Adam Cooper (00:01.912)
Okay, hello, and today I'm delighted to be joined by Stephen Knight, who's the founder and CEO of Pimento, leading independent marketing agency, 20 years old this year. And also I know you run a number of other businesses. So Stephen, welcome to the Fractional CFO Show. How are you doing today?

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (00:21.612)
Really well, thank you and yourself.

Adam Cooper (00:23.62)
I'm very well, thank you for asking. And thanks very much for joining. I'm really looking forward to this one. Diving into marketing and how we look at that from a cost center to a profit center perspective, which is a common challenge. So to start with, I'd love to understand a little bit about your background, Stephen. I saw from your CV, you worked at Disney many years ago. So I'd love to understand how you got from there to running Pimento and the other businesses that you lead.

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (00:52.852)
Yes, well my background has been nearly 40 years in marketing, sales and marketing and at that time I'd worked principally for three different sets of businesses. First of all, advertising agencies. So I was an advertising agent as we used to call ourselves in the 1980s and 90s, working for another very well-known creative agencies and I...

then moved from the world of advertising to client side, which in those days was not that traditional. You're either an agency person or you're a client. Never twain would meet, but reality is that was changing at the end of the nineties and into the noughties. And I've worked for the Walt Disney Company initially as the first vice president of brand for the middle East and Africa. And then after that, I then got promoted to the city vice president and CMO for the wall.

Disney Company in EMA, which I loved. It's fantastic, really, really interesting job. Met fantastic people and worked across a huge variety of different businesses and markets. I then left the Walt Disney Company after five years, principally because I was looking to round up my marketing.

career, this time working what we used to call below the line, so advertising being above the line and everything else below the line. And I was looking after as the CEO and management director of a network of promotional agencies based in London but with offices across Europe that were responsible for designing and manufacturing half the world's Happy Meal toys amongst other things, which is great fun, very interesting and

It really, I guess, gave me the impetus to really want to actually run my own business. And I had always been a bit of an entrepreneur. Even my years of advertising, I always used to have a few side hustles, things that actually kind of get me, get the mind going. So I left after 18 months to set up Pimento. And as I say, we're 20 years old now. And the thinking really behind Pimento was that clients were in facingly getting confused by the variety of different marketing options available to them.

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (03:03.384)
and the number of channels that they needed to operate in. And they weren't getting the best advice, particularly from the large group agencies who had a vested interest in capturing all the budget and basically telling the client that whatever the solution was, it just happened to be the thing that they were selling at the time, be it advertising or direct marketing or whatever. And I felt that really what you needed if you were going to be servicing your clients correctly is to put the clients at the center of the organization and create bespoke teams designed around their business needs and their market.

needs and but pooling on a resource that was coming from the independent sector who I found to be a lot more flexible.

much more creative, frankly, harder working and more senior than the equivalent you're getting from the big PLCs. And that was the idea of Pine Pimento, which was create bespoke teams, ensure the client is at the center of everything, bring in results as and when you need it, as opposed to having to retain that resource. So be flexible in terms of pricing and deliver outstanding quality work. And that's what we've been doing now for 20 years.

Adam Cooper (04:10.42)
Excellent, excellent. So really, really varied background there and sort of very pertinent for this audience where it's very much a small and medium sized business environment. And we're often talking with people who are looking at, you know, marketing, but without the resource. And so in the world where I'm a fractional CFO, there's often fractional CMOs and other sort of consultants who come in and help.

And I guess let's dive into that a little bit in terms of some of the challenges around, know, if you don't have those big in-house teams with your 20 years of experience, plus your sort of previous client side and agency side experience, what are some of the sort of the common mistakes that you can see those smaller and medium sized businesses make when they don't have that marketing function in-house and how best to avoid them?

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (05:07.15)
Right, well guess the starting point is it's not uncommon I think when you don't have the marketing resource in house to assume that marketing is a single discipline. So for example, whatever happens to be the latest whiz bang idea, whether it's social, PPC activity.

influencer, whatever the skill set is, you navigate and migrate towards that at the expense of all other channels and expect to get a result. The reality is marketing is a blend of different things, different skill sets, different media, and it requires approach that's tailored to your business and to the objectives that you're looking for. So if your business, for example, is a small and medium sized business and you don't have in-house resource, I always recommend that you should engage

marketing consultant, not an agency or consultant, and he or she should really do a proper assessment of your business, understand the key drivers for commercial success, and then base whatever marketing strategy you need on the business strategy. And the two should be, you know, joined at the hip. Once you've established the role of marketing and what you should be doing, only then do you really either hire in resource, or should you consider actually a hybrid model where you have some external and internal support.

Most of the work we've done over the years where there hasn't been a marketing team in place is designed to do just that, is to set up, to demonstrate the role for marketing to set really...

clear objectives and ensure that we track all of the performance of the activities that we are creating and make sure that obviously we're hitting those ROI targets. But we also, as part of that, ensure that we bring the talent that sits within the client organisation along. If there is no talent in the marketing space, then we also take the opportunity to actually help hire in the talent so that actually when we finished our job, there's somebody who can sustain it and take it forward. So it's much

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (07:07.116)
more of a consultative sale, much more of a business proposition, a business consultant first and foremost that develops into a marketing consultant. And I think for a lot of businesses that builds that trust. You're more vested in the client organisation because obviously you spend time with the owners and directors of the business and the output and the likelihood of success is much higher.

The alternative model is to go and hire all the resources yourself. The issue is these days is that there are just so many different channels. And I think what's happened in larger organisations, brand side, is that they've ended up basically trying to replicate all the resources they need and they just add more headcount into their business and more cost. So in the old days, you may have had a head of marketing, a marketing manager and a marketing exec.

These days, you know, have a marketing CMO who's steering the ship in terms of strategy and focus and product development and so on. Head of marketing, marketing brand managers, and then you might have a head of digital, head of advertising, head of media, head of PR, head of comms, et cetera, et cetera, head of social and so on. And very quickly, you you've got a lot of cost there. So it's all just for courses. You've really got to basically, first of all, what is the role for marketing?

What does it need to do in my business? What does good look like?

period of time that we're prepared to invest and know firmly believe that marketing is an investment. It's not a cost. You you are looking to basically employ people to help drive your business, grow your business, whatever the business objective is. It's not there just to basically you know spend money without some clear objective and some ideas to what you're going to get for that investment.

Adam Cooper (08:55.77)
Mm-hmm. I know that's brilliant advice. And I guess the whole consultative approach and bringing the consultant in first to assess the business means that you don't have to necessarily invest in the wrong things at the wrong time. You get that kind of investment and advice upfront. I guess it follows on to my next question, which is about where you don't have that team in-house and you're continually identifying resources externally.

How have you found it best to find the right partners? There's obviously thousands, tens of thousands of agencies and consultants you can partner with. What's a couple of tips or tricks that you've found to find the right partners? Maybe it's at that consultative stage without sort of wasting too much time and money on that part of the find.

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (09:45.504)
No, it's a fair question. I there are 25,000 agencies alone in the UK. It's a massively oversupplied marketplace. And like painters and decorators, get good ones, you get bad ones. So I think for us, and the thing we did with Pimento and the reason we set it up was because we felt the clients

didn't have access, were confused and had perhaps had a bad experience in the past and therefore what we wanted to do was create a network of independent consultants and independent agencies and today we've now got 6,000 people, 185 agencies and because we don't own any of the assets

The most important thing to us is what's right for the client, what do they need and we go through a process of identifying the requirements, putting together a bespoke team drawn from the network to answer the particular marketing challenge or question they have at the time. As the challenge evolves from strategy to execution, you can bring in fresh talent but from a client point of view, there's a single point of contact, somebody managing those relationships on their behalf which makes life an awful lot easier for them and reduces their headcount requirement and firmly

places the responsibility and accountability centrally on the person who is managing the resources. If you don't have the benefits of working with an organisation like Pimento, there are other organisations out there that you can approach. The Advertising Agency Register has been around for nearly 40 years and they too do almost a of marriage mixing proposition where they'll find answers for clients.

or at a more local level, Google is always a good starting point and most decent agencies these days will have strong references, they'll have case histories and what you should be looking for obviously is first of all, do they have experience in my sector? Do they have case histories to support the work they've done in that sector?

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (11:47.968)
Often obviously you'll want to go through some sort of pitch process and really depending upon the size of the budget, you know, that can be a good way to ensure that you end up with the right agency. again, we run free pitches on behalf of brands and to help them through that process. But if you're doing it yourself.

It's getting the brief right, articulating exactly what you need. And the same way as you were laying out to a builder, start with the architect, get surveyor in, work out what your costs should be, and then engage the trades to execute against that particular architectural plan. Same with marketing. You need to start with understanding, what do I need? Why do I need it? What are my expectations?

And also then I think the really important thing is chemistry because it's not always good enough just to have an agency that actually has got the experience and got a good track record. Sometimes it's also about, I going to work with this person well? Are you looking for somebody who's going to be taking orders or somebody who's going to be challenging you and giving you feedback on what they believe based upon their experience?

So you're going to treat them like a studio or they're going to be treated like a trusted partner or a supplier. These are all sorts of different things you need to consider, I guess, in that process. ultimately, it is an investment. So finding the right partner is very important.

Adam Cooper (13:15.886)
Yeah, no, absolutely. I like the analogy with the builders, just going through that building process myself at the moment. So I can definitely relate to that. I think it's like with any partner, trusted partner or supplier. You mentioned there about investment and you've getting to the nub of this podcast and about marketing being treated as a revenue driver rather than a cost center. I'd be interested in with your experience, why you think, and it's still the case,

the marketing is still often seen as an expendable cost, rather than something that's part of the strategic growth. This conversation feels like it's been going on ever since I was working in the creative space on the finance side. So I've been on both sides of the table. I'd love to hear your view on that.

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (14:02.03)
Yeah, mean, it's time started, hasn't it really? But Lord leave him and beyond that. the reality is it depends on who's asking the question. know, if the CFO, the FD is asking the question, first and foremost, they will suggest to you that it's a cost.

obviously if you're sitting in the marketing shoe you'll be describing it very much more as an investment. Either way and jokes aside the reality is it is an investment and you need to return on that investment and therefore it should be treated as such. The issue is that it also tends to be the first thing that gets cut in a downturn in the economy. It tends to be the marketing costs, training and then headcount.

tend to be the kind of order effect. And the issue is that marketing is the growth engine in most businesses and if you do cut that off, you know, the ship will continue to basically head in the right direction for a period of time. And then of course it will start to slow down.

start to cut a cap size and the reality is you know brands are you know it's like buying a new car you buy a new car you need to put fuel in it you need to continue to basically invest at an appropriate level to continue to drive that business forward and whilst there are decisions that need to be made in the business between how much and also where do you focus your marketing effort do you focus on short-term sales generation

what we call bottom of funnel or are you continuing to focus and invest in top end of funnel which is much more about brand awareness and building trust. In truth you need both you know people buy from brands that they like and trust and if you have a new brand or a brand that's third or fourth brand in a particular sector it sometimes can be very difficult to focus exclusively on performance-led marketing you know the stuff there's price promotion or activity.

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (16:01.264)
you might be doing with PPC at the bottom end of the funnel without investing something at the top end. And there's loads of evidence to suggest that actually the best businesses...

invest in both areas on a continuous basis. If cash is tight, then obviously you have to adjust your budgets accordingly. whatever you do, particularly in a recession, don't stop everything because two things happen.

media costs and the cost of acquiring customers in recessionary times sometimes can be a lot less than in boom times because you've got less people bidding for the same audience. So conversely, if you are looking to maintain your expenditure level or even increase it in a downturn, you will come out ahead of the competitors in a much stronger position.

very difficult to kind of keep your nerve and do that. I appreciate that. And you need strong evidence from the head of marketing or the CMO to persuade you. But if you go back over the last three recessions, there's a lot of very good analytical evidence-based case histories that will demonstrate the value of continuing to invest in downturns.

Adam Cooper (17:20.17)
Now that leads me nicely onto my next question actually, because I was going to ask about, you talk there about the strong evidence that the CMO needs to provide. And obviously it's one thing if you've got a CMO in the business, it's another thing if you're working with an outsourced partner, as you mentioned earlier. There's a lot of accountants and finance leaders who listen to this pod as well. So how would you advise finance leaders to get more comfortable with, I guess, the uncertainty?

around marketing campaigns, which is accentuated where you're not working full time with a consultant or a partner, but it's someone you've brought in. So maybe a few ideas from your experience of how finance can get more comfortable with that uncertainty.

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (18:05.006)
I'm giving you example too. First of all it depends upon the individual. think the modern CFO has to have a strong understanding and a perspective on all aspects of a business and effectively CFOs are very much...

know, COOs or even, you know, MDs in organisations these days, the role is so broad. And therefore marketing is another area where they just have to get their, you know, their hands dirty and get involved. The CMO needs to actually...

take on that responsibility and accountability to actually help to educate the CFO and bring them on board and work very collaboratively and ensure that they fully appreciate and understand what is trying to be achieved. Now, I was working for extremely large Scottish based FTSE Top 30 energy company and I've been parachuted in there whilst I was still working for Pimento as a consultant to sort out their brand. This business

was run by Scottish engineers and accountants and you can imagine the CFO played the role particularly well. In fact I actually had a sign on his desk that described himself as a measly, miserly Scottish CFO. So don't even ask, I it was actually sat his desk. And great character.

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (19:34.99)
They got very excited by the fact that as a business they were spending on average 17 pence per customer per year on marketing. And they saw this as some sort of moral high ground and victory. The reality was that they were losing.

tens of thousands of customers and they hadn't ever established what their proposition was or attempted to differentiate themselves as a retail supplier of energy. They, like a lot of the other energy companies at the time, were selling the same product to similar people at a similar price and to all intents and purposes, you know, it was a commodity and they hadn't really done any evidence-based marketing or research or insight to fully understand their customers. So at the starting point,

was to actually do a massive piece of research amongst their customers, their stakeholders, their staff to get beneath the skin of the business and to try and ascertain what it was about this particular business that potentially we could focus our communications on. we undertook something like 2,500 interviews across the UK. We did the largest piece of

qualitative and quantitative piece of research that they've ever undertaken. And the results basically allowed us to be able to understand where there was some clear water to create a brand and a branded proposition.

And the importance of that to the business wasn't just in terms of trying to retain its customer base, but equally too in trying to attract and retain talent. And everybody likes to work for businesses they're proud of. They see their friends in the pub or they see their friends wherever. To be able to say, work for the X company and actually have some sort of sense of pride in what you're doing.

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (21:19.916)
is really important, particularly today where employee brands are as important as consumer brands. So throughout this research and having identified where they could basically position their brand, we then set about to create an entirely new campaign, starting with the brand, from its brand identity all the way through to its sponsorships, its advertising, its internal and external communications. It's literally every touch point in the organization. And you can imagine it was a huge job. took us three years.

But nothing got signed off or approved without the CFO being completely involved in the process and he was taking along that journey, came to the research groups, got involved with the agency that we employed in helping basically to justify the level of investment that was required. And the net result of all this activity was that we managed to stem the flow of losses in the business. We managed to...

actually slow right down the loss of customers and we actually managed in two areas, in telecoms area which they moved into and into servicing boilers and repair to actually start to generate new businesses for them based upon having a very strong well understood brand proposition. So I guess the point is don't treat the CFO as a CFO, treat them as an extension of the marketing department and vice versa.

Understand their language and talk their language and educate them to understand your language. I marketing is full of Marketing speak avoid that you know speak it, know being patronizing speaking language that both both parties can fully understand learn your own way around the balance sheet and the cost base and the pricing structure and organization so that you can have a Proper input into the business decisions that are made not just the marketing decisions and just the end

the day, treat people as people. If you respect CFO and allow them to have the input into the process, it will lead to long-term partnerships, both good and bad. When you're successful, celebrate your successes with them. When it doesn't go quite so well, look for another job.

Adam Cooper (23:36.09)
That's great and really interesting there and I'd say just to sort of tack on to that, you mentioned about the importance of the CMO and the marketing team to learn financial language, the balance sheet, the P &L, et cetera. It's also for all of you accountants out there vital that you do the other way around and that you learn marketing language. You go along as you said in your example to the research groups and really understand what the marketeers are doing and that way it's a two-way learning street. So, you know, vital, I think.

just I was really interested where you chose that as an example. You mentioned it's a FTSE top 30, I think you said company, so publicly traded. And I saw from your CV and when we spoke earlier, you mentioned that you've been involved in venture backed companies, in private equity businesses as well. And so I wondered about, you an example that you gave there, which is a three year project. You you're going over lots of quarterly earning cycles. You know, you've got backers who need to be convinced. So when you get those kind of,

on the private side, guess, on the private equity or the venture capital side, do you see challenges there around like long-term projects like that? Or do you think, yeah, the message is the same, the lesson is the same?

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (24:47.79)
Broadly the lesson is the same, but the reality is the time period is a lot shorter. VC backed businesses, there's no evidence to suggest that they don't fund marketing quite the opposite. In fact, they very often will actually accelerate marketing expenditure because they need to get to a place more quickly than...

the legacy brands that perhaps aren't VC backed. So their time scales are different, they need to return on investment more quickly, they need to drive the potential of the business harder, so they're not going to starve it afuel. They want to know that obviously the money that's going in is going to generate growth and profitable growth.

So the same rules apply and you do need to obviously bring them on board in the same way as you would do if you were working with the CFO. So it's just really understanding that the culture can be quite different. So I have noted that, you know, when you're working with VCVAC businesses, the culture is pretty different to say a family business.

people are a lot more black and white business decisions tend to be a lot quicker. Focus can sometimes be just on performance-led activities and brands sometimes can get a little bit left behind. So it's a bit like, I guess, an asset stripper that buys a business and basically just drives it into the ground.

caring about the brand, they're caring about the amount of money they can extract and as quickly as possible. I'm not saying that actually BC companies are asset strippers, but what they are looking for is growth and the ability to turn that money and walk away as quickly as they possibly can. So they might negate the same amount of money that you would put in if you were owner-led or family-led businesses into brand. It's just to skin that balance. So the role of the CMO in a situation like that is to be able to

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (26:43.952)
convince the venture capital organisations that actually brand does have a role, that customer has a role and that if you really want to drive growth or profitable growth there is evaluation on the balance sheet for the brand in addition to the sales performance.

You've got to be able to demonstrate it, but it's a logical thing at the end of the day. Anyone who claims that they don't buy on brand is lying. The reality is all of us have these subliminal messages in the backs of our brains and our cortex that are stimulated by certain things through communications, through...

word of mouth through time and we respond to different stimuli when it comes to brand and really what you're doing as a brand marketeer is basically tapping into those parts of the brain and using behavioural science to get you to do things which make no logical sense. know going out and spending five pounds on a cappuccino and it's virtually getting to that level now isn't it.

versus going to a fast food restaurant and have a similar product for half the price. It doesn't make any sense, but you will do it because there is this sense of achievement, sense of luxury, sense of reward.

you'll say and you'll logically, well, the beans are nicer and it's ground nicer and the coffee cups nicer and I like the ambiance, I like the atmosphere and the barista knows me by my name and all that good stuff. Truth is you're paying twice as much for the similar or similar product. And that's what brands about. It's about allowing you to be able to charge a premium for your products or your service and to do it in a way where both the customer and the purveyor both walk away from that transaction in a positive frame of mind.

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (28:26.486)
and that's what you do over time. You invest hardly in those relationships to do it. And let's be honest, these days it's increasingly difficult to do it because of the fragmented nature of media. But equally too, the consumer owns the media now. So if they have a bad experience, in the past they would have been disgruntled and not gone back.

These days, I'll go to social media and have a point of view. So it's an ever-changing world. AI is accelerating that change. And brands are scrabbling to remain relevant in times where economically, things could be better.

Adam Cooper (29:08.408)
Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. Fascinating insights there into the power of brand. I'm interested, you mentioned at the end there about the economy. And obviously we're in very economically challenged times. Some due to sort of factors beyond our control and some self-inflicted as a result of the tariffs that have been introduced. obviously don't want to date this podcast too much, but as it stands, we're in this 90 day pause period.

Is it a breather or is it the future? Who knows at the moment? But I'd be interested in your view on brand within this timeframe, within this environment and how important it is in your opinion to invest in brand when there's so much trade friction and so much uncertainty as a result of the tariffs. Love your view on that.

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (29:59.938)
Well, brands are like old friends really, or family. think when times are tough and you go back over the decades, war years and post-war years, that people migrate to their brands that they love and they grew up with when they actually got their backs against the wall. So I think what we are witnessing, and you referenced the terrorists there and the

the orange shadow, if you like, is that reality is that there's already been a real backlash, not just on commercial and financial grounds, but to US brands. that's as a result of the current administration and their actions over tariffs. Consumers have started to sort of flex their muscles with boycott USA messages and searches online have been trending on social media and search engines with users advising.

what brands to avoid. So, you know, we've all witnessed kind of Elon Musk, you know, seeing protests at Tesla showrooms around the world in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. We've seen new cars set on fire and so on and so forth. And it's been particularly, I guess, noticeable in European countries where electric vehicle sales have been higher than now, you know, tripping back. You know, in part that's down to Trump, but in part also it's down to other things, not least the cost to them.

What I do think is likely to happen is that…

Oddly enough, I can see the UK actually coming quite well out of this and doing quite well. Let's be honest, after Brexit, the so-called deals that would be done around the world and the relationships that would be created and how we'd be able to trade with X, Y and Z, the reality was we were highly bruised and people didn't take much notice of us.

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (31:52.95)
Our soft brand, you like, our soft brand around the world had suffered enormously and it was very difficult, I think, for us to do some trade deals. I think it's going to be a lot easier now. think, you know, we're in that sort of tightrope situation between the US and Europe and we've got to balance that and play the game as well as we might. But I do think we potentially could do quite well, particularly, obviously, the fact that our tariffs are low compared to other markets.

obviously we share a common language. I think positively, think...

One where I guess is the US goes into recession. If the US goes into recession, then it's going to be a very difficult period for everybody. Assuming it maintains some degree of growth, then I think we will do well relative to other countries. In terms of people's response to brands, I think we'd become more insular and we tend to go back to those brands we know and love. But let's be honest, there's also lot of confusion I see who owns brands these days. If you said, for example, Cadbury or Waterstones or Boots, these are all sort of

institutions. Well the reality is they're all American owned. So I think in some cases I don't think people are to be too sure as to what brands they should be boycotting. I have seen, I don't know if you've seen this, is in some supermarkets American products have been turned upside down to kind of witness the fact that these brands are no longer brands that you should be buying. So listen, it's mess but it will settle down.

Adam Cooper (33:13.082)
Hmm.

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (33:26.414)
we know that what consumers want, what business wants, what we all want, is a sense of normality. If there can be any normality, we want a sense of calm.

We want to be able to make rational decisions in our lives, be it the brands that we choose or the investment decisions we make or the next house, the next car, all those things are immensely important. And what you need for that is you need stability and you confidence to come back into the marketplace. And I think the 90 days, is it 90 or 30 days that he's decided to actually allow people to negotiate? I think we're going to see some very interesting outcomes because I think you've got markets like Canada, toughing it out and saying,

Adam Cooper (34:09.732)
Mm-hmm.

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (34:10.164)
we're going alone. We're quite happy with other markets we can do business with. Thank you very much." And he's already seen the Chinese response.

without getting terribly political about it, I think from a brand point of view and from a business point of view, it's really tough to make some decisions at the moment. And it does give businesses the opportunity to say, actually, I can't make decisions over marketing investment. I can't make decisions over headcount because I really don't know where we're going to be in three or six months' time. it's another reason not to spend. And I think that is damaging long-term for business growth.

Adam Cooper (34:48.632)
Yeah, no, absolutely. Really, really wise words there. think, as you say, everyone's looking for calm, stability, rational decision making. We haven't had much of that in recent years, but hopefully the tide is turning. We've seen the reaction, as you say, to the markets sort of freaking out slightly to the tariffs. So hopefully he'll come to his senses and things will return to a semblance of calm.

Shifting gears slightly, I always like to ask our guests to recommend a book or a podcast or some such resource that's been particularly useful for them in their journey from a business perspective or otherwise. So Stephen, what's been particularly helpful for you? Is there any books or resources that you could recommend to the audience?

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (35:33.313)
Well, I did a bit of search because

There aren't a lot of books that actually are targeting CFOs about marketing and surprising lack of evidence based information out there, which is part of the problem I think is kind of this natural divide between the marketing teams and the financial teams in organizations. But there's one book I would recommend and it's a book called The Long and the Short of it. And the book is about balancing short term and long term marketing strategies a little bit like we've discussed today.

by a gentleman called Les Burnett and Peter Field. Les was the head of strategy at DDB, one of the UK's, one of the world's most revered advertising agencies and that then became Adam and Eve more recently. And the book sets out through case histories and lots and lots of data to demonstrate the tension between long-term and short-term.

Adam Cooper (36:22.682)
Mm-hmm.

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (36:34.094)
marketing strategies for brands and as I said provides evidence-based recommendations on as to how you should invest in communications. He uses the word advertising but he's an old salt like me. We all call it communications these days because it's so broad. But the reality is it's getting that balance right. What works for you in your industry? There's loads of examples. I think it's like 160 case histories in there. It's a good read and available on Amazon and at all good bookshops.

Adam Cooper (37:02.24)
Amazing. Thank you for the recommendation. I'll put a link to that in the show notes, the long and the short of it by Ben Ettenfield. I've heard of that. It's very, very well recommended and I'm glad that you've recommended it as well. So thank you very much. And I guess just to wrap up, where can people find you? If you could let us know where best to reach out to you and any final words for the audience.

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (37:26.296)
Sure, we're always here to help. If you've got any kind of marketing challenges and you need a point of view, then always give us a call. We promise not to charge you, not least on the first occasion. Jokes aside, we are there to try and find solutions for our clients. So drop me a line at steven, at steven with a P-H dot night K-N-I-G-H-T at pimento, that's P for Paul, I-M-E-N-T-O dot co dot U-K or go to our website, which is pimento.com.

or give me a call on 07 818 095 967.

Adam Cooper (38:04.62)
Excellent stuff. Well, thank you very much. Thanks for joining me today on the Fractional CFO Show, Stephen. Really appreciate your insight, your perspective and your time. Thank you.

Stephen Geoffrey Knight (38:13.868)
Nice to see you. great weekend.