B2B Inspired
B2B Inspired, the podcast by BlueOcean - The B2B Agency, is all about exploring the ins, outs, ups and downs of B2B Marketing here in Aotearoa, New Zealand. We'll uncover emerging trends and thinking while sharing inspiring real-world stories from B2B Marketers here in New Zealand. With the goal of supporting New Zealand’s B2B Marketing community in becoming one of the best and brightest anywhere in the world, let’s roll up our sleeves and take on tomorrow together.
B2B Inspired
The anatomy of a good idea, and the cost of being dull
Want to unlock next-level creativity in your marketing?
Check out the latest episode of We Do B2B, where we sit down with Brett Colliver, Chief Creative Officer at Dentsu New Zealand. Brett unpacks the anatomy of a great idea and shares his powerful “nods and eyebrows” concept – a fresh way to evaluate whether your marketing ideas are truly hitting the mark. If you're a B2B marketer keen to break away from dull, forgettable campaigns, this episode is packed with practical insights to help you deliver more impactful and creative work. Brett also dives into the risks of playing it too safe in your marketing, and how avoiding the dreaded “beige tax” can make your budget go further.
Whether you’re after career inspiration or actionable advice, this conversation will help you push boundaries and build more effective marketing strategies. Don’t miss this one – it's a banger. 💥
For more B2B insights, ideas and opportunities, head to www.blueoceanagency.co.nz
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Let’s roll up our sleeves and take on tomorrow together.
Kia ora, and welcome back to We Do B2B, the podcast by Blue Ocean, where we unpick the ins outs, ups and downs of B2B marketing here in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Dale Koerner:I'm your host, Dale Koerner, and I'm a B2B marketer like you. From emerging trends and thinking to inspiring real world stories from smart, good people here in Zealand, we are here to help the New Zealand B2B marketing community to become one of the best and brightest anywhere in the world. If, like me, you're a B2B marketer looking for a place to connect, learn and be inspired, you have come to the right place. Kia ora, and welcome back to We Do B2B. I'm sitting here in Auckland with a view out over the harbour. I can see the bridge, it's all here and happening down here in the city centre, and I am joined today by someone with a very different perspective on what it takes to make a creative idea. So I'm joined today by Brett Colliver, who is the Chief Creative Officer of Dentsu New Zealand. Brett, welcome. Good to have you on the show. You're back relatively recently from Australia, is that right?
Brett Colliver:Yes, over there working on a new business pitch, so we should hear about the result of that very soon, hopefully, hopefully in the positive.
Dale Koerner:That's always the hope, isn't it? That's always the hope. There are some topics that we want to get into today, and the reason that, actually, that we're approached to is that someone from the B2B community had seen a presentation that you'd done and shoulder tapped me and said do you need to get this guy on the show and talk about this topic? Because it's fascinating and we'll get into that, but could you take us through, first and foremost, who is Brett Colliver?
Brett Colliver:Take us through your journey that brought you to being now chief creative officer here at Dentsu, new Zealand well, firstly, I want to meet this person who said that, because you never quite know when you're doing these presentations, there's always just speaking out into a big crowd now, so I'm glad it landed with at least one person, who is Brett Colliver. I was thinking about this and, in terms of my career, I think I can nail it down to page 12 of a book called I'm Almost Always Hungry. That's where the entire thing started. It was while I was studying graphic design at Curtin University in Perth in Western Australia, and about halfway through my degree I was looking through some design books in the library those old-fashioned things that I believe still exist and stumbled upon this book called I'm Almost Always Hungry by Bill Kahan from a design studio called Kahan and Associates. They specialised in probably the most boring thing in the world, which is annual reports. So you're like, why is this an interesting book? On page 12, he specifically said and I've written it down somewhere. He said I'm not interested in something that just looks good. It has to have an idea behind it.
Brett Colliver:So halfway through a design degree, you can kind of imagine how that clicked in my mind and went OK, maybe I love graphic design, I love art in general and just aesthetics and good design. But that deeper layer of something that has a concept at its core really resonated with me. So I kind of rushed back to the lecturer and said, can I build the advertising part of the design school into my graphic design degree? And they did. Let me do that. So I believe you get a double major if you do that now.
Brett Colliver:But at the time it just meant lots more classes for me and lots more units. But that was kind of where I discovered advertising, how I got into it and then from there did award school, did a year in Perth, from there did a ward school, did a year in Perth, ended up over here with a creative partner who was keen to work further afield than just Perth. So I got over here, DDB for a few years, back to Clemenger, Melbourne for a year, Colenso for about four DDB, for another seven and a half. And then here we are now, Dentsu Creative as a CCO with my creative partner, mike. What a journey, yeah, yeah.
Dale Koerner:I love that it all came back to, to page 12 of a book whose title actually resonates with me.
Brett Colliver:That was what one of the other girls in the class said.
Dale Koerner:She goes that that is me One of the things that I've seen in that presentation that you gave and it was PJ Morris, by the way, from Fletcher Building, who had shoulder tapped me. She talked about this way that you had, I suppose, deconstructed the ingredients of a good idea, or how at least you know you're on track with a good idea, and that concept's called nods and eyebrows, right, yes, so take us through. Take us through, first and foremost, what what an idea is and what a concept is, and then we'll get into the nods and eyebrows piece. Because meaty questions, sorry, and I don't know how much I prepped you on that one what is an idea?
Brett Colliver:yeah, no, you haven't prepped him on that one. I'm not 100% sure how to answer. What is an idea? Like a fresh idea, a good idea?
Dale Koerner:So when you were reading that book and you looked at page 12 and it said I'm interested in the concept behind it, yes, what does a concept look like? I mean, is it a tagline? Is it a series of words? Is it a different way of looking at something that's been seen before?
Brett Colliver:I think it's probably easier to answer in. I'll have to talk my way through this one, I think, to actually figure it out as I talk, because it is a weird one to articulate exactly what is a concept.
Dale Koerner:And you would have delivered countless of them over the years and had all those moments.
Brett Colliver:Yeah, you never stop to think about specifically what one of those things is Easier to answer an innovative idea or an idea we haven't seen before? Because obviously that's two or multiple pieces of information that you've synthesized into one new thing that the world hasn't seen before? That's easy to talk about. New ideas and why those things take us by surprise and why those things cut through in terms of the generic answer of what of an idea, I don't know. Have a think about that. But answering the what did he mean by putting a concept at the middle of all of his designs they would try and look at.
Brett Colliver:There was one company, for example, that specialised in human genome sequencing. Okay, so you're like, okay, how do you write an interesting annual report about human genome sequencing? So they went through and actually mapped out the entire human genome and they had all these clear pages that all overlaid and basically all the what are A, t, c, all the different sequences of that, and as you flip through, I think, the first 20 odd pages they overlapped and created this beautiful kind of visual metaphor for what's happening inside the human body and how the sequence kind of stacks upon itself. Yeah, so in a design sense that's still kind of qualifying as an interesting conceptual way to convey what this company does. Another one.
Brett Colliver:They looked at more medical stuff another medical company they were working with and it was far too complicated for the average investor to wrap their head around. So they ended up writing what was the equivalent of a kid's book but with semi-complicated topics within it, so they could have given someone this really complicated thing. They didn't understand, but conceptually they went. Well, we need to break it down into simple fun terms for regular people. So there's a mountain of examples like that in that book.
Dale Koerner:Now, when you talk about nods and eyebrows, take us through what are nods and what are eyebrows, and what's this whole philosophy here about?
Brett Colliver:Yeah, so that one. It's a concept that I think we've noticed many times in this industry, and the reason I talked about it when PJ would have seen it was it was the future of marketing summit, and I'm fascinated by the future of marketing and the future of technology and all those kinds of things. But I was like, if you search that online, you just get a mountain of people with a mountain of opinions, even in the world of podcasts right there's, there's millions of them. Yeah, it's like maybe, rather than try and add another theory to what the future is, I'll talk about something that's, uh, I think, a timeless truth and can always be applied to wherever and however we want to show up, now or in the future in the world of marketing.
Brett Colliver:So what is nods and eyebrows? I think of it as the anatomy of a great idea, and honestly, I think it applies to pretty much every idea I've ever heard. Someone says to you you know how dot dot dot they insert something? You go, yeah, yeah, I know that that's true, they go well. What if we dot dot dot insert something? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that. That's, that's true, they go well.
Brett Colliver:What if we dot dot dot? Yeah, oh, so it really is that series of truths and then a surprising leap after it. So you nod at all the truths as you take along that journey and then, when that that final leap they make with the creative idea, you kind of go surprising have I have to point out, I guess, that the eyebrows part of that equation is absolutely critical. If you give me a series of nods, I'm like yep, true, true, true, and then if that last thing just makes you go, oh, yeah, okay, then it's like it makes sense, but it kind of bores me, yeah, okay. So yeah, it's the two parts of, like I said, what's called the anatomy of a great idea.
Dale Koerner:Where does that live then in the creative process?
Brett Colliver:Is that an?
Dale Koerner:early development stage. Is that when you're talking through a concept, or are we talking all the way down here to the final execution piece?
Brett Colliver:or is that? Are we talking all the way down here to like the final execution piece? I think it is in the process without you necessarily realizing. You're doing it when coming up with ideas. Why I've become more attuned to it, I think, in recent times, is having to judge other people's ideas every day. Yeah, when they'll bring in a stack of papers and say, idea one, go through that, idea two, idea three. You know you're going through a mountain of ideas and we all know that feeling when we hear a great idea.
Brett Colliver:You kind of something clicks in your brain you just know you kind of just know, and we'll talk about gut feel often as well yeah, but why? Why do you? Why do you just know it when you hear it, but, probably more importantly, when you're not hearing it, where's it going wrong? Yeah, so by having this, this nods and eyebrows kind of way of measuring and dissecting an idea means we can kind of diagnose where it is or isn't working and whether it can be tweaked to kind of be fixed, or whether it's doa, because if you go, I should have brought in some ideas that aren't working to talk about. But if, let's say, you get the first nod and then the second one isn't a truth or an insight or something that's actually people agreeing with, you've kind of tripped yourself up already, yeah. Yeah, if, like I said, if you're getting those two or three nods and then you don't raise my eyebrows, you go. Okay, you've kind of told me a series of facts, but you haven't shown me a surprising leap that makes me feel that, oh, this is a good idea, kind of feeling. It's a kind of meh kind of response there, totally yeah and yeah. So that's where it gets really useful If you haven't quite landed something true back here.
Brett Colliver:But if you say this at the start of the idea. That's the more truthful place to start. Let's continue chasing that thread. Yeah, see where that gets to us too. Yeah, so it really.
Dale Koerner:It becomes a very useful way for us to analyze an idea and where it's going right or wrong and you know from your perspective as a chief creative officer and you're working with a team of, you know, 10 or 15, however many. Like you said, you must be processing through a lot of input from the team to then be able to say, yep, no, work on it, and then give it the structure of how.
Brett Colliver:Yes, yeah, it's disturbing how many ideas just never go further than a piece of paper, never see the light of day. Daily, daily. They must be written in the industry. There must be tens of the in the new zealand industry, tens of thousands that are just like throwing around and then never end up anywhere but I guess that's part of the process as well, isn't it?
Dale Koerner:yeah, you almost have to start wide in some other, in that sense, and and throw a bunch of shit and see what sticks.
Brett Colliver:Um, yeah, but recognizing that there are things that make it stickier than others, yes, yeah, I guess I don't know how many of your listeners would be having to articulate an idea or write it down to explain it to someone else, but where it also does become helpful for taking ideas into a review, I guess, really valuable if you're following. That structure of this is true. Therefore, this is true, therefore, we're thinking this way. Therefore, here's the the leap, the surprising leap. Yeah, if you're, if you're following that process and how you articulate an idea to someone as well, you've got a better chance of making sure it makes sense to them and they're not misinterpreting, or no, that's a really interesting area because certainly in the B2B sphere we have this, almost this.
Dale Koerner:Whether it's like a personality disorder or whether it's being bipolar, you have this desire to want to do something creative and you see it all the time from within the marketing camp and the actual marketing folks within the industry. There's a drive to want to be less dull. In B2B People don't want to do bland, and that's great. You know that's the right direction for it to be heading in. But then, as soon as you get to this stage of that leap of faith moment, the rational you know devil on your shoulder starts piping up and saying, oh, but what if we piss off the key accounts? Or what if we're being, you know, too silly? And what if it's not sensible enough? What if people think that we're being too playful?
Dale Koerner:But what I like in what you're saying there in terms of taking people on the journey is I think that's often the area that marketers struggle with within the rest of the organization.
Dale Koerner:I mean, if you're bringing an agency in, it's kind of it's a bit different, because you can almost use them. You can almost throw them under the bus and use them to be the people that sell the creative concept in right. But that whole drive to push for more creativity, to push for ideas that are effective in the long term, it's not an easy thing to articulate to a group of people who, in a lot of industries, have come from the tools or they've come from a sales background and they know how to sell their way out of a paper bag. But taking a creative leap of faith is scary and alien to them. And it's interesting because in that same presentation that you gave you, you kind of touched on this concept of the, the cost of being dull, and that's. It's relatively new research as far as I can see, but it's extraordinary just how mundane a lot of the world's advertising is right.
Brett Colliver:Yeah, it is and it's I think it is fairly new research. I loved it as soon as I saw it as well, and I think I loved it because for so long, no disrespect to everyone that was trying to find and make the case for creativity based on things like ipa ipa actually ipa did a study where they were. Were they like comparing highly awarded campaigns, I believe, at can lions with how many of those were also awarded effectiveness awards? Yeah, and there were pretty good correlations and various things that kind of gave validity to the power of creativity there. Yeah, I know WAC were doing something similar where they were showing it's quite a similar study.
Brett Colliver:I think in the end, I always had a slight skepticism from the clients perspective of going well. Of course, the can level big winners are probably at least half the time I don't think it was even total proof, but at least half the time were also effectively awarded. But that's the top one percent of work in the world. Yeah, what I really liked about this cost of dull study was they weren't trying to make the case for the 1% of work. They were saying with whatever you're doing, it's okay.
Brett Colliver:If you want to be boring, you're just going to have to spend seven times more for it to get noticed. Yes, and I think what's wonderful about that is you start going. Whether that's an EDM or whether that's a social post, or whether that's the biggest campaign in the country, the same rule applies, which is very different to is it winning at Cannes or is it winning at a big award show when it's your EDM. So I really like this. The value in seven times more spend if you want to be boring, the price of being dull is, I think what they're calling it and I, I think I'm trying with the numbers.
Brett Colliver:Now stuff my head. They said in the UK it costs the average company 10 million pounds a year. Obviously we're talking quite big companies over there. Yeah but if, on average, companies are wasting 10 million pounds a year of their marketing budget, yeah and the us.
Brett Colliver:They said for the industry, 190 billion a year, and I'm not sure what the entire marketing budget of new zealand as a country is, but I'm pretty sure combined it's nowhere near those numbers that are just being wasted, let alone spent overall. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I love, I love that research. It's adam morgan and john evans, as far as I can tell. They're the ones spearheading it, but I'm sure there's many other smart people involved with it as well.
Dale Koerner:I found it really interesting and again, I I like the fact that it, like you said it, it's a principle that can apply to almost minute decisions. Right, you know, on the on the, on theest in the broader sense. But I saw those numbers and then I saw the other piece of research that came out of system one recently, which said that you know, they, they measure advertising effectiveness on a star criteria. You know, you watch the ads live and how do people respond, and 75% of all B2B ads were one star or less, which means that only 25% were mediocre at best or above. So when I look at the B2B industry and I look at the opportunity that exists there for marketers to make a really tangible impact on the businesses that they work with, just don't be dull. I mean, that's the low-h hanging fruit straight off the bat, right.
Brett Colliver:Yeah, and if you want to make your marketing budget go further this is the other thing Be interesting because you're disproportionately delivering to how much you're spending then yeah.
Brett Colliver:I remember having a chat with a very successful business person and he was talking about Colgate have managed to land, is it? Nine out of ten? Dentists recommend whatever it is over the years. Yeah, we all, we've all heard it. I should be able to say it off my heart now. I'm pretty sure it's nine out of ten. Yeah, I was like, yeah, that that has landed, that has been effective. But how much have they had to spend over those years with what is a fairly boring message now just to bombard us to get to saliency, versus a more interesting message could probably spend one-tenth of that budget and get to something just as effective if done correctly.
Dale Koerner:Because you're not essentially paying a tax on attention.
Brett Colliver:A tax.
Dale Koerner:yeah, I see they're calling it the beige tax somewhere else the beige tax, which I really like as well. I'm wearing beige colored pants. That's embarrassing.
Brett Colliver:We've just installed a whole beige wall downstairs with beige letters on it that says boring is bad for business. Because it really is a stupid business decision to be being boring. You're paying the beige tax.
Dale Koerner:Let's say, client-side marketer comes to you and says, look, I, I want our business to be more creative. I want us to bring more creativity into the work that we do because I want, as a marketer, for my work to be more effective.
Brett Colliver:What would your advice be to to that, to that marketer, client side to try to work with good people who kind of get the value of creativity for the right commercial reasons.
Brett Colliver:I guess there's often this misinterpretation that creativity is done for fun or to be Because for the sake of it, for the sake of creativity, yeah, yeah, I think it's very easy for all of us to forget that the sake of it, for the sake of creativity, yeah, yeah, I think it's very easy for all of us to forget that the point of creativity is to do something that the world cuts through kind of the barriers and and makes people care.
Brett Colliver:Yeah, largely when it's something they haven't seen before or something presented to them in a way they haven't sort of interpreted or had thrown at them before. And as far as I know, that goes back to our biological kind of roots that we're built to respond to new because it might put our lives in jeopardy or it might be something valuable. But if we've seen it a million times before we know we can just gloss over it. Yeah, move on with our lives. Our brains are sort of having to be trained, or have been trained, to do that. Therefore, creativity is your tool to be able to cut through those barriers of the brain.
Brett Colliver:Without just paying seven times as much in advertising to staple it to someone's forehead, and also without yes, which would be a terrible way to advertise stapling in my head, because then I can't see it I mean, you better do it reverse.
Dale Koerner:So they see in there looking back across your career, then um, what have been the most recognizable that? What have been the the truths and the nods and the eyebrows that you're most proud of having lent into In our work ourselves? Yeah, for you as a creative.
Brett Colliver:Yeah. Well, what I liked about doing that presentation was it forced me to sit down and analyze a whole bunch of pieces of work through that structure, because when they'd been successful I was like, well, hang on, why, if I broke this down to that anatomy, what worked? Yeah, out of that process. So maybe I'll try and walk through a couple of those. And then, because it kind of gets to the point afterwards of what that idea was, so a recent one we did talked about the, the the Kepler challenge, being a 60 kilometer ultramarathon through, if you know it, down in Tiannau, through the mountains and like mud and over mountain ranges, just searing heat, into the middle of forests and crazy run. So you go, okay, that's just a straight-up fact. It's an enduring, hard ultramarathon. Yep, nod. And then you say it's true that when you run that distance you cannot do it without some sort of nutrition and sustenance going back into the body as you run. It's biologically essential. So, yep, fact. Uh, fresh choice just happened to be Fresh Choice Supermarkets, the naming sponsor of that race, and they have everything runners could possibly need, from sodium based snacks to sugar based snacks and drinks and all of those things and as the naming sponsor, so we've got three nods there. So at the 50km mark, when runners were really hitting the wall, they installed an entire supermarket aisle stacked with everything in the middle of the forest that runners could possibly need to help them get to the finish line. So you're like you can kind of picture that already right, without even seeing the the visual. But it was in the middle of this overgrown kind of forest area, little trail, and this giant supermarket aisle appears out of nowhere. And runners I was down there for it. I was like I wonder how this is going to go on paper. This is a really interesting idea, yeah, and runners it was on the top of a rise as they come up around a bend and you just hear expletive after explaining what the hell is this thing, but then the joy on their faces when they're slamming down gatorades and shoving chips in their mouth. So that's a recent piece we're really proud of.
Brett Colliver:Another idea that I put through that little filter was probably from two or three years ago. Now it's it's hard to get iPhone users to switch to Android because they're worried if they switch over they won't know how the operating system works. Yep, you know that is a barrier. It's. I've been onto samsung a couple of times and I remember that apprehension like this is going to be a foreign language. How am I going to? So you're already that first nod and then very quickly from there we're like well, so what if we managed to get the Android operating system able to be test-driven on an iPhone? So we created a thing called Samsung iTest, which you could actually download what was a web app and then basically explore a fully operational Android experience on your iPhone without having to put it down and go into a store, and that thing kind of took off.
Dale Koerner:It was like you won lots of awards for that one as well, right.
Brett Colliver:We did win lots of awards for that one, but I guess because it's based off such an undeniable first nod and then a how did you manage to get that thing past the walled garden? Yeah, of apple, yeah, and onto actual iphone users phones, yeah. So then you're okay, tell me more. So there are a couple of examples, like, obviously, that we're very proud of, but also great examples, I think, of nods and eyebrows in action when you reverse, diagnose where and how they actually what was the anatomy of those ideas?
Dale Koerner:yeah, and why they worked. What I find interesting in that again is you're leaning very strongly. I mean, we'll use the Apple example there, the Apple that, sorry, the Samsung example. Make sure we get the right people here, people who paid the bill. You're actually looking into, like the trigger for that whole approach is is based on, not a rose-tinted view of the customer. Do you know what I mean?
Dale Koerner:It would be very interesting, you know, very easy for someone in the samsung camp to say, well, of course they're going to want it because it's good and it's this, and it's that and it's sleek and it's got. You know, but you're actually looking at that whole cohort of customers with a relatively skeptical view. Right, you're looking at it and saying they ain't going to switch unless we give them a reason to, or they are going to be afraid that that language is completely different. So what's the intersection between, I suppose, understanding customers and getting a real look under the hood of what drives them and the origin of that creative idea? Maybe take us through your process. How do you get under the hood of what a consumer is thinking?
Brett Colliver:Personally, I like it to be probably a mix of research we're given sometimes, yeah, like, sometimes there's an actual fact out there from a study someone's done or unearthed through research groups or whatever. Really, yeah, it's always great to have an actual, proven fact, yes, but sometimes I think we've got to be open to the fact that you just know it, because we're humans. You're gonna go yeah, that's, that's true. Right, everyone goes yeah, that is true. Like, do we do we have scientific proof? No, we could probably find some, but do all of like if 20 people are like yeah, that's true, you've got 20 nodes to begin with. Yeah, yeah. So I like it to be a mix of both. What I like about the research side, what I love about data and some of the studies on that side of things is and I talk about this in the presentation a little bit you will find unexpected first nods sometimes in that data that you wouldn't be able to just intuit okay whether it's a.
Brett Colliver:We all think people do certain things for certain reasons, but when we actually slice and dice the data of how people are actually acting, it uncovers something different and counterintuitive to what we all thought they were doing. So I don't think there's a right or wrong way, I think it just has to be. When you explained it to someone like you kind of know, inside it feels true and and you very quickly find out if it is true or not. When you just say it to someone, they're like yeah, yeah, I know that thing.
Brett Colliver:Yeah, and that's how iphone users. I don't think we necessarily need to go into a research group. Anyone who's had an iPhone for 10 years will say yeah, I'm a bit apprehensive about getting onto Samsung because am I going to know how to use it?
Dale Koerner:Yeah, yeah, I know where everything is and there's this weird back button down bottom left that I've never used before.
Brett Colliver:Yeah, yeah, yeah, bottom left, that I've never used before. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was one other truth we built into that, which was I think none of us like going into stores to test drive a different phone either, because you get all of about. I'm gonna say two minutes before there's a salesperson hovering around you, can I help you with anything, can I? So you really need to be able to sit foot with it for an hour yourself yeah and then explore to get comfortable with something.
Brett Colliver:So that was the other reason of why I think it was so successful.
Dale Koerner:People could muck around on there as long as they wanted without the yeah, one thing that we come across so often within the marketing community is this piece around imposter syndrome. You know so many client-side marketers that I know and that we deal with have this sense of needing to always second-guess themselves. Is my thinking valid? Do I deserve to be doing the work that I'm doing? Am I actually on the level that I'm being paid for?
Dale Koerner:Even what I really like about the whole nods and eyebrows approach is that it actually gives in the context that you've just shared there. It gives people a way to actually bake in a sanity check into their own thinking, because often creativity needs a bit of a leap of faith, right? I guess there's always going to be those ideas where you're taking a bit of a punt, when you're on the bleeding edge of doing something that's really innovative. There's no data to say it's definitely going to work, because if there was, somebody would have done it already. But recognizing that marketers do have this sort of chip on their shoulder, this imposter syndrome piece, I really like how, like you said, nods and eyebrows and using that way of delivering a concept to someone or delivering a stream of thought to someone, kind of bakes in a validation point. I actually think that's really powerful for marketers to take away and learn from.
Brett Colliver:And maybe it's. I hadn't thought about this too much yet, but it's easy from the agency side to feel like you just have to get the marketing team over the line and then and then you're off yeah, my partner where she works in marketing and I hear about some of the the realities of what she has to navigate when hearing, when taking the idea from the agency to all the different stakeholders within the company she works at.
Dale Koerner:Yeah.
Brett Colliver:And that is the reality of what happens. Once that idea goes to the marketer, they're not just in charge necessarily of green lighting it. Being able to talk someone through it in that sequence of nods and eyebrows gives all marketers a tool to make their own internal presentation of the idea to everyone they need to. If they've got that structure down, they will probably nail it more than they don't when they have to talk about it inside the company. We get quite good at it because we have to do it day after day, but it is a muscle memory kind of tool you eventually get in how you articulate ideas. Not everyone has the benefit of doing day in, day out to get better at it.
Dale Koerner:No, I mean agency side. You're paid for your thinking right, You're paid for your ideas and what you can do with them. So invariably you get quite good at taking people on a journey and doing all of that piece. But, like you said, on the internal side of it not so much.
Dale Koerner:And I guess the other thing there is that you know, from the agency perspective, you're you're presenting ideas to people who have come to you for them. You know, like they've come to you to say, okay, amaze us and like, take us on this journey and help us change the world. But then, like you said, the reality is two desks over from that person is someone who isn't looking at the agency as a, as a source of all creativity. They're looking at them as a cost and they're looking at the marketing function often, as you know, rightly or wrongly, probably wrongly as a cost, as a cost, and they're looking at the marketing function often, as you know, rightly or wrongly, probably wrongly as a cost, as a cost center. Um, so, helping people to actually be able to bring the rest of the business and the organization on that journey, um, wildly, wildly helpful. Because that over that then starts to to talk about the beige tax right I'd say I.
Dale Koerner:I don't know what the numbers are, but I wonder how many potentially brilliant ideas um just get swept under the rug once they've been presented and you'd probably know it and you'd probably have a sense of this as well but um, because they don't survive the, you know, internal socializing of the concept you know shared around the boardroom table, and someone who, like you said, hasn't necessarily presented ideas that often or that fluently, is trying to take people through this really outlandish couple of nods but massive raise of the eyebrows, concept um to a group of people who are skeptics yeah, you never quite know necessarily how they, who gets what complications.
Brett Colliver:An idea meets within a different organization as well, like different things don't quite align for different reasons with different stakeholders or all sorts of complications. But yeah, it's important to be able to shepherd that thing through as best possible by presenting it each time in its best light yeah, it's understandably it.
Brett Colliver:Often you can see why a marketers would get or do get the creative team or someone from the agency to come and present it internally as well. Yeah, just because they've had to polish the story so much, yeah, and whittle away the confusing parts. Yeah, so they've got the argument pretty tight. Yeah, so to get them to represent it on to as many people as possible as valuable. But obviously that's not always achievable and you need to be able to have the the three minute chat in the kitchen with someone from your own marketing team or someone from the broader kitchen with someone from your own marketing team or someone from the broader organization, the brand without anyone from the agency necessarily being there every single time and without the deck and all the without the deck yeah, I guess all these things are signs of a good idea as well.
Brett Colliver:If you can get it down to something fairly crystallized and you can talk about it in the kitchen without the deck, then it's probably a decent idea if you need the whole deck.
Brett Colliver:Maybe it's not such a good idea in the first place anyway. And I would just add that I'm probably talking like we have these idea articulations perfect and crystallized from the moment they're conceived. Yeah, I'm always amazed when I look back at some of the early write-ups of ideas. We have how much, how much more language is in them, how they're slightly more complicated, and then over time, as whether it's a team has shown me an idea and then I've explained it to I don't know one more person in the agency and then a day later explained it again to someone else and then a day later explained it to three more people, and each time getting sharper and sharper and more honed with how you present it.
Dale Koerner:Yeah, fantastic. Well, look, that's been such an enjoyable conversation. If we had two days to go through this I would pick your brains just no end. But we do have to wrap things up. But look, thank you so much. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and opinions. Brett and um look forward to sharing this with the world. Pleasure. Thank you very much. That's that, thanks for listening to we do b2b by blue ocean. Now brace for ctas. If you want to join and grow the community, make sure to subscribe. Wherever your eyes and ears absorb information, don't forget to switch on notifications so you know when the latest episodes drop. And for more B2B goodness, be sure to follow Blue Ocean, the B2B agency, on LinkedIn. Now look, you know how this next piece works. The more reviews we get, the faster this thing grows. So please do for us what you hope your customers would do for you Leave a review and share your thoughts. Let's stay connected and keep the B2B marketing conversation going.