode, I'm joined by Toby McKinnon. Toby started off originally in agency land, then moved over to marketing roles in fairly established businesses, including Bank of Queensland and Intuit QuickBooks, before taking the leap over as CMO at Sapia.ai, a recruitment focused tech startup which in 2022 raised $17 million and is slowly taking over the world.

We met in 2021. So you're officially a COVID friend, and we've both sort of bonded over really enjoying B2B, sort of different approach to B2B work. Welcome to the podcast. 

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Toby McKinnon • 00:48

Thanks very much. 2021 feels like such a long time ago. 

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Lindsay Rogers • 00:52

I know, I'm sorry. It feels like you’ve known me forever, ball and chain. So, give me a quick overview. I sort of mentioned in the intro about your sort of marketing career. We'd love to hear it in your words. 

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Toby McKinnon • 01:02

Look, yeah, I mean, you kind of hit the nail on the head, right? I mean, I spent the better part of probably 15 years in advertising. And you know, I wouldn't change it for the world.

Although I would have potentially some, some guidance or insights for anyone wanting to get into it. I think these days it's changed a lot since then. But, you know, just plowing my kind of wears and learnings, both in Australia and in North America as well. 

It was absolutely fantastic. And I think kind of it's in part kind of shaped where my career has gone because I’d call myself, if you were to ask, you know, what sort of marketer am I?

Probably creatively adaptable would be the best way. And I said it for two pronged, right. Because the creative side comes from the advertising industry. You know, I've worked with some of the world's biggest brands, you know, the chevrons of the world, the Doctor Pepper Snapple Groups of the world, and amazing creative people, like core creative people. But what that I think really did was actually teach me not just to be creative per se as an ad, but actually creative thinking.

And I’ve sort of tried to take that through all of my career, and then the adaptability side comes through relative to industries in that you work as, as you would well know, in the advertising industry. You know, one minute you can be working on a car brand and the next minute you're on a franchised retail organisation, and the next minute on infertility clinics.

And I mean, it's everything in between. So you have to learn to be adaptable. You have to learn to understand the industry you're put in, and really scale that knowledge really rapidly. So that adaptability becomes, you know, super, super important. And I also think that, that then lays into how people hire and good leaders, how they hire as well.

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Lindsay Rogers • 02:37

Yeah, that's fascinating. I love the idea of creative adaptability. What do you think about the pace of agency land setting you up for your career? What did you sort of learn from a nuts and bolts perspective?

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Toby McKinnon • 02:47

I think the one of the reasons why a lot of people in advertising want to become a marketer in a corporate organisation is that they're not beholden to somebody else's schedule and calendar.

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Lindsay Rogers • 02:58

You made you can leave at 5:01.

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Toby McKinnon • 03:00

Why in theory, yes. But actually it doesn't in reality, it doesn't work that way. I think all the teams I’ve worked with are all a reference, in reality. It's not that in real life. You’re just in different pressures right? In that, yes, you are beholden to deadlines, but they're often internal teams. Our internal departments that you're working with to try and hit that objective.

It's not just delivering on a brief on a certain date. So, I don't think that's a reason to make the change.

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Lindsay Rogers • 03:29

So tell me a bit about Sapia, and then also what foundations did you come into the role as CMO with that were already established? What was the sort of state of play, and what did you decide on the job to be done?

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Toby McKinnon • 03:41

Look, I think with Sapia then called ‘PredictiveHire’, fundamentally it was a fantastic product.

And so I think that there was really one thing that I wanted to make sure, you know, before actually signing the dotted line was, you know, what is the product and the chief data scientist there, you know, talking to him about it, you know, left with no uncertainty that it is an amazing product, that is actually doing really good in the world, which is fantastic. 

So, that was kind of the first one and then kind of the culture and the leadership were the others. So, you know, sort of assessing those kind of core aspects were pretty important to consider the organisation. And coming in, it was like, well, what do we need to do? You know, there was a marketing team of two at the time. We didn't have any real tech. There wasn't a brand. And the founder had said, “I think one of the things we need to consider is the brand and the role of the brand”.

And so it was really a ‘building from the ground up’. They'd got to a point where it was ready to scale now, and the foundations need to be put in place in the right way to make sure they could set themselves up in that right trajectory.

So, it was exciting, you know, in that regard. And so from a, you know, if you remove the tech, the campaign development, the demand generation, that aspect of it and just think about the brand piece, the idea of aligning brand to the product roadmap. It was good in a way that kind of said what it did on the tin. 

PredictiveHire, and that's in essence what it was doing at the time. But the product evolution was going to be so much more than that. And so the name had to actually adapt to where the business was going to go, and also be more aligned in the tech space in other geographic markets as well. So it was almost like the perfect alignment of stars, where all these aspects needed to be worked on.

And so a very, very small team then set about with you guys as well at Chello to get moving.

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Lindsay Rogers • 05:33

Give me the quick overview of what Sapia is and does.

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Toby McKinnon • 05:36

In essence, it's a front end kind of recruitment hiring tool that basically large businesses, like the Qantas's of the world and Bunnings and Woolworths will use to interview. You know, they'll have tens of thousands of employees on an annual basis, and they can use Sapia to interview the volume of candidates and give them a fantastic experience, and not only analyse what they say but how they say it, using the AI in the background and in the large language model to then actually outline how closely aligned are the applicants’ personality traits to what we would deem success within the role model.

And it'll stack rank all those applicants. That then means that the hiring team can either pick and choose from the top people, face-to-face interview, or hire them instantly, so it can significantly reduce the time to hire for one. It's blind so it completely removes bias, particularly candidates that are say neuro diverse, it opens up a world to them.

And really importantly, one thing I loved about it was that every single candidate actually had a response back from their application because it's five simple questions in their own time. And, then you receive an email back where your answers are actually analysed and you're given some coaching traits based on your answers, which for the most part, people that are applying for these types of roles would never have in their life.

And the feedback and the experience that those candidates have was second to none. So, amazing, amazing product, and continuing to evolve and getting some big brand names, both in Australia and overseas.

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Lindsay Rogers • 07:09

Yeah, amazing. I mean, we're recording this in 2024 but when you started on the brand journey with PredictiveHire that then became Sapia, it was very much before the mass conversations around AI that we've been having in the last sort of 18 months, championed by the likes of ChatGPT.

Tell me a bit about, you know, exposure and the category of AI and technology broadly, and sort of the job to be done from a marketing sense.

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Toby McKinnon • 07:31

In terms of, I mean we sort of joked that we were AI before AI became cool. And it was kind of fortuitous timing I guess, that Sapia AI came about because we were looking. We obviously were an inherently an AI organisation but we didn't have AI in the name, and we couldn't register the URL.

So it became Sapia.ai. So it sort of played in our favour, but you know, when back in those early days we would talk to prospects about the platform and the use of AI, and more often than not, there was an inherent concern around AI and what does it actually mean? People even referred to Will Smith and iRobot. You know, the robots are coming to take over the world because it was so unknown. And this is only, you know, 3 or 4 years ago now so it's not a huge amount of time.

And then, you know, over the period of years with the likes of ChatGPT and, you know, if COVID was the buzz word a couple of years ago, well AI and ChatGPT are now, right? It is ever present. So we were there beforehand, but knocking on doors where people were hesitant because they didn't understand. And so there's a lot of education to be done around AI and the role of AI in any organisation and in any business unit. Now, it's kind of ever present. 

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Lindsay Rogers • 08:40

And so how do you reconcile that with the marketing function at the time? Was a lot of your time from a marketing perspective spent on educating people on the benefits of AI, or did you go sort of brand led? And it doesn't really matter about the tech, we'll just get it done.

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Toby McKinnon • 08:52

It was conjunction with sales, right? You know, so lockstep with the sales org that where we were, and it's a startup remember? So it's not like we're, you know, hugely within paid media and you know, out there everywhere in the market. Every conversation that we're having with prospects we had to develop sales toolkits that would align around, you know, what that business was likely going to need. 

And so there were elements of the approach that where we would talk to AI, but it wasn't the kind of the main focus. It was more around the benefit to the business as well as the customer impact as well. AI just happened to be the tool in the background that we would use, and that would be the part that then you'd have to educate. Once you got sort of further along the prospect purchase path, and they had questions about all the how of the model behind, how did it actually happen, that's where we would talk about it. But early stage, it wasn't necessarily kind of upfront and in the spotlight.

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Lindsay Rogers • 09:43

Yeah, I love the story and the idea that the URL wasn't available to work with so you went with AI. You know, you could put that down to a hunch. You sort of had a, you know, “it's not available, let's go with this. We think it's sort of an interesting way to talk about the brand into the future” and how well that’s served you today. 

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Toby McKinnon • 09:58

I like to say it was planned, but it wasn't.

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Lindsay Rogers • 10:00

So how has your role evolved as a CMO? You went in, what was it, sort of 4 or 5 years ago and you had a lot of foundational stuff. I'm sure you were doing auditing and mapping and establishing sort of the ‘at the scene’. How has your role evolved since then over the years?

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Toby McKinnon • 10:12

Look, I guess it's a pretty broad question, right? I think it's evolved in terms of marketing capabilities and how you actually, you know, approach a go-to-market strategy. And, you know, that is multi-layered and multi-tiered, and it's ever evolving. I think that's one of the things with the marketing landscape is that every day there's a new platform and technology that we can use to, you know, improve workflows or capture and measure data, optimise media spends. You know, it is ever present and ever evolving.

I'd say the other part is probably leadership in terms of, I think I'm a work in progress you know, as a leader, and I spend a lot of time on it. I'm a firm believer that it doesn't matter the size of the organisation. That if you are a leader, you, I think everyone is a leader inherently. You just have to practice that but it is a learned practice and it's something that you need to spend a lot of time on and I'm quite passionate about it. So I think for me it's a combination of both the marketing skill sets, but also the leadership skill sets because that will then make the marketing we do even better. 

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Lindsay Rogers • 11:12

And so tell me a bit about the buy in from senior leaders, whether it's at a CFO level or CEO level. And I know Barb Hyman, CEO at Sapia is really experienced and a sort of strong commercial leader.

How did you talk about the softer components of marketing, whether it's sort of the hunches or the more creative aspects? You talked at the start about creative agility and adaptability — how did you get commercial thinkers on board with that?

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Toby McKinnon • 11:35

I think in the instance of Sapia it was a different landscape because it was a startup, and we were moving at pace and we had to differentiate in the market. Barb is a well-seasoned, well-rounded leader who gets the idea of creativity and relevant differentiation which is really important. And particularly in the industry that Sapia operates, there needed to be that. So to convince her of that wasn't difficult at all, she was completely on board with it.

Obviously there are, we need to know, are there any non-negotiables in terms of where the businesses have come from to where it's going to be. But in terms of that support, I think it is a, you know, we had that from day one. I think really where as you evolve within any organisation, but particularly in a startup because budgets are limited and you're constantly watching your burn right? Where is the funding best allocated across the business, and it needs to be where that needs to go, right? In terms of, you know, if more funding needs to go into product and product team members then it needs to go there. If it needs to go into sales, then it needs to go into sales. And so, as a leadership team, we had a very fluid budget allocation on a kind of month-to-month quarterly basis to see how we were going.

But the role of kind of brand and marketing was always kind of core into it, particularly the brand element. The way we took it to market varied depending on where the business was at any given point in time. In a bigger organisation, quite different. I think brand can often be, probably the first thing to, you know, get cut.

I think the drive to purely hit a KPI can actually cause downside of, you know, really good brand building but again, you know, if you can prove out the why, and the how, and what the return is going to be at a total level, then it's an easier buy in right? Because brand plays one element but it can’t play element by itself always. I've always said “Everything that sells must brand, everything that brands must sell”. So collectively they have to work together but you need to be able to show and map the whole plan, not just brand alone.

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Lindsay Rogers • 13:38

You mentioned before the organisation went through a naming change from PredictiveHire to Sapia.ai as well as a sort of visual refresh or rebrand. How did you know that the first version of the brand wasn't fit for purpose? 

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Toby McKinnon • 13:51

That was a hunch. It was a hunch, and to be honest, you know, Barb is the founder. It was probably a hunch that she had initially as well. You know, we sort of talked about it and, you know, purely in its look and feel, it didn't feel modern. It didn't feel innovative. It didn't feel aligned to the customer. You know, HR is a heavily female skewed industry and it was a very harsh sort of brand look and feel and identity in the marketplace and dated. And so, you know, it was pretty clear that something needed to be done and really rapidly. 

I think we went through with you guys, and the Chello team, you know, start to finish. I think the first conversation was in December and we were in market in March the following year, you know, and that was a lot of work done in a very short period of time by a very small team of people.

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Lindsay Rogers • 14:40

Yeah, amazing. And when looking retrospectively at the work that you did on the Sapia brand over your time with Sapia, what would you say has been your biggest win?

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Toby McKinnon • 14:49

I'd say the colour, you know, purely from a brand perspective. You know, it's pink and it's not every day that you, and when you talk about buy-in and leadership buy-in, you know, Barb was was one thing, but she also was there. We needed to get the rest of the leadership team, as well as the broader organisation on board with the rebrand. And it was an unexpected choice for many. But again, then when we took them through the process of why we did what we did, we showed them the kind of prospect in the end user and what appeals to them. We showed them the category where our competitor’s brands were sitting as well, and it just made sense.

And there was an element of ‘we trust you Toby and team’, that this is the right thing. Some people said we love it, absolutely love it from day one, others said, ’yeah, I'm still on the fence’, but you fast forward a pretty short period of time and, you know, we would turn up at industry events and, you know, consistently having a presence at these events over time, people come up to us and say, “I've seen you guys before. I had to come over and find out what you're all about”. And we also had pink Sapia hats so we would make sure they were strategically placed, you know, in different forums of speakers, and so on, so forth. It wasn't uncommon for a moderator, an event to call out, you know, “someone in the pink hat”.

So, it was a nice moment. I always said that “my career would be done when I saw someone walking down the street in a pink Sapia hat or hoodie”. I haven't yet seen it, but I have relocated, so I'm pretty sure that they're out there. 

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Lindsay Rogers • 16:19

I love that the, you know, as simple component of the rebrand as color has become so distinctive and memorable for you. You've sort of really doubled down on owning it.

Tell me about creative adaptability. Digging deeper on that, what does that mean to you when you've taken single brand focused roles, so no longer in an agency across multiple brands, what does that adaptability look like there?

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Toby McKinnon • 16:38

All encompassing in any large organisation or corporate, you know, you always have 360 reviews and looking at how you can improve on yourself and as a part of a team. A lot of the feedback I had was that, you know, on my own kind of approach and performance was that, I would tend to listen first, and absorb, and take different points of view on board, and then consider, “is there an alternative way to putting forward what we're suggesting?”. Now that could be in terms of KPI setting, that could be in terms of, you know, a strategic product evolution, a quarterly planning. Anything within the business, you can apply creative thinking to how you solve that problem. 

It's not just a kind of creative solution per se, so really it's all encompassing and I’ll always try and encourage teams to maybe introduce the phrase, “you got to go wide to go narrow”, right? Like think of all the creative possibilities or different options that are out there, as far fetched as possible, to then hone in on the one that you need. And if you can't go that wide way, then you're not going to hit on the best outcome, in my opinion. 

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Lindsay Rogers • 17:40

And do you think that's something that can be taught, or do you think it's inherent? 

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Toby McKinnon • 17:44

No, I absolutely think it can be taught. Yeah, yeah. I mean I am a fundamental believer that there is creativity in every single person. It's just how it manifests itself, you know? What is your channel? You know, it's not just, “am I a painter or am I a writer?”.

You can be creative in your own world, and it doesn't have to be the creative arts, per se. And

it's a practice, I think, but it absolutely can be taught.

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Lindsay Rogers • 18:06

How do you manage that as a marketing leader in terms of stewarding an idea or an approach without wanting to kill terrible ideas? You know, how have you sort of managed teams with their own creative process?

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Toby McKinnon • 18:17

I’ve often asked the question, “is this the best we can do?” And it's a positive question, right?

Like, “is this the best that we can do?”. And if the answer, when people take time to really think about it and they challenge themselves, oftentimes they say, “actually I did have my own doubts about it, but we wanted to move forward anyway”. And you might get to that point where 80% is good enough, right? But if you're constantly asking yourself, “is this good enough?”, then you know you may find that you’d be able to push a different way. 

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Lindsay Rogers • 18:44

So on this sort of topic of marketing science, the data, and looking back retrospectively to be able to look forward, and looking at all the different metrics and touch points any senior marketer is keeping an eye on versus having a hunch around an approach, how have you sort of directed your career?

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Toby McKinnon • 19:01

It's a good question. I would say, you know, back in when I was in a core advertising role, there really wasn't a lot of data. You know, we just didn't have the technology then. Makes me sound like I'm really old, and a lot of it was hunch driven. You know, potentially the way you would use some data in a way would be focus groups and creative testing, which I think is, you know, it can be fraught with danger particularly from a creative aspect.

And there's many stories that can ruin good creative ideas, but it wasn't so data led at that point in time. And in part, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to move from kind of core advertising into a marketing role within a corporate, in that I felt that I didn't have a line of sight to how impactful the work that I was doing was in the marketplace, and I kind of wanted to have that accountability of ownership. To see a campaign, you know, through and through, right through to working with other teams in an organisation.

And that's when I was living in the States and working for WPP at the time. I said that to the vice president of Y&R, and I said, “look I'm spending more time in my client's offices with them and their teams, and I'm really, really interested and passionate about that, moreso than I think I am in our own offices”. And he said, “great, you know let's work out how we can transition you from this role into that role”, and he championed me being able to sort of really cut back to Australia and ended up kind of getting out of advertising per se.

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Lindsay Rogers • 20:22

Amazing, and how admirable for someone that’s, you know, within agency network land to help you land the role that's the right fit for you even if it's outside of WPP.

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Toby McKinnon • 20:30

He was a phenomenal leader, yeah.

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Lindsay Rogers • 20:31

And so tell me a bit about the reality of then being in large organisation marketing department side. Was that true? Did you feel then that you had more input on commercial end goals?

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Toby McKinnon • 20:39

Yeah, 100%. Yeah I mean, look you have to right? I mean, you're ultimately accountable for a budget. You are given targets or, you know, you develop targets depending on kind of where you are in the organisation and you're accountable for delivering on them, or not. And if you don't, you know, “what did you learn from it?” And “how do you go again?”. 

But that aspect of marketing takes it to, I think, a more serious level than you know, the core advertising role back in the day where it was just about developing creative campaigns and getting them to market. You’d always have a vested interest in, you know, “have they worked?”, and I think now if you fast forward 20 years, it's a very different role being in an advertising agency because agencies now are more structured to actually have skin in the game and be more data driven to make sure that the work they're developing actually works. So, different world now than it was then, but 100% within the marketing capacity. You know, owning that P&L and having to report that up into leadership change again, depending how big the business is, is vital.

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Lindsay Rogers • 21:30

So looping back to your earlier point around “there weren't that many data inputs”, so it was much more hunched back in agency land days. Do you feel like you've sort of moved along that scale with more data points now?

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Toby McKinnon • 21:41

You can't do anything now without data. It's ever present and it needs to be. It needs to be within the bounds of having to use a hunch or a calculated guess that something is going to work. 

You can sometimes have that leap of faith assumption to say, well, you know, 90% of our quarterly plan is built, locked and loaded, and forecasted not only on a quarter level, but a month level, a week level, and even to a point that we've set points where we’ll have KPI’s on a daily basis, right? 

But then there's that 10% where you take caution to the wind. That's where your creativity can really come in to say, look let's try something new here, that we will make a leap of faith assumption that if we do this, this will happen, but we don't know. And there is an inherent risk in doing that, but you're only apportioning a small portion of your budget and your time to be able to do that. And if it works then fantastic, you can double down and do it again. But there's still underlying premise of data beneath it.

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Lindsay Rogers • 22:33

And so how have you managed to garner buy in from a CFO, or CEO, or more senior commercial thinker when you're sort of saying, “we've got this little bucket for high risk activity”. How have you sold that in?

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Toby McKinnon • 22:43

I think it depends on the size and the type of the organisation, and the leader to be honest. I think one of the benefits of big businesses, you know, big global entities or even, you know, national entities here in Australia is that you do have the luxury of budgets. But with that comes a very structured target approach, and then your KPI’s are drilled right down.

As I said before, it takes a certain type of leader and culture to allow that level of risk to try that extra amount. I mean, when the chips are down and you're trying to do everything you can to hit that target, it's very easy to say, “well that 10%’s not there”. 

In a smaller organisation, it's a little bit like more anything can go. We've got nothing to lose. We've got less to lose, I should say. And it's beholden to us to try and be a bit more risky, to try something new. And if it works, fantastic, then let's go again. If it doesn't, great let's move on, and move on really quickly in that instance.

I think it really depends on the size of the organisation. As I said there, the other side is the leader, you know? Is the leader of that group or team or business unit prepared to try and look at new programs to then put forward, “is this best practice?”. 

In our team we have a culture of innovation and trying things new. And we mandate that, you know, every week or every month or every quarter, each team member and team allocates a little bit of time to do that kind of riskier creative thinking. And if they foster that through the team, then it's an easier sell.

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Lindsay Rogers • 24:06

So thinking back to your corporate roles that you've had in marketing teams, how have you defined brand in that context, and what kind of levers were you able to shift?

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Toby McKinnon • 24:13

I really think it's a summation of a range of collective experiences that really just elicit something of emotion, right? And I think the businesses that do this very well, brand is ever present across everything.

And I think customer service teams play a huge role in brand, you know? I think about some of the brands that I love, and they have a customer service team that will stop at nothing to make sure that that prospect or customer is happy. And if they're living, you know, what the brand has set out be then I'm left with a positive impression of that, so I'm then going to talk about that. I mean it's not rocket science, but I do think that the brand has to be ever present. So it's built into the product; it's building the customer service team; it's built into the way you hire people; it's built into the way you exit people. It is everywhere through an organisation, because then every time I see, feel, touch, hear of this brand or this product, I'm left with that same positive emotion or negative. 

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Lindsay Rogers • 25:09

Yeah, and so who do you think owns brand in an organisation? Whose responsibility is it? So often we hear that a marketing department has a head of brand or, you know, there's a brand project within the marketing context, but rarely, if ever, does customer service sit under marketing. And all aspects, products sit under marketing. So who owns brand and how do you reconcile that?

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Toby McKinnon • 25:27

Everyone owns brand and I actually remember back in the Bank of Queensland days, we went through a full rebrand and we did a roadshow with Stuart Grimshaw, then sort of, CEO, and he hired me. I was doing some consulting and brand review for him and the board at the time, and then he offered me the job a week after. And I said, “sure, I'm not a banker”. And he said, “Toby I don't need another one, I've got thousands of them. I need people that can come on board the business here, that can champion the customer, think about things differently and lift up every stone. Turn it over if it's the right way of doing it, it's not change it. Just make change happen. And I need people like that across the whole organisation”. And he hired people like that, right.

And so what that then permeated was there was sort of a foundation of leadership within the bank that were open to change and supporting. And so when it came to a rebrand, we did a roadshow around the whole country. And each time I'd get up and I would say to the network, “I'm hired here as in part_, the brand guy. But i'm not responsible for the brand. You are and you are and you are. Every single one of us is.”

There was a story of, one of the corporate guys who actually came in and it was under the guise of, it's possible to love a bank. So it's kind of challenging for the time, right, because everyone hates the big four banks. And so everything that we were doing at the bank was to prove that actually it is possible to love a bank. So the guise was that we just wanted them to hate us a little bit less. Yeah, we wouldn't say that externally, but internally that's kind of what it was. 

And, this corporate guy was actually at a supermarket and it’s a true story. And there was a woman who was going to pay for her groceries, and her bank card didn't work. So he actually leant forward and he tapped his card, and she was absolutely taken aback. And he said, “look, I'm from Bank of Queensland. We believe in doing things differently. And we think you should think it is possible to love a bank.”

And he came back and he told that story. And at that point I thought, well, this is fantastic. We've got the foundations here that people get internally and they're living and they’re breathing it. And then we had to foster that. And then more and more, more stories would come up. So it's not one person's responsibility. It's everybody's. And if it is one person's responsibility, it’ll fail a dismal death.

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Lindsay Rogers • 27:25

I know you've been through a variety of rebrands through your career, and I think I'm so passionate about the difference between branding and, creating a brand strategy, and stories. Usually led by a marketing team or a project team for a rebrand. Then, key being the communication to the rest of the team, the organisation embodying that work. It's very useless if it sits in a drawer as a brand book or, tools that are too far fetched from an consumer or somebody on the front face of the business. I love your idea that everyone is responsible for brand, and putting it back in the hands of people that are interacting with customers every day.

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Toby McKinnon • 28:01

Mhmm, absolutely. 

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Lindsay Rogers • 28:02

So you seem to have smoothly shifted from large corporate, marketing departments into start up land. We'd love to know a bit about your journey there and what it was that excited you about the move over.

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Toby McKinnon • 28:13

Smoothly is not a word I would use and for good reason, right? I've always wanted to kind of challenge myself and do things differently. So, from working in Advertising in Australia over into North America and learning a whole new country and, understanding how consumers work over there. You know, through to moving into to marketing and then different industries within that.

The opportunity, to get into startups was kind of a box that I always wanted to tick. I had friends and family members who have been in startups, some successfully, others not. And it was always something about it that really interested me and the opportunity came up. And, with the founder at the time and I also remember she said, “let's consider this like a first date”. She said “if you like me and I like you, you know, you never know where it might go.” And one thing led to another, and I ended up coming on board. 

But it was much like moving into banking. I remember the COO at the time who said to me, “you know, my only concern with you Toby is your culture fit. You know, you're coming from advertising and we're a regional bank. And, you know, I want to make sure that you can adapt into the culture.” And, you know, hindsight, I was there for six years, so obviously I was able to. But that adaptability is really important. And on the flip side, when I moved into startup world, in fact, it was the COO as well, said to me, “you need to be comfortable being uncomfortable. And if you're not prepared to roll up your sleeves here, then don't come on board.”

And it was really transparent, you know, about that fact. And he was absolutely right in that, in a startup environment, you are doing things that you haven't done in many, many, many years. You know, if you think youre gonna be in a marketing role, you know, in your own vertical for one, and you'll have teams and budgets to do everything. It's just not the case. You know, you will be taking pull up banners at events and setting up booths. You know, you'll be packing them down at the end of the day it's by any stretch of the imagination.But it's really fulfilling because you're there and you're seeing the change happen literally on a day to day basis.

And really, really small wins are really, really big in a startup. Versus in a bigger organsation, you know, it can often go unseen. So the energy you have in the startup is fantastic, but you do have to go into it with your eyes wide open, knowing, you know, what it is that you're getting into. But it's fun.

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Lindsay Rogers • 30:22

Yeah, amazing. I know something you and I are both really passionate about is B2B brands being less traditionally B2B. And by that I mean, not just kind of the old ad, thinking around direct mail and boring everything. Where do you think this comes from for you? Why are you particularly passionate about B2B being reimagined?

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Toby McKinnon • 30:39

I don't think it's necessary that B2B. I think it's about people, you know, I actually, I studied psychology before I studied business management. I didn't finish it. I did transfer halfway through it, but I have an innate passion and an interesting people. And so I think it's not just B2B per se, but it is that at the end of every single purchase, doesn't matter what industry, product or service you're selling, there’s a person.

And I believe that innately that human beings like to be engaged and entertained. And even if it's an enterprise grade product, you are enjoying seeing things out in the marketplace and in your own personal space and even in, you know, in your work environment that cut through and are a  bit different. And even if it engages and stops you two seconds in that first instance and creates that memorable moment, even as small as it might be, in time you're going to come back to it. 

So I'm a firm believer that there's absolutely no reason that B2B brands can't be more engaging than they have been historically. You know? I mean, you look at the sales forces of the world, they're doing some amazing creative work that's cutting through. And I think more and more it's going to happen because, those brands that don't entertain and engage in the right format. Right? I mean, there is a time for, function and factual aspects, particularly given sales cycles are longer, and they're going to be needed to justify often what is larger expense. But that first top of the funnel engagement absolutely can and should be differentiated. 

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Lindsay Rogers • 32:01

And across your career, how have you decided on the split between top of funnel, brand building all the way through to, really niche performance?

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Toby McKinnon • 32:08

I think it really varies on the state of the business, the business itself, the budgets and allocation. You know, there's always going to be an element of test and learn. I have found there's been instances where, if we're heading towards, you know, the end of a quarter, you know, we may well reallocate, budget from top of the funnel work to more lower and middle funnel work in an effort to kind of get us over that, finishing line. Is that the right decision? Not necessarily for a long term organisation. But you know, it can be done if it needs to be done.

But back to the original point that everything must sell, should brand and everything that brands, should sell. It is that combination of the two. So it doesn't matter whether it is a lower funnel, they’re still gonna want a brand to it.

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Lindsay Rogers • 32:41

Who's your sort of pin up brand? Who do you think does brand really well?

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Toby McKinnon • 32:46

There's a lot of them, you know, for me, really, any brand that walks the walk to me appeals. And I say that in that, it is in their DNA, a values, purpose driven organisation. There's a company called, Nakie. I don't know if you know them, but they sell hammocks. And, you know, I bought one because they engaged with me on social media. And then as I looked into them, it looked like, well, this is an amazing product, for one, it's made from recycled bottles. But not only that is that they plant a tree for every hammock that they sell. But also, you know, everything that they do in terms of their customer service and the experience that you have is aligned to that. 

And it is, it's just a really good experience. And there's a lot of those brands out, I mean, Patagonia is always one that's talked about. But there are huge amount, I did an interview last week with a company called NATPAT who make these little patches for kids. And the three founders really started the business because they wanted to solve parenting problems. And they're making these products specifically for problems that they as parents face that they think other parents can benefit from. But they also have an ethos that they don't want to grow too big because they love the job that they're doing. And the bigger they get, the less of that passion they feel.They're going to limit the size of the business to kind of where it needs to be. 

But then in addition to that, they have a customer service policy that if you are absolutely not happy with your product whatsoever, they will guarantee they'll give you the money back. And there’s only about a 5% return in that regard. But also, the founders like to try and respond to every single person where they can, themselves. Now they know that's not necessarily scalable, but they're actually working on a way that they can try and make that scalable. And so the passion that they have for every touchpoint and every customer, I think comes through. So for me, the kind of brands like that not necessarily the halmark brands that you might see out there in the marketplace.

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Lindsay Rogers • 34:21

I love that idea that, you know, we talk around the, shift in the early, early days of startups building the first iteration of brand being sort of often founder centric. Whether or not the founders face is on it, but it's very much the thoughts, the thinking, the approach of the founder. And then eventually there's an inflection point where it's more around the market solution fit standing on its own two feet.

And I think what you're getting out there is that from a funding perspective, everything's about scale and, you know, keeping the heart. Whether it's the product or the brand or the opportunity that the organisation solving and scaling it commercially. And I think from a brand perspective, an interesting question to solve is sort of how do we scale founder sentiment? You know, the passion, the enthusiasm, that is what started and sort of got the organisation off the ground. How do you scale that into the future? And I think whether it's copy, whether its sort of finishing touch from a founder. I know there's organisations that will send out CEOs to, customers and the surprise and delight, trying to keep the common thread of that, senior executive all the way through to customer, I think is underdone and really important.

And then if you add to that all the content, you can deliver and capture from those beautiful moments, I think we'll see more of it in the future hopefully.

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Toby McKinnon • 35:23

Yeah, and I think fundamentally it comes back as almost full circle right. It comes back to the people you hire.

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Lindsay Rogers • 35:27

Yeah.

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Toby McKinnon • 35:23

Yeah, it's the people that make the culture. And if people are aligned on the purpose, the organisation, what they’re trying to achieve and the founders trying to achieve, then they're in the tent together. And the people that are, they tend to get weeded out pretty quickly because it's not fit for them, it's not fit for the company. And that's okay too.

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Lindsay Rogers • 35:40

And I think that's the great thing around clarity and accountability. This is who we are and this is what we stand for as a brand. Through the sort of articulation of brand strategy and then hiring people that embody that, sort of like oil and water. If you're not the right fit, that's fine. But we're really clear on why we're here and where we're heading.

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Toby McKinnon • 35:54

Completely agree.

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Lindsay Rogers • 35:55

I hear so many marketers, in my world anyway, toying with the idea of, moving from large organisation into startup. You mentioned it's a box you felt you needed to tick.

What would you say to somebody that has been running a large marketing department, thinking about moving into startup land? How can they get themselves primed? What could they, whether it's resources or mindset or things to get right from the start?

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Toby McKinnon • 36:14

I think it's probably mindset, right? As I said earlier, that if you're not prepared to roll up your sleeves and really be on the tools and be a team member as well as a leader, then you really want to consider whether it's right for you, because every single day is going to be different. 

There’s ebbs and there’s flows, there are challenges that unforeseen, which you could never have accounted for if you’d planned it out, it just doesn't happen. And that's very different than in a large organisation, because you don't have the luxury of time to try and fix it. You just got to fix it right there and then and put that far out, then move to the next one. I mean it is a bit of a cliche to say it like that, it's true right. And it's energizing and exciting, but you need to be really clear about what you're getting into before you do that, because it's a different world than being in a big corporate.

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Lindsay Rogers • 37:04

So on that note, what's next for you?

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Toby McKinnon • 37:06

I'm continuing doing some consulting for startup scale ups, which have a passion for, I think, once you've had a taste for it, it is great. Because you can inherently make a difference really quickly to these kind of businesses. So I'm going to continue on that path and I'm also, I haven't actually mentioned to you, but I have a partner with two other people, and looking at a people management platform. Which really is focused around wellbeing and academically outline to positively impact, an employee's wellbeing that increases their capacity. Which also then leads to productivity and performance gains for an organisation.

So it's a win win in terms of the individual person gets benefit in corporate workplace that their whole lives are actually a better functioning version of themselves. But then they're actually able to deliver more with an organisation, and there are commercial gains on that side of as well. So, looking at building that out, and getting it to market fairly soon.

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Lindsay Rogers • 37:55

How incredible! I had no idea. I feel like it's breaking news podcast. 

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Toby McKinnon • 37:58

It kind of is, yeah. 

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Lindsay Rogers • 37:59

Thank you so much for your time. This has been such a enjoyable and interesting conversation.

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Lindsay Rogers • 38:06

For me, I took out of it the importance of creative adaptability throughout your career. Whether it's large organisation or small team starting something from scratch, how important that thread has been throughout your career.

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Toby McKinnon • 38:17

Thanks very much for having me. It's been fantastic.

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