Why Your Marketing Is Failing & How to Fix It Fast with Damian Lucas 🚨

Today, I’m joined by Damian Lucas, a fractional CMO through Lucas Growth Advisory.

Damian shares his journey from being a creative student passionate about graphic design to becoming a strategic marketer obsessed with consumer behaviour and working with some of Australia’s best-known Retail brands.

In this episode, we dive into the evolution of the Australian retail landscape and why e-commerce was surprisingly slow to gain traction.

Damian also shares valuable lessons from his career, including how he utilised this knowledge when his Marketing stopped working in one particular role. How did he diagnose the problem, strip everything back, and rebuild a strategy that worked?

And how did he cope with the emotional and stressful rollercoaster that this brought about?

Plus, we unpack the power of speaking the language of commerce, from knowing your metrics to understanding what’s truly driving revenue and sustainable growth.

Looking for practical tips and meaningful insights to understand how to bridge the gap between creativity and commercial success? Then this episode is for you.

Episode breakdown:

00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome

00:17 Early Career and Creative Pursuits

00:59 Transition to Marketing and Education

02:07 Retail Marketing and Consumer Behaviour

07:31 E-commerce Evolution in Australia

16:45 Challenges in Retail and Marketing Strategies

24:10 Campaign Strategy and Media Planning

24:38 Experimenting with Offers and Competitor Analysis

25:42 Budget Constraints and Predictive Planning

25:53 Board Presentation and Campaign Adjustments

26:43 Achieving Positive Results

27:12 Lessons Learned in Marketing

27:34 The Importance of Real-World Experience

34:03 Consumer Behaviour and Psychology

39:41 Marketing Metrics and Business Conversations

44:03 Final Reflections and Advice

If you'd like to connect with Damian:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucasdamian/

I'm Emma Graham, Career Coach, ex-recruiter, here to help you:
💡 Gain clarity on what’s important to you
💡 Confidently communicate your value
💡 Build a personal brand and a strong network
💡 Take a strategic approach to your next move
💡 Navigate the job market effectively
💡 Build career confidence with a repeatable success blueprint

🌐 Explore my coaching programs and free resources:
Website: https://www.egconsulting.au/
LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/emmajgraham
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emmagrahamcareercoach/

🎁 Free Resources:
📄 CV Development Guide: https://www.egconsulting.au/cv-advice
📄 LinkedIn Profile Optimisation Guide: https://www.egconsulting.au/linkedin-profile-guide

📅 Book Your FREE Career Strategy Discovery Call:
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Transcript

Emma: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Your Career Journey, the podcast designed to be your compass through the twists and turns of career development. Today I'm joined by Damien Lucas, a fractional CMO through Lucas Growth Advisory. Having spent the majority of his marketing career in retail, Damien shares his take on the ever-evolving landscape of Australian retail and e-commerce and reflects on the biggest lessons he learned in his most challenging role when his marketing stopped working. Join me to find out what he did. So I am joined today by Damien, Damien Lucas. Welcome.

Damian: 0:43

Hello, Emma. I'm really excited and I have been looking forward to this podcast. I've been watching a few of your podcasts and actually it's a privilege to be on yours. So thank you.

Emma: 0:53

Thank you. Very nice to hear. When you sort of think back to, I don't know, perhaps your earliest memories about thinking about your career and what you thought you were going to do with your life, did marketing and I guess the creative pursuits always kind of feature quite highly in that? Did you always know you wanted to go in that direction?

Damian: 1:15

Not really. I think I've always been creative. I was one of those students that loved painting and drawing at school, particularly in year 10 and 11 and 12. And I did want to kind of be a graphic designer. So I suppose early on, I was probably wanting to commercialize that artistic skill. But yeah, I didn't really go into that particular endeavor. I actually found myself... not really in marketing, but really in technical sales in the beginning. And then from technical sales, which was in D2B, I found myself as a product manager. So that was one of my first kind of stints in marketing and actually understanding how to take a product to market, how do you launch a product, how you release a product, and then also long sales cycles with products, taking products to market. And then the evolution of that for me was actually moving into segment manager. So being more about a group of products to a particular customer segment from a B2B perspective. So it gave me a pretty commercial grounding early on. But I found myself wanting to shift from the product side to something more strategic and creative because I had that burning desire, that creativity. But I still wanted it to be a bit commercial. So I think that's where marketing kind of really came in for me. So as a mature age student, I did my Master's of Marketing at Monash. which is a bit of a leap of faith. And then halfway through that course, because I was in B2B, I was doing a lot of B2B appropriate subjects in my units. I actually got retrenched and then found myself going, well, what am I going to do now? And then I managed to land a job at Kmart. And then I managed to flip all my subjects that I had remaining to be more B2C focused, which was great. So I kind of had my B2B and B2C kind of stood in half across my master's. But yeah, that was really a pivotal moment for me. And landing at Kmart, that's probably where I started to really discover my life with B2C. I became obsessed with consumer behavior, how people make decisions, what influences them, timing, creative offers, how you all kind of bring it all together. And retail kind of felt like a playground of testing ideas for me. I loved it. Every campaign was like a mini experiment for me. What worked? What didn't? How can we do it better next time? So it kind of gave me a really, really good grounding from a B2C perspective and really got me hooked on consumer behaviour.

Emma: 3:33

People are infinitely fascinating, aren't

Damian: 3:36

they? Look, and when you're in retail, I mean, you live week to week. You live Monday to Sunday. That's your retail week. And you live and die by that week. And what did you do last week? versus what did you do last month and and it's it's really interesting you feel like you actually are doing like mini experiments every week like oh we won this week oh no we lost this week oh actually we're okay this week we're still fighting uh or we're actually getting that incremental growth and that incremental gains that we are eventually going to aim for each time uh and then can we be smart enough and refine what we have within campaign to actually correct that campaign if we're off course so yeah i like it i like the creativity you know i like the but i also like the data aspect of it as well and i And the immediacy

Emma: 4:20

of that, like to have that, as you said, that weekly feedback of we're on the right track or we're not on the right track. It's kind of rare. Trying to think of other industries outside of retail, I'm sure there are some, they're not immediately coming to mind that are that immediate. Yeah.

Damian: 4:37

Yeah, I think we should stick the nail on the head there, Emma. It is actually, it's very quick. I mean, you either live and die in retail and enjoy it because it's like an adrenaline rush or you don't. And there are many that I've worked with that I've kind of thought retail would be great and then jumped out of it. I've always stayed in it. At the moment, I'm not in retail, but I'm still doing some consulting in and around it. I'm actually in real estate doing consulting at the moment. So it's a bit of a nice change. But this is the pace of retail. It is is something that you actually kind of miss when you're not in that place. You've got to think on your feet. You've got to be very, very, very adaptive to what's happening in the market, what's happening in your business, what's happening with competitors. But yeah, you're right. The immediacy of that is something that you can quite get addicted to. And it was much slower when I was in B2B sales and marketing, so longer sales cycle. Yeah. So look, from a retail perspective, then I've kind of worked in senior marketing roles across Coles, Bunnings, The Good Guys, Autobahn. Midas, Clark Rubber, and then more recently at 40 Winks. And I've worked across from those types of retailers. We're talking about big box retailers, franchise, e-commerce, most of the senior leadership roles that I've had as well. E-com was part of my remit. So I had the full remit. So it's kind of interesting when you have those types of remits that you're seen as a cost center when you're doing all your other marketing and when you're actually doing the e-com part, you're actually seen as a revenue center. So it's really interesting. But yeah, it's been a really interesting journey and an interesting blend of mix of different Different businesses, different business models, I suppose, and different types of products and ranges and categories and customers. But I suppose the thing that's always stayed true to me is that the skills, our core skills are always transferable. And it's given me a very good general base of everything to do with marketing. So it is, has a bit of a slant, obviously, retail, e-com, you know, I suppose, direct to consumer. I can apply that skill set to as well. as well as omni-channel. How do you get in-store and online working together? And that's a bit of a trick that I've actually learned over the, I suppose, over the journey too. But these days, the work is a fractional CMO and under the name of Lucas Growth Advisory, And I help brands fix what's actually not working for them. I find what is, and then I actually help them scale in a way that's sustainable and profitable for them. I make it sound very simple there, but it's not that simple. There's a lot of auditing. There's a lot of looking at things and actually really scaling things back to the bare basics and the bare bones and find out what actually is working because not everything can be measured. So let's work out what we can measure down to what is working and then start scaling back up from there. But that's kind of my simple mentality that I take with that. and actually has been giving me some great results and great tractions with the clients that I've actually been working with. So a couple of direct-to-consumer clients and also some retail clients of mine.

Emma: 7:32

I love the simplicity of that messaging. I think like a lot of things, we can all be guilty of overcomplicating sometimes and trying to, I guess, sell a message of, you know, I can change the world, but there's something actually very reassuring about, I'll help you fix what isn't working. And I actually, yeah, love the simplicity of that. But as you say, there's obviously a lot of complexity behind it and a lot of experience and data and real world knowledge that that's gone into that. I'm really interested to dig into that in a little bit more detail. But before we do, I just wanted to go back to e-commerce and just talk a little bit more specifically around how e-commerce has changed over the last, what, probably 10, 15 years. I've been in Melbourne 13 and a half years now and I can remember really clearly being in London, Googling Melbourne-based businesses to see where I'd be able to buy furniture and, you know, what my life was going to look like and found it really hard because there was almost nothing online. And in comparison to, I mean, you know, London's a huge global city, but the UK more broadly, There just didn't seem to be that much happening in the e-commerce space. And then I arrived in, what was it, 2011? And that seemed to be reflective of kind of what was happening on the ground. But since that time, it has obviously changed immeasurably. But from your perspective, I guess, kind of on the inside of that, what have you noticed about that kind of journey, as it were, towards e-commerce? Yeah.

Damian: 9:14

Yeah, look, it's an interesting journey. And what you've described is exactly how I suppose us in Australia we're feeling as well is that retail was so strong. You know, when you were talking about when you're about to move out here and you're looking to see if you can find some e-commerce solutions or some online store solutions, it was very small and not very well done. You know, the US was way streaks ahead and a large percentage of, if I talk about from a retail perspective, percentage of sales from e-com and the UK was kind of neck and neck with them, you know, and I know Australian businesses were actually not necessarily looking to the US, they were looking to the lessons to be learned from the UK. And a lot of English or people from Europe were actually coming out to Australia for that exact reason is that they actually had done the hard yards. They've scummed their knees and elbows. They've kind of worked out what did work. And they were kind of on the bleeding edge of e-commerce. Australians were so hooked on catalogs. I mean, I don't know if you noticed that when you first came here, but there was a very, from a retail perspective, you didn't have a weekly or a bi-weekly or a monthly catalog. You didn't, you lost really because it was the battle for the letterbox. So it was very old school but only old school in the sense of it was so effective which a lot of people particularly a lot of people that come from the US or Europe at the time they came over and I know I was working at Coles at the time what are you going to scrap this catalog thing what do you do that for it's very expensive but highly effective so it took a long time for businesses to really embrace e-commerce and make it be part of their business and see it as not only their best store but like our best group of stores combined together and actually really start to understand the customer's start and restart their journey, whether it's actually physical or digital or a combination of the two. So I think COVID was the only really where businesses that actually had either really managed to make sure that they'd gone up to that particular benchmark or if they didn't, work scrambled and vested to really be in that particular place. But the other flip side of that is that consumers and the majority of consumers were not comfortable. I mean, if you read any of that there are lots of e-commerce reports around Australia and comfort levels around that and actually, I suppose, penetration of e-commerce from shopping, it was actually low compared to other countries. So I think COVID really forced that to come to head, but also really forced the laggards that were behind and actually had that e-commerce experience to come to head as well. But yeah, it was a very slow evolution from an Australian business's perspective. There's obviously some sweethearts that did it really well, did it very early, which made them stand out from the pack very, very quickly. But in general, it was a retailer thing and it was a consumer thing. Things were too good and they didn't really need to lean into e-commerce, which created a whole heap of nightmares for retailers, depending on what you sold, because the tyranny of distance in Australia is trying to get product across the country. It's very, very expensive and causes a lot of headaches and then causes then customer complaints and issues as well. So it's other headaches that they didn't want to necessarily invest in. I remember when I was at Bunnings that they, you know, e-commerce was something that they wanted to steer away from for quite some time and they actually had some very good relationships in Europe and the US and were steering away from it for that very reason in logistics. They did use digital very well, did use the website very well, did use product pages very well and describe and videos, but actually selling online, they resisted it to the point where they couldn't resist it anymore. So yeah, interesting journey to go on. But yeah, I think Australians have actually definitely caught up from a retail perspective, but also consumer perspective as well.

Emma: 12:57

Yeah, it's been really interesting to kind of watch all that from the sidelines and as a consumer kind of see how it's changed. I remember when Amazon first came here and I was so excited because, you know, my memory of Amazon, certainly living in central London and Prime, was I could order in the morning and it would come in the afternoon. It was, I mean, again, central London, I get it. It's a slightly extreme example, but it was just so good. And even stuff like, I don't know, washing powder. was cheaper on Amazon than it was in the supermarket. So, and it was so easy to kind of have delivered. So it did really change how you shopped and how you bought things. And I remember when it first came here and- Certainly the opening experience was not like that. And actually I had stopped using it for years and I only just recently bought something from them again and noticed that now they actually have their own delivery drivers. It's their own delivery service that they've moved to, which was really interesting and actually pretty smart. I can understand why they wanted to have control over that very important aspect of the customer experience. But yeah, such a difference from where they started.

Damian: 14:13

Yeah, I remember when they first came to Australia, everyone was quite scared. You either went with them or you went against them, I suppose. And you kind of saw this divide happening. We're going to compete against them or we're going to join them. And I was at Autobahn at the time and we're going to go, well, what are we going to do? Are we going to compete with them? We're not going to compete with them, no. But we need to be aware of what they're doing and how they're doing it and then be part of them. So we had eBay as a marketplace at the time. So it was kind of a natural progression for us to be on there, but they didn't have the scale. So they started very small. They obviously set up warehouses in, I suppose, huge population areas first, Melbourne and Sydney, and then started to get their presence. But they're probably where they what you experienced in the UK back when you were there, at their best, they're at their best here now. So I'm a bit like you. I get quite busy and get quite distracted about doing things. I need that. Okay, if I order it right now, it'll come tonight or it'll come tomorrow. And then the convenience factor comes into it as well, as much as the pricing. So in Australian retail, you need to actually stand for something. So you don't necessarily need to compete with all these people. You can actually work. work with these marketplaces. It just really needs to be right to the brand and I suppose the consumer experience.

Emma: 15:29

Yeah and I think you see more and more or certainly how I use it is very much an integrated in-store and online. I do both like certainly if it's a brand I've never ordered from I'll go in-store, I'll try it on and then if they haven't got the right size or they haven't got the right colour then I just order it online. I don't bother going to another store but it's that sort of integration of the That I think is a little bit more challenging, but probably I imagine there are many consumers like me who want that sort of integrated approach. They want both.

Damian: 16:05

Yeah, look, there is, I mean, a lot of stats I can't remember off the top of my head at the moment, but there's some huge stats around the viability and the lifetime value of omni-channel customers, which is what you were saying you are, which I am as well. I need to experience a brand physically in a store, particularly around certain products and services. So some things that are more high involvement or things that I need to make sure I've got the right size from a clothing perspective or fit from a shoe perspective. But once I've made that connection And then I can go to the convenience of e-commerce and I can either buy from them directly or I can buy them from a marketplace. I feel much, much comfortable and much at ease at doing that. But the omnichannel customers far outpace those pure online customers or those pure in-store customers. And that's really where I think, you know, retail needs to blend and go to, not be omnichannel, but to be really, to really be completely, what would you say, completely integrated in such a way. So a customer can shop whenever they want. It's completely seamless from that perspective. They don't see the brand as the online brand or the in-store brand or I'm doing a mixed purchase at It's just, I have an experience with a brand. I might start my journey somewhere and I might end that journey somewhere else.

Emma: 17:23

You can understand the challenges there for certainly marketers specifically, but also Australian retailers more broadly. And, you know, as you said before, the boom of COVID certainly from an online perspective and since then, probably a more challenging environment for many retailers. What have you kind of seen recently in terms of, I guess, a vibe check for retailers? tell more broadly.

Damian: 17:56

If I check for retail more broadly, I think, I mean, particularly if I'm talking about working with retailers themselves, it's interesting. It's, you know, you would feel it too, you know, working in the field, but you feel it in them. I feel it on the other side of the fence when I'm coming to pay for you to get some work is that the marketplace is stressed. It's difficult. There's a lot of, you know, consumer confidence that is kind of quite wavering at the moment. There's a lot of business confidence that's wavering at the moment, you know, so the traffic is really kind of up and down, whether it's on the website or actually in store. You can feel it when you're watching businesses kind of market to you and talk to you, whether it's the amount of emails that you get in your inbox or whether it's the amount of things that you see come up in your feed and when you're out and about. So everyone seems to be always on sale. Even the brands that are not normally on sale seem to be on sale. So it gives you a vibe and it gives you a bit of a check to go, business is tough. Business is hard to get. Customers are hard to win. And I think what that kind of plays out to me is it's the brands and the businesses, whether it's a founder-led business or whether it's a CEO-led business, whether it's a corporate retail or it's a franchise retail. For me, it's actually thinking a bit more broadly and a bit more strategic about what you need to do and what actually does work in these particular times. I've got a good story I'll tell you about that soon. But it's thinking a bit more broadly and thinking about what you're actually doing that matters. So, you know, a lot of people get focused on acquiring customers. Let's just get new customers. Let's get more traffic. Let's just get more. The more people we speak to, the more customers we'll get. Well, if that costs you a lot of money, then you're actually not making any money. So it's not profitable to actually go after lots and lots of customers if they don't stick. You know, one of the interesting things, not a lot of businesses, but a lot of businesses that I come into contact or have worked in is if you don't get a customer to do a second purchase within 30 days, then your lifetime value for that customer kind of ceases or doesn't really exist. And if you can get them to convert again within that 30 days, then they become more sticky. They become a long-term customer. They've got two items or they've got multiple items that they've bought from you as a business, whether in-store or online. I think retailers need to focus a bit more about the customers they actually have and how much money they make out of the customers they actually have. Yes, don't forget about acquisition, but don't be at your own strategic play. And that's what I'm seeing a lot at the moment, particularly with the businesses that I'm talking to, is they're really tracing around marketing, tracing return on advertising spend, and they're kind of ignoring profit. The return on advertising spend makes you feel good, kind of hides the truth, but the metric that really, really matters to me, and there's a few of them, is marketing efficiency ratio. So your total spending on marketing versus how much you're actually making back. Your contribution margin that you're actually doing. So how much money you're making after the cost of goods has all been taken into consideration. That's that true profitability. And that's where kind of the real picture is. And that's where you kind of pull everything back to actually have a look at that and measure that. And you can measure that overall. You can measure that to a customer as well. So you can actually start to use that on a dashboard rather than just your other metrics. And then kind of scale that. How do you actually scale that actually to kind of do that? So that's where I get into the bits where I really love to do. It's like if your offer and your creative and your customer journey is broken, the more you spend, the more you're going to burn faster. You need to fix those fundamentals first and then you can kind of scale those. Again, sounding very simple, but there's a lot of work involved in kind of doing that. So it's really starting to people to think a bit more like their CFO thinks. Get some CMOs to think a bit more like the CFO. And then that actually starts bridging the gap between a CFO and a CEO or a founder about what they really need to be doing and how they need to be doing it. Most of the time when I speak to businesses, it's not about spending more. And I learned some valuable lessons about that. It's actually making what you're spending work better for you. Yeah. Okay. Then you start to find some nuggets and find some wins, but then you can start scaling based on that. So if I've got an opportunity to tell you, but I kind of, I rove to that through, I suppose, a story I've got. And I did write about it in one of my posts, actually. It was when I was at 40 Winks and 40 Winks, large scale franchise retailer, been around for over 40 years. much loved and known brand across Australia. Most people are aware of it. Their parents are aware of it as well. And a really interesting situation to be in from a marketing perspective is that I came into that business. We had come off the year of a record growth coming off, I suppose, the hangover from COVID. We were still growing. People were still nesting. Had another record year when the first year I was there. And then the second year that I was there, it was like everything just wasn't working. Just... Campaigns were going out. They looked great. It sounded great. The offers seemed to be okay. Just customers weren't responding. You know, a week goes by, a fortnight goes by, a month goes by, you know, two months goes by. And, you know, I remember having the coffee conversations with basically the guy, the lead e-com who worked with me. And we were walking off to the coffee shop and walking back from the coffee shop and we were having these same conversations. It was like day to day, every day. It's like, geez, this doesn't look good. Are you feeling what I'm feeling? This doesn't look good. We don't seem to be having the conversation we need to be having here. When do we pull the handle and go, hey? Or when is someone going to say, hey, it's not okay. Things will turn around because that was kind of like the conversation. Oh, it's just a bad week. It's just a bad fortnight. It's just a bad month. Things will kind of remedy themselves. And it didn't. So I suppose I put myself out on the limb a bit and actually got really close with the head of analytics for the business. And in having that relationship with him that I had already, we went, we've got to work this out. We're going to nut this out. Like no one else is going to be nutting this out. We're just feeling more and more pressure from the leadership team and the franchisees who need to better run their businesses and put their kids through school and pay their employees. So we scaled everything back. him and I went through a bit by bit methodically and went, okay, so if we can't spend the money that we have, because in franchise retail, you can't spend what you don't have. So it's percentage of the revenue coming in from the franchisees. So if the revenue is down, Our budget was down, but we're already kind of prescribed that and put that out in the marketplace. So it's like, what's our runway between now and the end about how much we've got to spend? And then where do we actually put that spend? And what do we put that spend on from a marketing perspective? So we pulled everything back to, okay, well, what media does work? How does it work? And what campaign does it actually work on? And what type of offer in that campaign works on? So we stripped it all the way back and went, okay, here's the lead. media that's going to push that campaign? What's the actually kind of complementary media that's going to go with that if we can afford it? And then worked out actually a particular campaign didn't need TV, it might only need radio. The campaign meant I only need digital as a lead. And so we actually worked out if we only could do a few things, what would they be doing? And we started then to experiment with the offer and actually look at the offers and go, okay, what's our competitors doing at the same time? How do they construct their offer? What are we seeing actually happening with products and services in the category? What do we think is going to get traction with? What's actually worked well in the past? Kind of actually understand what the offer is actually happening with. And we actually tweaked a few campaigns. Campaigns that might be a short campaign, we might have extended them from three days to a week. We might have had a fortnight campaign where we actually shrunk them down to a week to actually give a bit more sense of urgency. So we plated through it for a lot of different levels, whether it's the length, the timing of the campaign, the seasonality of that campaign, and even the offer of that campaign. So if 40 was kind of like the standard, 40% off in the markets was the standard, then what do we think is the standard now? Okay, what are we seeing now? So 40 might need to go to 50%. So we played with all those different things. And we actually then started to refine the combination of those and how we're going to go to market with those with less budget. So the budget was shrinking, remember? And so then from that perspective, then we actually went, well, let's do some estimations. Let's do some kind of predictability planning here and start to actually understand. So I then presented to the board about some campaigns that we wanted to change and how we wanted to change, not wholesale change everywhere, just targeted campaign change everywhere. where we thought we could move the needle, where we actually thought we could move the dial. And then we actually put them in market. Okay, so, okay, we think we're going to drive an extra $500,000 of incrementals revenue here, which is going to be a profit in everyone's pocket here from the franchisees. And do you give us permission to go and do it? And I'm denied and I'm denied. Yes, go and do it. Then we delivered a meal. in incremental. So we go, okay, we've got to win. So then we had another couple of campaigns that were similar to that. So then we tried that again. We think we're going to probably be 900 to 800K incremental on top of what we need to reach from a budgeting and targeting perspective. And then we go and deliver 1.5. So then we started to get some momentum and some traction. And we went from really a year that was going to be going into a negative to actually coming into a positive at the end. And that was all off the back of really getting into the guts, really getting into the detail, really getting into what worked. And as me as a marketer, I probably haven't been in, I've been in tough situations before where things weren't working, but things kind of turn around and the market kind of corrects itself. This wasn't going to correct unless we corrected it. So it was a valuable lessons that I learned, but then obviously helped build me some of the models that I've actually started to work with clients again today. I make them sound simple, but it is simple in explanation. Obviously, a lot of hard work, lots of interviews that goes into actually understanding what works and what doesn't work. But then, yeah, then you actually find what works and you scale that up.

Emma: 28:11

Yeah. And as you said, that real world experience, as you said, I'm sure incredibly stressful at the time and quite nerve wracking to be in that situation. But on reflection, looking back on that, what an incredibly valuable experience to have been able to have gone through and now be able to share that experience with other businesses, because you know what works, you know what doesn't work. And actually, perhaps not even you know what works and you know what doesn't work, you know what the process is. Yeah. don't change and that's obviously a far more extreme example but it's actually the same principle isn't it the principle of no it's okay it's worked before so we'll just do it again and we'll just keep doing it and hope that it just keeps working and that part of it is actually the same but to kind of make that as I said I'm sure quite scary but brave decision at the time to go hang on no we've actually got to do something different here And we can't just, you know, keep going on the same tracks and hope, hope isn't a strategy, that the market comes back.

Damian: 29:38

Hope is not a strategy. And yeah, Kodak is an extreme bank. So I think what we talked about before about a while, like about retail is, I suppose the net effect of that from when I was at 40 Winks was the compounding effect of it not working each week. And then another week goes by and then it becomes a month and it becomes two months and it becomes three months. And you blink and you go, well, what are we doing? We can't put the handbrake on, the vehicle's still running. So yeah, it was a good pressure cooker situation. It was good to kind of really go back to my roots in marketing and go, what did I learn on my master's? Like, what do I know from all the experience I've been doing? What are all the experiments that I've been doing, many experiments I've been doing along the way? You know, what did I learn when I was at Bunnings when we really didn't measure a lot of stuff? Because we opened the doors and we made double-digit growth. But the rainy day helped when, you know, Father's Day attacked once and it was like, well, yeah, these things work. Okay, great. Let's pull them out. So, you know, that whole measurement of everything that you do and understanding what you do you can always you know need to pull out the drawer sometimes but yeah it was it was a great experience to have didn't like it at the time coming out the other end with the benefit of hindsight but also the results has certainly given me a great framework and a great, obviously a great story to talk through, but a great framework and a reference point to kind of go back to and say, well, I know this works and I know this process works because I've been up against it with no real other move up my sleeve apart from I need to find out what works and my money's running out. Yeah.

Emma: 31:15

It's interesting because it goes back to something that I talk to my clients about often and that's, again, in simplistic terms, but your marketing skills give you a toolkit and that toolkit enables you to solve business problems. And I feel that sometimes marketers can be divorced from that or they can be divorced from we are here to solve business problems and that marketing can and should generate revenue and be able to attribute that and show how they're involved in that process. And I think it can be easy sometimes, easy is perhaps the wrong word, but to be divorced from that. So I really liked, you said it in that story, but you said it previously as well, that idea of thinking perhaps a little bit more like a CFO or like a business owner of we've got a problem here. What is this problem? what are the foundations of this problem and how do I use my experience and my toolkit to be able to solve that problem?

Damian: 32:20

Yeah, and in reflection on what we just talked about then and also recapping on that story, I think as marketers, and I've been guilty of it as well from time to time, is that there's an obsession with more, yeah. We like to be busy doing lots of things, yeah, but the obsession with more, like more content, more channels, more tactics, but... You know, I suppose that lesson I learned when I was at 40 Winks is that clarity always beats complexity.

Emma: 32:47

Yeah.

Damian: 32:48

Yeah. A simple... A sharp, simple offer aimed at the right people, executed well is often what you need to kind of get that cut through. You don't necessarily have a media problem. You've probably got a mechanics problem or you've got a conversion problem where customers are not converting. So it's, yeah, it's actually really giving that clarity. And it's like, oh, we don't have to be busy doing more and more and more and more. Actually, let's work out what actually we do need to be doing and what we do do that works. And that kind of gives you that clarity. So it's, yeah, it's a lovely lesson to learn. And that's a lovely thing to kind of work through.

Emma: 33:22

It's kind of the shiny object, isn't it? And I think we all do it in different scenarios, but it's so easy to get distracted by, oh, here's this cool shiny thing over here. Maybe we should be doing this. Or, you know, you see it with brands who are, I don't know, deeply in the sort of professional services B2B space, but putting all of their stuff on TikTok. And you sort of think, OK, is that where their customer is? I'm not entirely sure. Like, is that where they should be looking? Or the one that I always remember back in the day when I first got here was when QR codes first came out and everyone was doing a QR code and you were... Why? Like, is this relevant? Because we can. Yeah, exactly. But it's so easily done, isn't it? We all kind of get attracted to the new shiny thing.

Damian: 34:10

No, we all both, well, both of us jumped into the, I suppose, the Barbie and a toy box thing that went across the internet. I did a slightly different slant. But yeah, we do like to experiment with new things. But yeah, I suppose when it comes back to your business and your brand that you're working for, whether it's yours or someone else's, is actually you don't just do things for the sake of doing things. Kind of what I mentioned before, it's not doing more of just doing more it's actually doing you know doing the right things and then working out how you can do more of

Emma: 34:40

it so yeah and the power of knowledge i thought your your example before was really interesting in the business where you said if we don't get that customer to buy a second product within 30 days then we they're probably never coming back to us what an incredibly powerful piece of information to know and was have a huge huge impact on on what you would do with that customer in those 30 days and and you know whether you'd be pushing offers or or whatever you would do within that sort of model. But if you don't know that, if you don't have that piece of data, you know.

Damian: 35:15

Yeah. And look, that's part of the fun of actually getting into businesses. And for me, getting into businesses is actually– Let me have a look at your transactions and let me have a look at the size and frequency of those transactions. And let me go back and look at the last 12 months, maybe the last two or three years, and actually look at the lifetime value because I can tell you a huge story about what's actually happening and what's not happening. And really... a huge profit gain for the business because there are a bunch of customers that'll be quite loyal, that won't be price sensitive, that do buy multiple items, that don't wait till you're actually on sale. Are you talking to them? And are you talking to them correctly? And are you talking to them at the right frequency? And are you actually talking to them about what's actually meaningful to them? And then you're not being greedy, but then they're the ones you're going to make the most money out of. They're the ones that you're not having to convince too much to go and purchase from you again. They're small little nudges psychologically that you need you can actually make and where they feel good about purchasing with you rather than actually getting a customer that buys once and you don't see them again. Yeah. Which they're important, but we've got to think about ways of actually making those one-offs, one-off and gons come back to be a regular customer and buy multiple items. But look, the other little nugget like that one is, I think Australia posted some report about, I did a post about the other day about the average customer basket size or the average order value that you see in Australian retail at the moment. It's about $95. It's come down a bit, just obviously cost of living pressures and all that type of stuff. But then you know probably yourself, being an average online purchasing person like myself in that space, is that the average free shipping is about $100. Yeah. And then we're talking about, well, how do we actually get bigger basket sizes? Well, there's an easy way to do that. Just get everyone to spend $10 more. Increase the average basket size, which will increase it anyway, because most second items are not $10 from a retailer to kind of do so. So you might be pushing your basket size up to be $130. where if you're actually only pushing it to scrape over $100, then from a free shipping incentive of $100. So just little things like that. People go, well, we're giving too much away. Am I making it too hard? Actually, the benefit does outweigh the gain. So the gains outweigh the benefit there. So they are one and the same thing. If you actually can incentivize people with a little nudge to kind of spend a bit more, they typically will. People like to go, well, I get free shipping. Great. I'll put one

Emma: 37:42

more item in my basket. Like to save myself $15 on shipping. I've spent 50 bucks on something else that I may or may not have needed. But it's psychology, isn't it? You're like, oh, I got the free shipping. Go me.

Damian: 37:59

Yeah. And look, I did a post yesterday, actually. It was based on a book that I love, Predictably Irrational, done by Dan Ailey. I read that back in my days when I was actually, I think it might have been back at Maymar. And I first started to my first consumer consumer behavior. And it was one of the prescribed readings, a few chapters about prescribed reading. And then I ended up getting the book and loving the whole book. But he talks about the free and how free makes you completely irrational. So like you just said, I'm going to put an extra $50 item in my basket just to avoid $15 of shipping. So it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's, you know, but it's predictable. So there are some, there are some things like that from a consumer behavior, consumer psychology perspective. In that particular book, another book I love was Decoded by Phil. And then you've also got another one that's, what's his name? Martin Lindstrom actually got Biology. I mean, they're all about how the brain works and how we make decisions and why we buy the way we do and what kind of, how we actually kind of, the stories we tell ourselves to justify how we're purchasing, why we do what we do. So look, I think enough marketers do, but are not enough of the marketplace of marketers across a lot of different businesses that actually understand the benefit of consumer psychology and actually using, I suppose, the learnings and the research and experiments that have been done over the years to actually benefit from them for their organizations. Because I think what I think is a lot of people find it hard to translate those experiments and those examples into how they can apply it to their business. So that's where they need to come to obviously experienced marketers like myself and others like me where we actually have these benefits these books, we've read these books, we understand the theories, but more importantly, we've had plenty of chances to experiment with them and actually test them and actually see them work.

Emma: 39:49

Yeah. It comes back to real world application, doesn't it? Like I said before, you've gone through the storm, you know what to do because you have experienced it, not just a sort of a theoretical, oh, well, if I was in this scenario, I would do X, Y and Z. You know what you would do because you have done it. And that is always, always obviously going to be the benefit of experience. But I think even more so in marketing, I think that skill is, can be overlooked. And I think it is sometimes overlooked for a reason which I know plagues marketers across the board is that a lot of businesses still don't fully understand marketing and what marketing can actually do. And so I think that's where that disconnect can come of, oh, you know, we just need to, we just need content. Let's just have nice pictures on social, like that's marketing. And that gap, shall we call it, that huge cavernous gap is where a lot of those challenges lie. Yeah,

Damian: 40:54

look, I think it's a perception thing. I mean, perception becomes one of your biggest things in business, and I suppose from a marketing perspective. if you shape the right perception, then you can get most people to do most things. So from a consumer's perspective, if you can create the right perception about your product and your brand, then you can usually get them to think about you and feel about you and act in a particular way that you want. I think it's the same about marketing in general. The perception that people roughly have about marketing can be like, I only do these little things or they kind of do these things over here, they kind of do those things. And I think marketing is much like myself need to start. and we do, start to actually really have a better seat at the table from that perspective is that have different conversations. Have marketers having profitability conversations for a start, rather than just going, hey, all these vanity metrics. And it's like, yeah, but did we make any sales? Did we make any money? So I think that helps from that perspective and actually start to change the narrative around what that is. Have conversations where you can hold your own about what's happening in the business, not like how profitable pretty the campaign was or how creative that campaign is or how good that messaging is or how much you like it for yourself because it's not just yourself you're selling to, you're selling to obviously your customers. So, just changing that narrative will actually help marketing in general. And I suppose the impact of marketing is that we're not in there driving growth and driving profitable growth, then we're not doing our job. It can look great, but it's actually not helping anyone.

Emma: 42:30

Yeah. I actually think that change of language piece is huge, that commercial style of language is such a differentiator. And I've seen it so many times over the years of where that disconnect is coming it is often because the business is talking one language and the marketer or the marketing department is talking a completely different language and and they might as well be speaking you know english and german to each other they're not they're just not communicating effectively

Damian: 43:01

yeah

Emma: 43:02

and i think that also ties in with the earlier point around marketing being a toolkit to solve business problems because even using that sort of lens again it's a more commercial style of lens It's a more which leads to more commercial language, which leads to a focus on more commercial outcomes, which, as you said, is that's what marketing is there for to drive business growth.

Damian: 43:24

We go back to the beautiful models that I learned when I did my master's and anyone that's obviously studied marketing is that they're business models. They're not marketing models. They're ways of actually understanding business and actually understanding some methodical ways of actually building a business or scaling a business or growing a business. So that's why it's under the business and economic section within a university. It's not a marketing section of a university. So I think having more business-led conversations, having the right conversation with, I suppose, the founders and C-level management, having financial conversations. But also, I think the other way we can do it as well is actually talk about the metrics that matter. Talk about the metrics that actually matter to a business. And if you're helping do that to a founder, a CFO, a CEO, a CMO, and to other people in the organizations about how can we actually see what's working, really working the proper way rather than through other metrics that actually kind of hide those things or don't really give you visibility building those things, then that actually helps as well because then really you're having the commercial conversation and then you're actually going, well, yes, we can do lots of beautiful branding and messaging and creative stuff as long as it's actually driving a commercial outcome and we're measuring that commercial outcome. Yeah.

Emma: 44:39

Yeah, 100%. Final question, Damien. It is always the final question here and that is what do you know now that you wish you knew then?

Damian: 44:50

Very good question. Look, I used to chase perfection. I'm thinking about every campaign had to be flawless. And I think that was part of a bit of a trait of mine and trying to get everything right. And I've worked with lots of people and lots of different brands, businesses, and I see that and try to give advice to those people the right way. Don't trace perfection. You can't chase perfection. Well, you can, but you probably will never release a campaign. You'll never do the brand campaign. You'll never do that campaign. You'll actually never get this thing across the line. And I think retail kind of taught me that is that you can never get everything right. You can never get everything perfect. It's got to be close enough or good enough or out there working to come and refine. So yeah, I used to chase perfection, but now I don't. Now I chase momentum. Progress actually drives results. So doing it well enough and good enough, and I don't mean by degrading any of the quality, but getting it out there, getting it working, refining it, actually that momentum, that progress that drives results for me. So look, I've learned that friction kills. It's not big. It's obvious stuff, but it's the little moments of confusion or delay that stop people from buying. And I wish that I understood earlier how important offer mechanics were. One of the things I love about being a retailer is if you don't get your offer right, It doesn't matter how good you are, how pretty it looks, what colors you use, what logos you have with it, what cool video you've got with it. If you don't have a great product, clever, creative, it's full of targeting. Your offer's unclear, it won't convert. So how do you get that offer right? Whether it's a service or whether it's a physical product, whether it's a combination of the two, That's really, I think, you actually won't convert customers. And that'll help you with the conversion of the website. That'll help you conversion when you're at the cold face in the retail store, sales assistant talking to you. That's one thing that I love and I enjoy getting into. I love really pulling it apart and putting it back together. It's rarely one big problem though. I suppose. It's usually a series of small things, you know, fix those and the growth comes faster than you can think. But I think it's, yeah, it's actually understanding, I suppose, some of those fundamentals. You know, I think of some of the things that we do now, we actually generate leads and we get them to a website and we want them to do something. Then if where they actually land on that website actually doesn't have all the right cues or the right things in place, then really it's friction point. And then they kind of, jump off yeah the same we do all this work to send all this traffic to a store and if they have a really bad they didn't get greeted or they didn't get spoken to well or someone kind of overlooked them or doing something else or having a chat amongst themselves then the friction point is that particular point as well so it's actually understanding where those points are as well but yeah it's yeah i think for me perfection now i really just chose momentum

Emma: 47:41

The

Damian: 47:41

progress is what I want to see. And that actually is what drives results and actually allows people to kind of follow you and enjoy that journey with you, but also get on that same path. You know, they actually start to understand that that's momentum that's going to drive the results, the right momentum. But yeah.

Emma: 47:58

Yeah. Yeah, there's that quote, isn't there? And I forget who said it, but it's basically that done is better than perfect because you can never get to perfect. So done is going to win every day of the week over perfect.

Damian: 48:13

Yes, absolutely.

Emma: 48:15

Thank you so much, Damon. Really enjoyed that. There was so much in there. And to be honest, I could speak to you for hours on that topic because I think it's so interesting. But yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time and sharing your experience and what you've learned and the things that have made the difference for you in your own career. So thank you very much.

Damian: 48:36

Thank you. Absolute pleasure.