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Hello, uh, welcome to our third QA. I think we just got four questions, but they're all really good ones. They range from questions about optimizing how to play the sim through to brand purpose. So um, so let's just roll through them. Um, starting with a question from Natalie Schward. Um, and what she's saying, this is a sim question, and some of you are going to be more interested in it than others, but I think it's a good one generally, actually, for business. What Natalie is saying is that she's sitting on a large pile of cash uh towards the end of the sim. And since we we turned off dividends because we wanted to keep things really, really simple. So the question here was how would you should you deploy excess cash at this point in the game to enhance shareholder value? And of course, the answer to this, and I had to get back to the sim on this one as well and really think about it. The answer to this question about how to deploy cash really does depend on where you are in the simulation. Obviously, you are towards the end and you've already made quite a lot of choices about investment. Um, you should be using excess cash at this stage to pay down any long-term debt and also uh use internal loans to transfer cash, cash from cash-rich regions to cash poor regions. Obviously, the debt, the debt question is an obvious one because you want to eliminate any interest that you're paying. It's an it um eliminates short-term debt and takes out uh financing expenses. And so that should boost earnings per share. So that's what you should do when you're late in the rounds. But I thought it was also worth just considering this question when you're midway through the sim or a bit earlier. You don't really want to have, I mean, you do want to have excess cash, but you want you want cash working for you. So I also asked the sim company um, you know, what that would look like, for example, if this has happened in round four. So in round four, um, you get those uh you get um uh sort of uh environmental changes that means that it might be uh worth investing um in affordable carbon fibre, for example. So earlier, what this means is earlier when you've got access cash, you should be looking to invest to make more profit, basically. You don't want to hang on to it earlier, but you need to time that depending on when the when the simulation finishes. And the other thing that the SIM uh pointed out to me, that's kind of obvious really, but the other point that the SIM company pointed out to me, C SIM said, is to keep your, you also need to keep your eye on other external factors like ESG and sustainability. So as the simulation improved uh progresses, customer awareness of ESG and sustainability as it might in the market increases and social pressures peak. So if you deploy cash into sustainability decisions, you will you will get a shareholder value impact because the reputation score translates through to shareholder value, if that makes sense. So I think the answer here, there's there's the sort of answer for the sim because your business is effectively going to wrap up. But there's also, I think there's learnings here about when to make decisions about cash. So when to invest in the in the life cycle of a business or when to and and how to adjust to external factors. So I think it was a really good question. Uh for that reason, actually, not just for sim reasons, but to to get us thinking about how to these decisions when we're running a business. So thank you for that, Batalie. The second question um is a favorite subject of mine. So this is from Alicia, and what she's saying is I've listened to Mark and other marketing podcasters talk about business and marketing purpose quite negatively. Um, it says Google, she says that Google shared that Mark argues that brand purpose is often a hypocritical um smokescreen, and notes that true purpose doesn't be profit, it sacrifices it. On the other hand, what Elysia is saying is that if you should uh get into this module if you haven't seen it, what Raj says in our conscious capitalism module is that true purpose and its value is about growing the business as well as the community and the society about around it. So I think Raj really talks about that triple win. But I wonder if that's too fanciful. Not I, that's Elysiette's thing. It's this too fanciful. Do you believe there is a world where Mark and Raj's ideas can coexist? Well, this is a favourite subject of mine, so you've set me off. So off I go. Uh and it's a really hot area as well. So thank you for raising it. Uh, I'm gonna give you my view. I mean, firstly, I think that brand purpose is one of the most abused terms in marketing, uh, because the word purpose has been annexed into sustainability, whereas, in fact, the word purpose means having a higher order purpose to what you're doing. Now, if we take that definition, that brand purpose is having a higher order point of view that is bigger than but connected to your category, important, bigger than your category, but connected to your category, that can drive how the brand and business behave. When that brand purpose is utilized, if you like, or becomes part of how the business does, how the business grows and how the brand grows, what we know is that that can form the basis of meaningful difference, along with a functional offer, of course. But in in areas where most of us are competing, which are which are functionally commoditized, you do need to have something else. And often that as a brand, we have a bigger point of view about our category, whether it's about how women are portrayed and female empowerment if it's Dove or your right to look and feel beautiful if you're L'Oreal, you have a bigger point of view about your category into which you embed how you market, how you talk about your brands, your innovation, uh, your brand portfolio strategy. What we see in academic research is that it can be the anchor for emotional connection. And I don't just see that. So there's a there's a raft of academic research that talks that explains why this is the case, why we as people will connect with brands that have a higher order point of view about the world that we we also believe in. Um, it can be the anger of emotional connection. Now, that then also gets criticized for okay, well, that's fine, but it doesn't drive purchasing. But there is evidence that it drives because a point of parity, like where everything else is equal, it can be the deal breaker. So we don't all have a functional difference, and we certainly don't all have the dollars to get maximum salience and just shout the loudest. So if you're a small brand uh and you're basically in a commoditized market, that point of view about the world, that observation about that insight, if you like, about a particular group of customers can be your point of difference, your point of emotional connection, and it can be a choice driver at um at shelf parity, if you like. So when we talk about brand purpose with that point of view, I think it um it can boost profit, especially for smaller brands on their routes to growth. Mark talks about it as a hypocritical smoke screen. I think because he's referring to a couple of things. One, if it's only about sustainability and you just use it in communications, and actually it goes no deeper than communications in the in the business, then it is a hypocritical smoke screen. It's just like a lever to grab attention or make you look like the good guys. The reason he says it doesn't boost profit is if you if you do have an environmental or a sustainable or even a big social purpose, at the outset it's probably going to cost you because to really stand by it, you have to um you have to be able to run it throughout the business and say, is everything pointing in that same direction? Where might we get tripped up? So that's why he says it could cost you. Um and I think he's right as well. I think when we're talking more directly about environmental um purpose, that that cost is is obvious that you have to comprehensively look at your business unless it's hardwired from the get-go, like a Patagonia or a Whole Foods. Unless it's hardwired from the get-go, it will cost you money. Um, and I just feel it's a shame that the debate has got annexed there, actually, because a higher order purpose that's relevant to get your category, appeals at the human level, and the business can live into can be such a powerful lever for difference, meaning, employee brand, and salience. Um, a really great example is IKEA. You know, they have a purpose around a better everyday for the many. Now they fulfil that through great value furniture, great design value furniture that anyone can buy. Um, they actually have a very good environmental policy as well, but that's just how they do business. It's not their purpose. Their purpose is just making life a bit better for everybody every day. Um, another good example, actually, that I worked on a couple of years ago was the revitalization of Johnson's baby. Um, and when we looked back into the heritage, we could see that Johnson's baby, because it's got such a rich heritage and understanding that mother-baby bond. We we knew that the purpose from the beginning for Johnson's baby was about enhancing the mother-baby bond or parent baby bond now. And so, and that's what that brand is all about. So the products enable that through the use of the products at bath time, in moisturization, that skin on skin, it enhances that powerful bond that is the emotional bond between mother and baby. Uh, a very powerful purpose that the brand then revitalized behind. Raj's point. So, so the question here is: do you believe there's well where both Mark and Raj's ideas can work? They are the same, really, because Raj is saying, you know, to have a true purpose around a social or environmental purpose, so so bigger, I guess, than say the mother baby bond, although I would argue that's an important social purpose. Um, how can it grow the business? How can it be profitable? It's because it provides your anchor for connection for people around which people build community and you can build a better society. I would argue that was the case for Johnson's baby, actually, um, around really highlighting the importance of the bonding and attachment, um, and highlighting the importance to that to a healthy society. Um, so it's a complicated one, and as you can see, you've got me going on it. It's a complicated one. And I think it all comes down to how are we defining what grand purpose is. The final point I'd make is that I think to do it in the way that Raj talks about, you know, Whole Foods, Patagonia, there are one or two great examples in the world, but most businesses that most of us work for aren't built like that from the get-go. They could be if you were an entrepreneur, but they aren't built like that from the get-go. And I guess his challenge, and it's good to have people like him out there, his challenge to business is well, why why not? Why can't we enhance shareholder value by looking at business in a different way? And and you know, I think it's a it's a great challenge for leaders and a great way actually to finish our course. So, Alyssia, great, a great question. Um, I've riffed on it. I hope that was useful. I have strong points of view. It's where my own PhD resides in this area of emotional connection and then linking that back to um business metrics like repeat purchase, loyal, uh like yeah, repeat purchase ability to charge a price premium, which is what you're always trying to do. And there is evidence that having something higher order that people buy into at the level of their identity does enhance those financial metrics. Um, another question from Alicia, which is also about Raj, uh, she was saying she was listening to the QA that he and I did, and he said that brands that fully embed conscious capitalism spend a lot less on marketing. And her question was, well, we're marketers, so how do we comprehend this when we believe that marketing is critical to London's success of the brand? Well, marketing is critical to long-to-success of the brand. I think what, and I'm I'm remembering back when I went back and listened, he's talking, he's taking that non-marketers view of marketing, which is that marketing is essentially comms, um, which is horrible and a problem that the industry has, our discipline has, uh, because marketing, so he's, I think, talking about marketing as a comms um, as a comms, as a comms executor rather than a strategic function. But if you think about marketing, if it's a strategic function that puts the consumer at the heart of organization and then leads on how the business goes to market, builds a brand, and delivers a value proposition, um, then of course um marketers would be at the heart of building a business that embraces conscious capitalism, because you'd be at the heart of the leadership, because it would be an entire leadership effort that would want to put that at the forefront. What he's saying is if you're known for that and you've built community around it, then in theory, and I think you're probably not wrong, you would probably need to spend less on comms because you've got your advocates and your meaning and your salience doing a lot of the hard work for you. So you don't have to do, you're not having to push people, particularly at the top of the funnel, quite so much because people come to you anyway for different reasons. That's what he was driving at. Um and then the final question comes from Adina. It's a highly specific question about something that um she is doing. And um I I'm gonna answer it because I think some of you might be interested in it. So basically, it's um what they're saying is that they they had have spent a few months building a property tech idea, prop tech, um, over the last few months and um you know, applying a lot of what they've learned in both the marketing and this management module. Um, but has just noticed that the UK government has published a full home buying and selling reform roadmap, which overlaps with the solution that uh Adina is building. Um she's talked to stakeholders and kind of said that it's been useful because these people think there's something in it, and but that's not the same as validating the idea itself. Um, the question really is this kind of news where the opportunity becomes visible to everyone and larger, better resource players might move into it faster? Um, is this good or bad? Because when you're trying to build something that gets validated and it's already out there, you know, does your opportunity to be an early mover get killed, basically, because um because others are going to jump into that first mover advantage? Or actually, is it an advantage to be like a a fast follower because you can look at how the infrastructure lands and build something differentiated? Um so I think it's a question really about early first in or or or fast follower and the dynamics of that in particularly in tech. So a couple of things to say. Firstly, how exciting. Um, the other thing to say is um I've actually been working in a very similar business with a very similar business, um, a well-funded startup in an emerging tech category. I can't say what it is. Um what I have learned, and what I've learnt from other businesses where I've advised them as they've started up, actually, is that if your only advantage is that you got there first, and maybe you have an advantage if you can build network effects, but I'll explain what that means in a minute, then you may end up with a problem anyway. So I think when you're entering into these categories, you've always got to assume that it's going to get very competitive very quickly, rather than think, well, I'll be the first in and that should be okay. So, in some ways, the the kind of the who's in first doesn't matter that much because you've got to go in with something anyway that's got long-term potential. And I think in tech, you've always got to make the assumption that lots are going to be piling in and think about it all at the same time. I I would be, if I were you, I would be thinking about three key things. One is if you're early in, can you be the one to build uh the network effects if there are any in the category that you're thinking about? So a network effect often happens in tech and it occurs when the product or service becomes more valuable to each user as people use it. So the value isn't just about the product itself, it's in the size and the quality of the network around it. Think Uber, for example. So the more drivers there are in Uber, the better it is for everyone who's using it. And so more users mean more value, which attract more users, and you get that self-reinforcing loop. And every and then there always becomes a cost to um to sort of not to not using that one because it's got all of the network effects. So Airbnb and Uber are brilliant examples of that. So my first question to be you would be is there a network effects opportunity in your idea, and in which case moving quickly would be an advantage. Then there are two other things I think to think about. One is have you thought about and can you integrate a defensible IP? Because I think, especially in tech, as uh is so easy to move into it and it moves really fast, if you've got some kind of defensible IP, you're setting yourself up for future success more easily than if you haven't. And the third one is is there potential for a data moat? So working again in tech businesses, often what's happening is you're getting valuable data. Uh so if you think about like cloud systems, so for example, my business uses box as a cloud filing system. And um and actually, they've that would it would be very difficult for us to move off that now because all our data resides with it, all our links to our clients reside within it. Uh, or it could be are you building up data knowledge about a particular target segment that others won't have that you could then monetize? So I think three things to think about. Have you got a defensible IP? Could you be first in to build network effects? And is there potential for a data mode? And then the answer to those really give you your answer to whether you should push forward quickly, you might, if you want to get the network effects, or actually don't panic, build something more defensible and for the long term. Um, because sometimes it's better to be a fast follower. The fast followers often do really well. Um, but anyway, good luck with it. Um, let us know how you get on. Uh, and that is it for the questions this time. I think the next time you will see me is on the roundup uh when we'll review the course. I'll review the plays at the same, obviously not all individually, but what I tend to do is take a look at the you know, the really interesting good plays, some of the common mistakes, some of the common good things that happened, and just give a debrief based on that. If there is anything you want me specifically to pick up, just put it in the QA or put it in the LinkedIn and I'll make sure I do that. Uh, so I will see you then.