The ROI of doing good: Can brand purpose drive growth?

[00:00:00] Lindsay Rogers: 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 Natalie Placko.

Natalie is the Global Brand Director at Intrepid Travel.

‍

[00:00:23] Lindsay Rogers: Intrepid is a small group adventure business.

Think immersive experiences, small group of 12 to 14 people, and a great local

leader. It's travel that respects local people and places. Natalie's been at Intrepid

for nearly nine years in her most recent stint, but was with the business for

seven years previously.

‍

[00:00:41] Lindsay Rogers: In her time back with the business, she now sits on

the global leadership team and has helped lead Intrepid to four consecutive

years of record top and bottom line growth. It's really exciting to have you on

the show. Welcome.

‍

[00:00:53] Natalie Placko: Hi, Lindsay. Thanks for having me.

‍

[00:00:54] Lindsay Rogers: So tell me a bit about your career today. I know

you've had both brand side and agency side experience.

‍

[00:01:00] Lindsay Rogers: Tell me a bit about where you came from.

‍

[00:01:02] Natalie Placko: Yeah, I came from a totally different university

degree, which was back many moons ago, and it was in fine arts. I think I

thought I was going to be like an artist and then got to uni and realised that was

not my calling. And actually I went on a gap year and I found my calling.

‍

[00:01:24] Natalie Placko: So I traveled for a year and then, like many Aussies,

came home and thought, God, what am I going to do with myself? And ended

up working as a travel agent to begin with, and then found, I guess my, maybe

what I call my first true love, which was Intrepid Travel.

‍

[00:01:41] Lindsay Rogers: So you came back from a gap year. I'm assuming

at some point, did you study marketing?

‍

[00:01:45] Lindsay Rogers: How did you sort of ladder into that?

‍

[00:01:47] Natalie Placko: So then I started at Intrepid and I worked in sales.

We were a really small business back then. Um, from memory, there were like

30 or 40 of us. Now there's over three and a half thousand around the world. So

back then I worked in sales, we were a small business and so we really had huge

opportunities and, and I'm really grateful for that initial time where I was lucky

enough to progress into sort of sales and marketing roles.

‍

[00:02:13] Natalie Placko: I then went back and studied marketing while I was

working full time. And I think actually for me, that was. It's amazing because I

got the benefit of working in real time or using those learnings in real time. And

so it just felt like a really great anchoring of both my, I guess, personal passion,

my professional career, and then my learning as well, and my continued,

continued learning on the job.

‍

[00:02:39] Lindsay Rogers: And what do you think your sort of first few years

in sales taught you then, or did it give you sort of a leg up at all from a

marketing perspective?

‍

[00:02:46] Natalie Placko: Absolutely. And I actually think all great marketers

should either have worked in sales or at least have a real sort of interest and I

guess opportunity to lean into sales in their organisations.

‍

[00:03:01] Natalie Placko: For us, we've always been, and I think we'll always

continue to be a really sales led business. And that was integral, not only

learning about the product. And obviously learning about the business, but

really that commercial acumen is so important in marketing because the two

totally feed each other.

‍

[00:03:18] Natalie Placko: Marketing feeds sales, sales feeds marketing. The

two just work beautifully together, if you get it right. And so having that

knowledge or having that experience has absolutely paved the way for me,

especially in this organisation and other organisations as well.

‍

[00:03:33] Lindsay Rogers: Mm. I believe between your stints at Intrepid, you

went and worked in some other places, one of those being PR agency side.

[00:03:40] Lindsay Rogers: What do you think that sort of layered on, or what

did that chapter mark for you in your sort of broader marketing career?

‍

[00:03:45] Natalie Placko: Yeah. I mean, it was really amazing. I'm really

fortunate that I had that opportunity. I think I was a bit old though to work in an

agency. I was a new mum. I was really passionate about working in an agency

and I kind of left it for a really long time.

‍

[00:04:04] Natalie Placko: And so when I got given the opportunity, I jumped

at it. I wish I'd done it earlier. I think and some of the best people I've worked

with and had in my teams have worked in agency in the beginning of their

careers, and I would give that recommendation or advice to any young marketer

to go and work in agency first.

‍

[00:04:24] Natalie Placko: It's really hard, but it really teaches you invaluable

skills. You build such a great network. And you really learn about clients

without being on client's side. This experience for me was really great. PR is

hard and specialisation is hard. I'd always said that I was like a generalist

marketer. You know, I still say I'm a generalist marketer.

‍

[00:04:48] Natalie Placko: I'm actually not really that good at anything. I just

kind of know a lot about a lot of things or know a little about a lot of things.

And what I learned PR is just, and in this agency in particular, is it was all about

the obsession around being a PR professional. It didn't really matter what the

product was, and the team that I worked with were really impressive.

‍

[00:05:12] Natalie Placko: They just did the same thing really well over and

over and over again. So a great learning, yeah, definitely my advice for others. I

wish I'd done it earlier.

‍

[00:05:22] Lindsay Rogers: Yeah amazing.

‍

[00:05:23] Lindsay Rogers: Tell me a bit. So this more recent stint that you

came back to the business, I think you went from sort of a, AUNZ sort of

marketing role into a global role.

‍

[00:05:31] Lindsay Rogers: What have been the changes there? What's the sort

of, is it a pace change or how have you found it?

‍

[00:05:36] Natalie Placko: Yeah, it's, um, it's a really big change. Intrepid's

quite an interesting organisation in that we are very global, but we have regional

officers or regional teams around the world. And in particular, three core

regional sales and marketing teams.

‍

[00:05:55] Natalie Placko: One in Toronto, one in London, and obviously one

here in Melbourne, which is our head office. So, and over the sort of journey of

Intrepid 36 this year, we've gone from very regional or very global to begin

with, very regional. And then we're kind of somewhere in the middle now. And

so this didn't since just before the pandemic or kind of 2018, I've been in this

global role.

‍

[00:06:20] Natalie Placko: It was a very small global. In fact, I was the first

person in the global brand team. Fast forward to today, we're sitting at around

50 scattered all over the world. The business has obviously changed organically

and in, in many ways over that time. But yeah, I was one person in the global

brand team. So we really started to work out what was global brand.

‍

[00:06:44] Natalie Placko: In fact, back then we didn't do global brand. We

didn't actually do brand. So from 2018 before 2018, and even I'd say before

2020, 2021, during the pandemic, we didn't really do brand. We did a lot of

good. Tactical marketing, destination marketing, but what's what we know now

as brand marketing, we just didn't do it.

‍

[00:07:09] Natalie Placko: So there's been huge changes, not only in the

organisational structure, but also in just the approach from a brand perspective

in how we market and how we put the brand out there. So it's been great.

‍

[00:07:23] Lindsay Rogers: So the pandemic hit, travel, you know, came to a

grinding halt. Tell me a bit about how that felt and what you did from there.

‍

[00:07:29] Natalie Placko: Yeah, um, It was. Like something we would never

have dreamed of. I mean, no one would have dreamt of it. I think for travel, it

was really life changing and, and business changing because it was the first time

in our history that we had to stop all operations.

‍

[00:07:51] Natalie Placko: We had never stopped operations. Yes, there was

some countries where, you know, we kind of had to, for different reasons, you

know, pull out of, or kind of go back into, but we'd never stopped operations.

‍

[00:08:02] Natalie Placko: So for a travel operator to not operate was really, it

was really epic. It was a really epic moment. It was also a really awful time for

a business that has to sadly say goodbye to a huge part of their workforce for no

fault of theirs. And then we went into skeleton mode, we went into survival

mode, but we knew that we also, um, we're going to make it, we'd been well

financed.

‍

[00:08:30] Natalie Placko: or well managed from a financial perspective

business by our CEO. So we knew that we have reserves in the bank and that

we would be able to not only look after our customers, look after some of our

people. And as many as we could keep, we did. And that we would really look

at how we built back better into the future.

‍

[00:08:49] Natalie Placko: And so what do you do when you don't operate?

Trips is that you try to think about what does. Well, one, what does the future

look like from an operational perspective? And how do we come back better?

But you talk about brand. And so we had this really great moment and we knew

that it was really one moment we could lean into, which was talk about the

brand because we couldn't talk about the destinations.

‍

[00:09:14] Natalie Placko: We couldn't talk about running trips. We couldn't

talk about customers because we didn't have any customers. And so we talked

about the brand. And so I think we really found ourselves during the pandemic

and we were lucky enough, which would not have happened in many

organisations is that prior to the pandemic, we'd started what was going to be a

total rebrand.

‍

[00:09:35] Natalie Placko: And luckily for us, we continued that project and

the objective of the brand refresh was how do we anchor. Our product and our

purpose more closely in a way that was more engaging for our customers.

‍

[00:09:50] Lindsay Rogers: Give me a really quick overview of what

somebody can expect when they engage in an Intrepid tour and where does the

heart component of it come from?

‍

[00:09:57] Lindsay Rogers: I know you're very involved with local suppliers

and operators.

‍

[00:10:00] Natalie Placko: So our mission is to create positive change through

the joy of travel. And again, that is that sort of anchoring of purpose and

product. and that is what you experience on our trips. So anywhere from 12 to

16 people on a small group adventure, we travel to over 100 countries.

‍

[00:10:18] Natalie Placko: We've got almost 900 trips across seven continents.

There will be travelers that travel with you on the trip from all over the world,

primarily Australia. The UK, Europe, North America, so US and Canada, but

also a heap of other countries. And so you'll turn up on one of our trips, you'll

have one of our local leaders, they will take you from A to B and run the

itinerary, but they're also the person, the local person that will introduce you and

enable interactions with local communities, with local people, and will bring

those sort of special.

‍

[00:11:00] Natalie Placko: What we call only Intrepid moments. And so that

could be, yeah, like a beautiful local lunch at someone's family home that you

would never be invited into if you weren't with Intrepid and with our local

leader. Um, it could be just, you know, having access to a local guide or a local

attraction that is only for locals and not for tourists.

‍

[00:11:25] Natalie Placko: And so, again, we give access to experiences like

that. Our trips range from a week or a couple of weeks, lots of local interaction,

local transport and locally owned or and run hotels. And so our accommodation

can be really diverse in India. You can stay at a palace in Australia, you can

sleep under the stars and everything in between, but it really has to have that

can't do this by yourself sort of flavor and also have that interaction with the

community.

‍

[00:11:58] Natalie Placko: And so for us, it's about supporting local

organisations, local people. It is about empowering locals to run their own

businesses for us to continue bringing people into their, either into their

businesses, into their communities, into their homes. And it is about that

connection. You know, we have this big ambition for 2030, a big sort of

winning aspiration of that is delivering on this sort of statement, which is the

world needs more Intrepid people.

‍

[00:12:27] Natalie Placko: And we feel that if there were just more Intrepid

people out there, who kind of had this sense of, you know, we're probably more

alike than different around the world, then the world would be a better place.

And so. Going on an Intrepid trip can just be a holiday or going on an Intrepid

trip can give you this connection with local communities that just makes you

look at the world a little bit differently and opens up your mind and your

perspective.

‍

[00:12:53] Natalie Placko: And so when you come home, you just become a

little bit more Intrepid.

‍

[00:12:57] Lindsay Rogers: I'm so glad you were sharing about the strategy. I

was reading online that the sort of ambitious 2030 strategy in commercial terms

is around 1. 3 billion in revenue, 600, 000 customers in the next sort of six

years, five years now. And it's amazing to hear how that then comes to life from

a purpose or like a bigger, more meaningful perspective than just the

commercial terms.

‍

[00:13:18] Lindsay Rogers: Um, it's a really unique business in terms of your

customers are exposed to the, you know, the guides or the leaders. on the trip as

a huge part of your brand. You know, I'm sure people come back, they love

their guides. So therefore they love the interpret experience. How do you sort of

maintain great customer experience through the guides when they're different

cultures and people in totally different countries, you know, they have their own

unique way of doing things.

‍

[00:13:43] Lindsay Rogers: How do you maintain that consistency?

‍

[00:13:45] Natalie Placko: Yeah, absolutely. And it isn't easy. And it and

whilst it's consistent to a certain degree, there's definitely this sense of bringing

out the best of our leaders or enabling our leaders to bring the best of

themselves. and their destinations or their countries and their cities to our

customers in the best way that the trip enables them to do.

‍

[00:14:10] Natalie Placko: Every trip is really different. I mean, obviously we

follow set itineraries, but when I say set itineraries, you know, we enable the

leaders and actually one of the favourite experiences that many of our leaders

do. Is actually end up taking their groups to have lunch or dinner with their

family if they're lucky enough for the itinerary to go through their hometown.

‍

[00:14:33] Natalie Placko: And so we do definitely, you know, encourage and I

guess, inspire that. Spontaneity kind of approach. Having said that, yes, there is

training. There is kind of brand modules. There is, I guess, formula around how

we onboard our leaders, how we hope to continuously sort of train them on

brand. I mean, it's kind of a little bit of both.

‍

[00:15:01] Natalie Placko: How do they get the formal kind of proper training

and how do we just give them the tools for them to be able to be who they are

when they're running their trips and actually be, I guess, um, flexible enough to

accommodate the groups and the groups can be wildly different from one week

to another. And whether it be because they've come from totally different parts

of the world.

‍

[00:15:25] Natalie Placko: Or whether they're different in ages or whether

they're just different in what their expectations are of whether they really like

travel really well traveled or not as well traveled. And so our leaders have the

hardest job in the company by far, much harder than the CEO, much harder than

any of us in brand and marketing.

‍

[00:15:44] Natalie Placko: Our leaders have the hardest job. But they are 100

percent the best brand ambassadors. And for us to have that chance to connect

through our product with a customer, with our brand, it is the leader. And so we

do, and we continuously try to sort of. Elevate the way that we're working from

a brand team, how we're engaging and working with our leaders, you know, to

make their jobs easier and also for them to continuously kind of bring the brand

to life in their own ways when they're on our trips.

‍

[00:16:16] Lindsay Rogers: Yeah, my parents are avid Intrepiders and they just

got back last week from a trip to Sri Lanka and my mum was sharing that they

obviously had an itinerary program and that's. A big reason as to why they

chose the trip, but one of the unforeseen and probably most memorable,

certainly most soulful experiences was my mom had a photograph of her dad

during the war in Sri Lanka on this monument.

‍

[00:16:37] Lindsay Rogers: And the, the, the guide, the leader of the tour went

well out of his way to go and recreate the photo with my mom in it from my

granddad's. And I think that's just sort of proof in the pudding as to the sort of

consistent brand experience that they signed up for, but the authenticity and the

flexibility to be able to deliver a really great local experience.

‍

[00:16:58] Lindsay Rogers: He was able to find the area, like, as a local would,

and it would be really hard as a tourist arriving, you know, for a few days. So

they're avid, they love, they've done a variety of different Intrepid trips. They.

Personally love the, I guess the level that you can choose level of comfort. So

you sort of know where you stand from a more, I don't know what you call

them, but more basic option through to a more luxury option and therefore the

like mindedness of the people also on the trip and they've made amazing friends

locally and globally.

‍

[00:17:26] Lindsay Rogers: And I guess that's the sort of opportunity you're

untapping with people meeting. Like minded people along the trip. Tell me a bit

about the loneliness epidemic. I can only assume that part of your success as a

organisation has been people connecting with other like minded people in this,

you know, continually lonely world, what role and is an active sort of role that

you play from a brand perspective in that, or is that just a by product of a great

travel product?

‍

[00:17:52] Natalie Placko: No, we absolutely feel and I guess, especially since

coming out of the pandemic, that the shared experience of an Intrepid trip is

absolutely a solution to some of the, the bigger kind of, I guess, problems that

we're, that we're seeing and people are feeling around the world. There is. You

know, nothing like a shared experience to make you not feel alone for people.

‍

[00:18:22] Natalie Placko: Sometimes joining an Intrepid trip can be really

daunting, especially if you're a solo traveler, a heap of our travelers, a solo

travelers, single travelers, I'd say well over sort of 50 or 60%. And many of

them are solo female travelers. And so they're choosing Intrepid for a number of

reasons. Um, obviously sort of the trust around, you know, safety and, you

know, that confidence in traveling.

‍

[00:18:51] Natalie Placko: But so many of our customers over the years, not

just now, but over the years choose to travel with Intrepid because they want to

travel with like minded people from all over the world and not just, you know,

their home countries. It's not always easy to join on day one, like day one can be

really hard, but throwing yourself in and kind of leaning into that experience.

‍

[00:19:12] Natalie Placko: I know that a hundred percent of our customers,

that's the brand in me saying a hundred percent of our customers come away

feeling like they've had a great connection. They've made some friends, they've

met like minded travelers and I feel like if Intrepid in some small way can

inspire someone to kind of step outside of their comfort zone to join a group

that will have like minded travellers and that will have a leader there to kind of

give them that trust and support, then I just think they're going to be, you know,

better off for it and hopefully, you know, find that connection with people that

they may not have back home.

‍

[00:19:52] Lindsay Rogers: Absolutely. And I'm assuming there's probably a

lot of great friendships, even marriages, babies, who knows people that have so

many,

‍

[00:19:58] Natalie Placko: so many, we've told some great stories. We have

actually a lot of people who do reunion trips as well. So the whole group will

just do a reunion trip in a new destination, which is lovely.

‍

[00:20:07] Lindsay Rogers: I'd assume also you've got a lot of solo travelers,

but I assume people like quite introvert people, perhaps that maybe could book

the same destination, but perhaps wouldn't expose themselves to some

experiences or meeting people would get a lot from being in a, in a cohort and

sort of facilitated with a guide.

‍

[00:20:24] Natalie Placko: Absolutely. And so. Yeah, it's a really good point.

We definitely don't only have extroverts on our trips. In fact, really different.

And we've done some really good psychographic work on the Intrepid traveler

over the last year or so. And the, the, you know, it's actually a real mix of

introverts and extroverts.

‍

[00:20:44] Natalie Placko: It just has to be this kind of, I guess, little sense of,

you know, feeling excited or kind of comfortable enough to connect with other

travelers. That's what you need. You just need to think, okay, I'm going to, I just

want to connect. You don't have to, you know, don't have to go full on. We have

the opportunity for our single travelers to book single rooms so they don't even

have to share rooms.

‍

[00:21:06] Natalie Placko: You can share rooms with others. But there is this

kind of really nice kind of lean in during the day. Have a single room at the end

of the day. And so these trips are not designed just for extroverts. There is this

really beautiful opportunity for people to kind of step outside of their comfort

zones if they are introverts.

‍

[00:21:23] Lindsay Rogers: I guess you're just asking for them to have some

sort of openness, which you would hope so if they were at the point of booking.

Exactly. Tell me about that psychographic research. What led you there to

undertake it? And what have you found that's been interesting?

‍

[00:21:33] Natalie Placko: So prior to the pandemic, we didn't look at the

health of our brand.

‍

[00:21:39] Natalie Placko: Post pandemic, when we really leaned in and we, I

would say that we really kind of shifted gear into being sort of a brand led

organisation, we invested in brand health tracking and we now, once a quarter,

do brand health surveys. And get quarterly insights, which I, again, as a word of

advice for other brand marketers, if you can invest even really at a low level in

some sort of brand health measurement, it's been so valuable for us, not only in,

I guess, I guess in a way sort of elevating brand and the conversation.

‍

[00:22:18] Natalie Placko: of brand within the full organisation, all the way up

to the C suite, our CEO and our chairman, all the way through to our

salespeople and our leaders is being able to talk confidently about our brand

health and the insights that we're seeing from those surveys has been really,

really powerful for us.

‍

[00:22:36] Natalie Placko: What we saw in our first year of Brand Health

Insights. So we've gone on, I guess, a bit of a journey over the last sort of 12 to

18 months where we've decided to introduce a new brand positioning. It's

probably the final piece of the puzzle and most brands will have done this all at

once. But given we did the brand refresh project during the pandemic, we are

kind of catching up and this is the last piece of the puzzle in our brand platform.

‍

[00:23:02] Natalie Placko: As part of that brand positioning, we've done a heap

of work on audience segmentation. We've done a heap of work on brand voice,

brand identity, and ultimately sort of that hero brand positioning piece. The

psychographic work that we did going back to the original question was really

around audience segments.

‍

[00:23:23] Natalie Placko: We kind of felt like we knew our customers and

ultimately we did, and we definitely did within our regions. And so our great

marketing teams within each of our regions had a really strong understanding

and deep understanding of who their customers were in each of their regional

areas. What we didn't, though, have is a global view.

‍

[00:23:44] Natalie Placko: And so the psychographic work that we did was

identify six core audience segments for the Intrepid traveler globally. And now

we're using those audience segments as a way to really prioritise Our marketing,

especially performance, but also ensure that whilst there are six that we have

some prioritisation in which audience segments we're focusing on.

‍

[00:24:10] Lindsay Rogers: And so I'm assuming now the journey is to track

the brand performance over time, diving deeper into those sort of personas or

the six different audience segments. What is Utopia? What is sort of true

success to you?

‍

[00:24:21] Natalie Placko: Part of the audience segmentation is also a

connection strategy, which is. Pretty simply exactly what it says, how are we

connecting to these audiences and strategically thinking about why, when and

how are those connection points really ensuring that we're putting a budget, our

focus and our prioritisation in the right places.

‍

[00:24:45] Natalie Placko: The big thing around the connection strategy and I

guess the audience segments is that they're definitely not different to the

travelers that we have now, but that identifying of them is really important and

that they're not all traveling now. And so it's this really nice journey of what are

we doing now to slowly but surely bring them into the community and not have

those short term expectations that they're already converting today or tomorrow.

‍

[00:25:09] Natalie Placko: And so this really nice kind of short and long term.

I guess journey of the audience segmentation and audience segmentation sounds

kind of really heartless because actually it's just a community of travelers. But

you know, it will drive what product we're creating, how we're creating that

product, what innovation we're bringing into our product so that we actually

have something for everyone in this, in this community and customer group.

‍

[00:25:34] Lindsay Rogers: Incredible. And how have you structured your

local and global marketing team around that? Do you have a short term sort of

performance focus team and then other long term brand building, or give me a

bit of flavor around that.

‍

[00:25:45] Natalie Placko: We have a great marketing structure. It is a little bit

hybrid and a little bit regional and global.

‍

[00:25:52] Natalie Placko: As I mentioned, we have a global performance team

led by our GM of global marketing, and we partner with a really great. media

agency over in the UK who looks after all of our performance, paid

performance for all of our regions. But our marketing teams regionally are

absolutely kind of laddering up into that strategy as well.

‍

[00:26:14] Natalie Placko: And so we prioritising sort of three of our segments

in each of our performance plans for 2025. And then we're doing, or we're just

about to kick off some High risk. High reward. The global team will be

managing. You know, we'll kind of cover the budget because it is a little bit

more risky. You know, our regional teams are very, very connected and

engaged with our daily, weekly, monthly sales targets.

‍

[00:26:41] Natalie Placko: And so we you know, we don't want to kind of mess

with that great, strong, deep strategy that we know works. But we want to try

some new high risk, high reward connections that we haven't done before. And

so that is identifying one of the audience segments in one region and really

looking at potentially just one or two new connection platforms and going,

okay, great.

‍

[00:27:06] Natalie Placko: Let's go and see. Does this work? Hopefully it does.

Um, what can we learn from him? And then how can we slowly kind of roll it

out? So there's definitely short term, I guess, to a certain degree, the three

priority segments that each of the regions are focusing on that are a little bit

different. You know, we know them really well already.

‍

[00:27:25] Natalie Placko: We know what platforms work and convert. And

now we're going, okay, great. So if we were looking at not one of the priority

segments, how do we start seeding that so that as we move into 2030, we've got

some really strong learnings so that by that time we are really rolling out that

full connection strategy.

‍

[00:27:44] Lindsay Rogers: Amazing. In the last episode with Tony Westlake

at Big Red Group, she was talking about Adrenaline. For example, when you

jump out of a plane and you have this amazing experience, you want to tell

everyone about it because you've sort of experienced it. But then when it comes

to marketing, the challenge is like, how do you share that story when someone's

not yet experienced it?

‍

[00:28:02] Lindsay Rogers: I would assume it's the same for Intrepid trips.

People come back just sort of raving. How do you harness that from a

marketing perspective? What's your journey been around the role of

storytelling?

‍

[00:28:12] Natalie Placko: Yeah, we're exactly the same in that, that feeling

off. Um, I guess that experience that you have and that feeling of emotion, that

emotional connection you have when you travel, you can't put on a billboard or

you can't put into, you know, even though our copy is great, our messaging is

really good.

‍

[00:28:32] Natalie Placko: Uh, you know, visual identity is really strong. It

doesn't do anything. Yeah. Anything in building that connection. So we have

the same challenge. And again, I think, you know, as we kind of came out of the

pandemic, one of the things we really leaned into is, you know, becoming more

of a storytelling sort of brand or, you know, looking at those opportunities of

talking about.

‍

[00:28:57] Natalie Placko: You those experiences really connecting with our

customers for our customers to be telling us those stories and interestingly, a VP

of PR and social, you know, he, he, a couple of years ago, kicked off tick tock

and for Intrepid and actually our strategy for I think what would have been

probably the first.

‍

[00:29:18] Natalie Placko: Was stories told by our customers only, not stories

told by Intrepid. We've got the good times, which is a blog platform. We have

the good times magazine, which is a little print magazine that we create. We've

got our social channels. We are really doing a lot in our videos. space and

continue and will continue to really prioritise video in 2025, which probably

every brand is because everyone wants more video, but trying to kind of get

those stories and connect with our customers for them to tell those stories is so

important for us bringing to life and Intrepid experience.

‍

[00:29:52] Natalie Placko: is the best way to convert a new customer. We do

actually have a, a brand within Intrepid, which is our urban adventures. And so

it's a product within our portfolio, which is day trips. And so we're trying to

really look at how we use urban adventures as a marketing tool, because if you

can go and have an urban adventure experience with Intrepid, you're getting the

bite size experience.

‍

[00:30:15] Natalie Placko: And then hopefully that will inspire you and

motivate you to book a multi day trip, but also looking at new ways, how we

can bring a little taste of Intrepid to inspire someone to travel with us.

‍

[00:30:26] Lindsay Rogers: Thinking back to the pandemic and how pivotal it

was for you as a business. How did you land on your brand purpose work that

you've taken forward?

‍

[00:30:33] Lindsay Rogers: Like, what is it and what does it look like to you?

‍

[00:30:35] Natalie Placko: Yeah. So as I mentioned, I mean, purpose has kind

of been at the heart of Intrepid since day one. And actually the experience that

the two co founders had when they first traveled together, which was the

inspiration and motivation to start Intrepid when they came back from their

journey was all about giving back to the communities, giving back to the places

that we travel. And so, you know, they continued to, you know, build itineraries

and build the product around that formula. We were one of the first. Business to

hire a responsible travel manager as well back many, many years ago. And so

even just like those little things around being the first we were at the time in

2018, the world's largest travel B Corp and continue to successfully grow and

increase B Corp score year on year.

‍

[00:31:35] Natalie Placko: And so for us, that continuously drives us. forward

all the way to do what what we do behind the scenes. So our B Corp really

drives our supply, our approach to supply chain and B Corp in particular really

anchors us in this feeling that, you know, business can be a force for good and

that by aligning with B Corp methodology and really striving to improve our B

Corp score every time we're certified makes us a better business, whether it be

customer facing within the way that we Run our product or create our product

or behind the scenes.

‍

[00:32:09] Natalie Placko: And it is all about, I guess, an equal weighting

across all of our stakeholders and one of those stakeholders, obviously the

planet as well.

‍

[00:32:17] Lindsay Rogers: So leading on from that, tell me a bit about the

Intrepid Foundation you mentioned at the start.

‍

[00:32:20] Natalie Placko: Yeah. So the Intrepid Foundation was started in

2002 from memory, and the Foundation's reason for being is a vehicle to ensure

that when we say that we're giving back to communities that we are.

‍

[00:32:35] Natalie Placko: It is really about looking at a number of different

initiatives, whether it be about women's empowerment around the world,

whether it be around reducing poverty, whether it be enabling communities to

find work and to, and to ensure their livelihoods. We have many projects in our

portfolio and we will either run fundraisers to support them, or we will look at

ways that we can.

‍

[00:33:06] Natalie Placko: Visit, say, an organisation on one of our trips where

our, uh, customers will have lunch or dinner or have an opportunity to give back

while they're on the ground. So it's both sort of, I guess, customer facing, but

also behind the scenes. And last year, our target for the, for TIFF donations was

2 million.

‍

[00:33:26] Natalie Placko: And this year it will increase again. It's a real

passion for many people who work for Intrepid, and it is that vehicle to give

back.

‍

[00:33:35] Lindsay Rogers: When you're thinking back on your career as a

marketer at different stages and different chapters of your growth, what are

some of the bigger bets you've taken and how have they sort of paid off?

‍

[00:33:44] Natalie Placko: Look, I've had an amazing career from, you know,

thinking I was going to be an artist to kind of finding my way into the travel

industry, which, you know, again, as I said earlier, I couldn't have written the

script better. I feel really grateful for the opportunities I've been given in

particular here at Intrepid, but many of the other organisations I've worked with.

‍

[00:34:02] Natalie Placko: at as well. I kind of know the educated way of

marketing and of brand and continuously will read and listen to podcasts and,

you know, keep learning and keep digesting what's happening out in the world

of marketing and brand. But I think many of the bigger bets that I've taken are

the ones that I've taken with my gut or kind of on a hunch.

‍

[00:34:24] Natalie Placko: And I'm lucky because I've worked here for such a

long time. I'm I often say that if there was anyone kind of representing the

brand, I've been here on an off since 2001, that I have that ability to kind of go

with my gut. And so whether it be, you know, doing a full rebrand during the

pandemic, I mean, obviously supported by some really great people around me,

but taking those hunches, like putting new brand campaigns out there where,

you know, we can't always measure them.

‍

[00:34:51] Natalie Placko: And I think just going with your gut, when you

know something feels right, I think always works.

‍

[00:34:57] Lindsay Rogers: Amazing. What do you think about the future of

marketing for good? And not at all that people are doing good to market, but the

fact that being a purpose led and sort of, you know, B Corp and having a

foundation and definite sort of proof points, but now you sort of, I guess

evolving to talk about it more. What do you think about the future of marketing

for good?

‍

[00:35:21] Natalie Placko: Yeah. Look, I'm really excited about the future. I

think it's hard and I think it's really good to be honest. It's hard and it will

increasingly become harder. And whether that's because it's super competitive

or whether it's because there is an element of greenwashing that is out there that

where, and myself in particular was super conscious of is that it's the, the future

is about how do you get the right message to the right customer at the right time

for them, for it to feel like it's adding value to them. Representing our purpose

was not at the forefront of our marketing. It is now, and I hope that that

continues.

‍

[00:36:01] Natalie Placko: But, you know, we'll kind of dial up and dial down

on certain different areas of our purpose, strategy and the stories that we want to

tell with our customers at different times, I think being really authentic and

being really conscious of what we're saying and how we're saying it is just bare

minimum and really integral.

‍

[00:36:20] Natalie Placko: And we've learned that over the last couple of years

and we'll continue to learn that. I think the future of marketing is staying

educated in that space. And so for all marketers out there, you know, knowing

and, and educating yourself and kind of learning from others, whether it be

good learnings or kind of learning from where things went wrong is really

essential.

‍

[00:36:40] Natalie Placko: And I think that knowing what customers want to

connect with as well. So we often, and years ago, I'd say this a lot, you know,

we throw a heap of messages out at our customers and we just, you know, hope

that they just take what they want. And I think for us, we're becoming much

more strategic in where are we kind of leaning in?

‍

[00:37:02] Natalie Placko: Where do we know our customers want to learn

more and where do we know that they don't and where it's not part of their

decision making, especially in the beginning, prior to their first travel

experience. After people have traveled with Intrepid, they definitely want to

learn so much more about the Intrepid Foundation and B Corp and all of our

purpose initiatives.

‍

[00:37:21] Natalie Placko: But in the beginning, Let's not throw it at them

because actually that's not necessarily the biggest part of their decision making

to travel within traffic. So how do we make it kind of a bit of a pick and mix?

Like our customers can kind of find what they're looking for without us kind of

screaming at them.

‍

[00:37:37] Natalie Placko: So I think the future will be we need to be better

targeted. I think we need to be really educated. And really stay on the pulse of

what's happening out there in the world of environmental and sustainability

marketing. And for me, I'm really keen on how we lean into where we shine,

which is around community engagement with our leaders.

‍

[00:37:59] Natalie Placko: We have such great networks and so many of our

Intrepid people are in our core destinations around the world. So, you know,

being able to talk about those communities and the interactions we're having. Is,

you know, where I see us moving into the future.

‍

[00:38:14] Lindsay Rogers: How are consumer travel preferences changing in

recent years?

‍

[00:38:18] Lindsay Rogers: What are people looking for now?

‍

[00:38:20] Natalie Placko: I mean, it's always changing and I think, you know,

if I, if I think back to years and years ago, it was probably the same when I first

started at Intrepid in 2001. You know, we were adventure travel, but the

definition of adventure travel was so different back then it was like considered

quite hardcore. Fast forward to 2025. We're mainstream. You know, we are

cultural immersion. We are adventurous in the sense of adventure, not

necessarily, you know, like hardcore adventure activities, cycling trips, hiking

trips are definitely trending and top destinations that are always or have been

trending for some time now.

‍

[00:38:59] Natalie Placko: Morocco, Vietnam, um, But now we're seeing

Pakistan and some new destinations coming in. People are definitely looking

for, you know, what we call the not hot list. So where are some of the places

that they can go to avoid? over tourism where obviously as an organisation very

conscious of over tourism and how do we become part of the solution and how

are we the solution versus part of the problem and so the not hot list that we

released last year and we do on an annual basis is an area that our customers are

really leaning into because you know if they're well traveled or even if they're

not well traveled They definitely don't want to go somewhere where there are

hordes of travelers surrounding them.

‍

[00:39:41] Natalie Placko: And then you don't have that Intrepid experience.

Greenland is looking hot this year in a not hot way. And so new

destinations. And I think definitely just that active, mindful, get out in nature is

something that we're seeing a lot of come through.

‍

[00:39:58] Lindsay Rogers: I've noticed a huge shift amongst friends in recent

years, just thinking about dinner party conversations and, you know, people

wanting to experience.

‍

[00:40:06] Lindsay Rogers: Things for the first time and have a positive impact

with like minded people. And I think you've got such a great product and brand

right at the center of all those sort of make it easy for people to explore and

activate perhaps a side or an experience that they might not have done just by

themselves, looking at the next sort of looking forward, what can people expect

from the Intrepid brand?

‍

[00:40:26] Natalie Placko: I mean, we've got huge ambitions between now and

2030, but from a brand perspective for me, it's. Whilst I hate saying this, it's

doing more. I really feel it's like capturing the momentum we've had over the

last couple of years. Last year, we did some really big global brand campaigns.

We launched a book, we kind of did a whole lot of new things.

‍

[00:40:46] Natalie Placko: And so we'll do that again this year, sort of more is

more. We'll launch some new things, really look at new ways of. bringing our

brand to life and connecting with audiences at times, perhaps that they're not

expecting. So it's not necessarily just when they're in the market for travel. So

that dreaming inspiration stage is really exciting for me.

‍

[00:41:07] Natalie Placko: And then that consistency of just being out there.

And I think we've learned a lot. And again, Another piece of advice, which is

not easy to do, especially with small budgets is how do you just have this

consistency throughout the year and this opportunity to connect with customers,

even if they're not traveling, how do you just stay relevant?

‍

[00:41:26] Natalie Placko: And that again is not necessarily with deals,

because if they're not traveling, they're not looking for a deal. So what are some

of those components? And that's what we've been exploring. What are some of

those components in kind of like that, within customers life? Um, you know,

life stages, uh, lifestyles, I should say, um, that we can continuously connect

with them.

‍

[00:41:45] Natalie Placko: So big brand campaigns are coming, we've, you

know, launching our new brand positioning, which is really exciting. Some

new, you know, brand voice, dialing that up, looking at some big activations

within our regional marketing teams as well. And so, yeah, I'm excited. I mean,

we're not reinventing the wheel this year, but I think we're going to take some

big bets.

‍

[00:42:05] Natalie Placko: And hopefully lots of people will see Intrepid out

there in new and exciting ways.

‍

[00:42:11] Lindsay Rogers: Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing your

journey, the Intrepid journey. It's been such a pleasure unpacking it with you,

and can't wait to see all the new brand positioning in market.

‍

[00:42:19] Natalie Placko: Amazing. Thanks so much, Lindsay. I really

enjoyed that.

‍

[00:42:21] Natalie Placko: Appreciate it.

‍

[00:42:25] Lindsay Rogers: What I loved most about Natalie's story was how

the Intrepid brand has managed to scale across geographies, regions. religions,

people, you know, to bring a consistent brand experience that's relevant to the

host, but that's also true to the Intrepid travel brand. And I don't think that's an

easy thing to do.

‍