“STOP BEING BORING!" Why Creativity, Storytelling & Brand Personality Are Your Secret Superpowers

Are you stuck in a loop of “free valuations”, “stunning homes”, and “professional photography”? Do your marketing materials look suspiciously like your competitors’? Then buckle up, because this episode of Viking Chat might just blow the doors off your agency's entire approach to branding.

This week, Kristjan Byfield – industry troublemaker and Base Property founder – is joined by the ever-creative Tom Durrant, CEO of DCTR (formerly known as Dr. Photo). What starts as a friendly chat about creativity quickly becomes a full-throttle, no-holds-barred deep dive into why most estate agency branding is flat, forgettable, and dangerously dull—and, more importantly, how to fix it.

🔥 Key discussion points include:

• Why “blending in” is killing your margins – and your soul.
• The problem with industry homogenisation (and how to escape the sea of sameness).
• How Hat and Home, Marsh & Parsons, and Location Location are absolutely nailing branding through distinct stories and visual identities.
• Why focusing on “free valuations” and “floorplans” reduces your value proposition to price alone.
• The emotional power of storytelling and why it beats features and stats every time.
• What Snickers, Nike, and Yves Klein’s blue pee have to teach us about estate agency marketing (yes, really).

💡 “Creativity is not optional. It’s your only chance to stand out in a world where AI, templates, and tech have levelled the playing field.” – Tom Durrant

Tom shares how DCTR evolved from photo retouching and AI-driven visual enhancements to a full-blown creative agency helping property brands build bold, compelling identities. He lays out a simple but powerful framework for creativity: Originality, Emotional Engagement, and Quality Execution.

And Kristjan? He delivers some classic Viking truths. Like the tale of an agent who watched his fees plummet by a third—simply because he couldn’t articulate a single reason why a vendor should choose him over three nearly identical competitors. Ouch.

But this isn’t just about getting listings or raising fees. This episode dives into something much deeper: How to build an agency that people want to work for, buy from, and talk about.

“If your brand story is authentic, your people will live and breathe it. If it's generic, they’ll just quote floorplans and hope for the best.” – Kristjan Byfield

Expect laughs, revelations, and the occasional rant (in true Viking Chat fashion). Whether you're a high street stalwart or a startup indie with big dreams, this episode is a creative reset button for your brand.

✨ BONUS TIPS:

• What to ask your kids to discover your brand’s real purpose.
• How to steal inspiration (the right way) from brands outside property.
• Why your next hire might be a storyteller, not a negotiator.

🔗 Want more?
Tom name-drops the unmissable white paper “The Extraordinary Cost of Dull” from System1, which proves—through 60,000 ad campaigns—that bland brands bleed money. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

So… ready to stand out, speak up, and finally tell a story that matters?

Hit play. Then hit reset

Transcript

Kristjan Byfield: Right. Hello everybody. welcome back to the Viking chat and this week I am joined by Tom Durant of DCTR.
Kristjan Byfield: DCTR some of you might have previously known as Dr. Photo. but under Tom's leadership it's on a new wave of creativity. So today we're going to be having a chat about ‘stop being boring’ aren't we?  So Tom, for those who don't know you already and don't know DCTR, tell us.
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Durrant: Thanks for having me, Excited to talk to you, Mr. Viking Man. you're a legend of the industry and one that I've followed now for eight years. I can't believe how quick it's gone, but I started with dad eight years ago. then we're known as Dr. Photo and then over the years we've changed and we've organically grown and my team's grown and we've done more things. Dr.photo, by the way, is still there and it's still big part of our world. It's just a subbrand of our overall group. so Dr. Photo, it's what a lot of people know us for is enhancing photos. We've got AI that does a lot of that now. We put furniture into photos, that kind of thing. But over the years, I've also built a studio that specializes in CGI and design work, brand and websites for agents and developers. we've been doing that side now for about four years and we've been slowly growing in our own sort of background but these days a big chunk of the client base that we work with tend to be housebuilders. everyone from the PLC through to sort of small and mediumme but we still work with there's very few brands we haven't worked with.
Tom Durrant: I've been lucky enough to work with over the last eight years. but these days I look back to eight years ago when I started with dad and he saw this opportunity and my background was marketing. So I worked in marketing for Walkers Crisps. I worked in marketing for KFC. So all the bad stuff generally flogging fast food. and dad said to me, "I really think there's an opportunity here. why not come and do something?" And I said, "I'd do it, but I didn't want to take bins off driveways for the rest of my life." I saw an opportunity to build a studio. I didn't quite know what that quite enjoyed the retouching photo enhancing side, but I wanted to do more. I've always been a creative at heart.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. …
Tom Durrant: There are some crazy things that I've done over my life that have worked through creativity. Things like setting up the first and only Surrey Cider Festival. I had over a thousand people attend the event. I bought 40 ciders into a massive hall. we had the Wurzles come and play. It was crazy. I've always done creative stuff and…
Kristjan Byfield: 
Kristjan Byfield: Nice. …
Tom Durrant: I wanted to do that in property and that's sort of where we are today.
Kristjan Byfield: without further ado, I'm going to take this beast off my head because glorious hat mark, but I couldn't start a chat about creativity without dawning the Viking helmet. yeah. So, we've obviously bonded kind of over a joint appreciation of creativity. I think partly I attribute that on my side. we've talked about this. My dad worked in advertising for kind of 40 years. He was from that madmen era. ended up being an art director that came up through Sachi and Sachi and Bateys in Asia and sort of all that shebang.
Kristjan Byfield: And we grew up in a household where we were constantly being asked what we thought about commercials, adverts, TV ads, posters, things on the tube, whatever. Anywhere we went, a dad would be like, for this advert I'm working on, which font do you think I should be using?" And that was back in the days where fonts were on giant stencil sheets, not in a computer.  We won't delve into that because that's going to blow the minds of some people watching this. but yeah, in short, you and I have bonded over in appreciation of creativity. as the title says, ‘stop being boring!’ I think as agents, we're really poor at coming up with anything unique and anything truly creative.
00:05:00
Kristjan Byfield: And I think, you only need to glance at your average local newspaper, your average property magazine, scroll through and see 20 different estate agents with 12 properties on a page.
Tom Durrant: Yeah.  Mhm.
Kristjan Byfield: And hey, look, they're in different colors and they've got a different logo and a different position. and lo and behold, they all offer something amazing called a free valuation, which I've never heard of before.  and it's such creative tagline really makes agents stand out because that's not in any way the industry norm that everyone offers. so I just really wanted to chat with you today about I think for agents it's a real challenge, right? I think for a lot of agents their day is so full of just doing the business, doing the deals. Yeah.  getting the valuations in, getting their foot in the door, getting the instruction on, getting it onto market, getting the team on it, getting under offer, and then pulling it through that process.
Kristjan Byfield: I think for so many agents, they get really bogged down in the day-to-day so when it comes to them discussing marketing, most agencies won't have a particularly creative (from an artistic point of view) person within the team. And if they do,…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: they don't seem to be given a lead on this. And again, it pivots back to those same old we sold a house on your street.
Tom Durrant: Come on. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: We sold a property in just 14 days from going to market. I mean, stop when we get to an original tagline. We give you a free valuation.
Kristjan Byfield: We've got slower fall throughs. God. Hey, check out this one. We do floor plans, professional photos. so I think one of the things I want to touch on is…
Tom Durrant: Mhm. Yeah,…
Kristjan Byfield: why just doing what everyone else does when it comes to marketing, why doing what everyone else does is the worst thing you can do. Talk to me a bit about that.
Tom Durrant: there's a lot to unpick there.
Kristjan Byfield: with a really easy question, Tom.
Tom Durrant: Got an answer to all of it. So, why doing something different is valuable.
Tom Durrant: so if you're doing the same as everyone else, then my point of view is that there's going to be a race to the bottom because when it comes to competing, if you're looking the same as everyone else and you're sounding the same as everyone else and you're providing a very good service, then you don't have much to compete on other than price. and that becomes a spiral and you become thinking about your neighbors charging. But if you're creative in terms of your positioning of your brand, messaging that you've got the identity that you've created, ultimately the feeling you give to someone when you're speaking to them, then something price is less of a conversation.
Tom Durrant: It might be important if you're charging four or five% fair enough. But if you're charging just that little bit more,…
Tom Durrant: then perhaps you're something worth paying for. so what you've said just now is everything that I believe, which is great. We're off on an even keel.
Kristjan Byfield: We're off.
Kristjan Byfield: I didn't open with creativity  Free valuations rule.
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that again, lots to unpick here. so in marketing world there's something called averaging means that across industry especially when you've been in an industry for a long time you will become increasingly very similar to your competitors and that becomes what looks like homogenization.
Tom Durrant: So what I would say, Kristjan, is that I think to a certain degree, we are giving a bit of a disservice to a lot of agents out there because actually over my years of doing this, I've seen a heck of a lot of progression. guys like yourself stand out. You don't look agency. when it comes to your windows,…
Kristjan Byfield: Careful not to linger too much on the window displays we've had.
Tom Durrant: from an averaging point of view, people would probably glance past a window. they know there's going to be pictures and paddles, but with yours, you're always changing it and you're creating well, this is it. You get whether it's good PR or bad PR. Ultimately, yours was good depending on which way you look at it and who your target market is. But the point is that there's a lot of homogenization in our industry and that is everything from language used.
00:10:00
Tom Durrant: If you're talking about free valuations,…
Tom Durrant: you're looking at the signage. so especially in the house building building industry, every apartment's luxury. every house is stunning. and there's very very little differentiation in terms of Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: Light-filled apartment. Yeah. Modern, light-filled, highspec. I think those are the tick ticks.
Tom Durrant: But if you compare that to the big brands out there, they very rarely talk in that language. you look at…
Tom Durrant: how Nike talks about their product, you look at how Apple talk about their product, you can almost read the words and who's talking about it. so I think I've always Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: right, let's not forget this is, when you talk about Apple and particularly something like Nike, you're talking about a brand message that sits behind something you might pay 10, 15, 20 quid for. Obviously, you could pay considerably more. we're talking about typically people's largest asset and…
Kristjan Byfield: getting someone to part with hundreds of thousands if not millions of pounds.
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: And yeah, and interesting to see kind of the brand essence and the feeling, the emotion of purchasing something. like you said, retail's nailed that kind of existential marketing. what does it do? does it tap into…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: who you want to be? Does it tap into who you see yourself as being?
Kristjan Byfield: Rather than said, "Here's a running shoe with a rubber outsole and hey, it has laces that keep the shoe on your feet.
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Durrant: Talking about functions, not necessarily the benefits and the emotion behind and so another way to look at it is my opinion is that a lot of our industry runs on trust.
Tom Durrant: Whether you're selling a new home or a non resi home or renting out a home, I think a lot of property brands, they want to be trusted. who doesn't want to be trusted? But certainly that conversation boardroom will be around And to a lot of boardrooms, especially if there's not a marketeteer on sitting on the board, which it's normally either salesled or…
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Tom Durrant: finance. then trust boring becomes a byproduct of what it is to be trusted. You see it across certain other industries like finance or even car brands. Yeah.
Tom Durrant: They're looking for trust and therefore the language that goes out and the way they do it through their communications tends to be fairly boring and it lacks to your point emotion. And the thing is if someone walked into your office and they lacked emotion, you probably wouldn't trust them. So, as long as who your target is and matter how you're promoting to them,…
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Tom Durrant: if you're promoting correctly to your right target market, you've got some emotion behind that, then brilliant. there's some good examples right now, like I said, of brands that are doing something a little bit differently, I think, Haten Home down the road,
Tom Durrant: Yeah, it's not rocket science, funny enough, but they don't have a typical word mark or logo. They've actually got this beautiful idea around hanging a hat on the home or whatever it is. And they've really gone in on that. And that actually runs through all of their marketing. The lovely thing with that is it means that they stand out.
Tom Durrant: Their boards look great in Santa where I live. but B, they have a consistency in their messaging as well necessarily. Yeah, and you absolutely Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: You can tell Ben is ex-Martian Parsons in that I mean about that campaign…
Kristjan Byfield: which they're still running which I think you from an agency perspective is probably one of the best creative campaigns  I can think of within who don't know, those who aren't familiar because hopefully we've got people who aren't just London agents watching this. So Marshian Parsons are a quite upmarket brand. I would say kind of on par with your kind of your Foxtons, your KFH, all that sort of stuff. and for years now they've run these very cool campaigns where it is a person or a couple who are quite stylised in themselves and then they attribute how that person looks to a property description.
00:15:00
Kristjan Byfield: So it might be a bold person. It will say, large roof terrace with far reaching views or whatever it is, something little bit tongue and cheek
Kristjan Byfield: but super clever,…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: gets you thinking, really high quality imagery, although it is fun. it still feels luxurious. I'm sure it probably says down the bottom Martian Parsons estate and letting agents or something like that, but fundamentally there is no message in that poster of we sell or let out homes. there's no mention of what they do at all. It is just an image, a tag and then I think typically it will be like an area like Fitzrovia W2 or something that's attributed to the property it's describing.
Kristjan Byfield: And…
Tom Durrant: Yeah, I'm standing
Kristjan Byfield: yeah, so I think there's clear inspiration in Ben's branding around Hat and Home. Like you said, it's moving away from the …
Kristjan Byfield: get it and FL
Tom Durrant: the rest of the competitors in the market.
Tom Durrant: Unfortunately, whether the rest of the competitors in the local area,…
Tom Durrant: they probably know it or perhaps they don't care, but unfortunately, they all look the same. And so there's
Kristjan Byfield: Listen.
Kristjan Byfield: So, you sit down and you talk, you don't need to I don't think stay away from the word creativity to begin with for agents because I think it will overwhelm them. But I think if you sit down with most estate agents who have aspirations of growth and establish themselves in their market and some sort of growth strategy going forward, I think if you ask them what their three…
Tom Durrant: Mhm.
Kristjan Byfield: what are the three things they're kind of focusing in on the business and it will be how do they get their foot in the door? How do they stand out amongst the people who get their foot in the door and how do they justify getting paid a quality fee? I think those would be the three key things and I think you touched on this really early on when you kind of kicked off about the fact that when you homogenise an industry. So when you put out almost identical branding, slightly different layout, slightly different logo, but fundamentally same message.
Kristjan Byfield: when you turn up looking and talking like the other three or four people who've been invited, you talk about exactly You wear exactly the same clothes. you fundamentally have pretty similar results. you've all got access to the same market insight tools. pretty much everyone uses either home search, sprift, Spectre,  So, one of those three is sat behind the data there. and then like you said, and then you get on to fee. And I think there kind of lies the problem. It reminds me I had a conversation years ago and this really crystallised it for me. I remember chatting to an agent at a property networking thing. I think it was actually an old school event.
Kristjan Byfield: and I remember sat chatting to this agent similar age to me, maybe a few years older at the time. and he was bemoaning what he felt was a constant slide in fees. he was saying that two years ago I was earning literally a third more in terms of commission & fees but doing exactly the same work. and he was bemoaning the fact that basically that fee over the last two years had been chipped away. It had gone from 2% down to about 1.2, 1.3  so . they'd lost a third of revenue, which is not only just a problem for him as a negotiator, but obviously for the business itself. And what fascinating sat there chatting to him was I was like, "Okay, so why does that happen?" And he was like, there's four of us.
Kristjan Byfield: There's four of us as agency brands that really kind of between the four of us, we've got 90% of the market we work in. And it's great. And it's cool. who's dropping the prices? And he was like, it's usually one of the other three and then we drop to match it or, sometimes we'll then undercut it, but I don't understand why they're doing that. and then got questions of okay so when you go to see a client…
Tom Durrant: Keep going.
Kristjan Byfield: what are you doing to kind of establish what you guys do differently to the other three and that was really interesting because that was where he just kind of stopped he and he was like so what's that and he was like ‘I don't know that we do anything  different’. I was like, I mean, a that's quite sad. but b I thought, if you can't convey a single difference or a single tangible benefit for a client choosing you over your three main competitors, and they're not going to be able to then because if you can't, there's no way they're going to be able to.
00:20:00
Kristjan Byfield: So there you're gonna have four near identical pitches near with very similar. we're a member of property mark and we're on all the property portals and on average we sell 80% of properties in the first 28 days and blah blah blah blah whatever those benchmarks are and here's a report show exactly what your property's worth it should sell for. yeah,…
Tom Durrant: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: fact is you present a consumer with four near identical products or services and guess what they're obviously unless they're a lunatic going to go with the one that delivers the most value and if they all deliver the same thing then that value is dictated by price. and I said that was 12 years ago that for me really crystallized a lot of the problems with agency in their attitude to marketing and I think it also comes down to that thing of and I think this is the problem with agency marketing being so literal about a free valuation about professional photos or floor plans is that when you make what you do
Kristjan Byfield: something tangible that in reality anyone can do because you're the first person to do professional photos and…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: floor plans and that wins you market share. Guess what all your competitors are doing tomorrow. they're at least the same as you or they're going, " okay. We'll do that, but we'll add on virtual tours or whatever it is."  And so you then again enter this kind of very tangible battle of something that you put and I think the important of creativity is you take the conversation away You take that conversation away to how do you make people feel or how do you solve that problem? is that  what is that desire that someone wants out of there? and so I mean I think something that's massively missing from our industry and you're seeing this more.
Kristjan Byfield: I mean, this has always been kind of something particularly with big brands, but I think with us now with the advent of, AI video creation and the amazing technical kit you can buy for next to peanuts now where, the latest iPhone Pro, people are shooting professional music videos and shooting some of the new 28 weeks later movie, I think, was pretty much entirely shot on them. So we've got kit that doesn't cost you a hundred grand that you can go out and…
Kristjan Byfield: 
Tom Durrant: Thank you.
Kristjan Byfield: shoot, professional quality stuff. So now you just need that creativity. So talk me a little bit about the importance of storytelling.
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Cool. So yeah, again linking back to you, you touched on some really good things there, especially with technology and with AI. So take for example Dr. Photo platform. We have blue skies and we make photos look high quality. For me, that's a mandatory, but it's not going to differentiate your brand because so many other people do it.
Tom Durrant: For me, creativity is the only way that you can take it to that next level and you can actually differentiate because everyone else is doing the same thing. and technology has, to your point, liberated. they've made it easy for people to do X, Y, and Zed with their visuals or their advertising. So, it's like, what have you got left?  Sometimes the only thing you do have left is To be honest with you, I find it in my market, when it comes to coming up with brands for developments, it's very easy to take the easy route and just call it such and such gardens and to stick a sort of canvas style PNG logo on the top of it.
00:25:00
Tom Durrant: But it's so superficial it's like how do you sell it into the client? Number one. but b it doesn't have any value behind it. once you've got a story,…
Kristjan Byfield: There.
Tom Durrant: you can start to hang lots of hats on that story you and things will start to feed into it. Just again the hat and home. Once you've got a story, it's so easy to differentiate yourself because my story is my story. The reason that I started to go into the studio world and do creative stuff was it always pains me that looking at the three biggest marketing awards out there cans and…
Tom Durrant: drum awards.
Tom Durrant: You can submit work by category and the only industry that doesn't appear in those categories is property. yeah just felt it's lucky against charities but budget wise property has to be up there right we're selling hundreds of millions of pounds worth of brick. yeah yeah yeah more realistic
Kristjan Byfield: I mean that's shock that's also a bit Drinking is something we don't get a choice about,…
Kristjan Byfield: right? Everyone hopefully has a roof over their head. You buy it or rent it. This thing that exists in everyone's Cars don't exist in everyone's life. Jewelry doesn't exist in everyone's life, but it is one of those must haves. And yet, like you said, how shocking is that the three biggest advertising awards, property doesn't
Tom Durrant: it just doesn't exist. And then I get to a certain degree. Look, a big driver of that is because we don't tend to do TV. But within those categories, it's not all judged on TV advertising. There's digital stuff in there, too. And I think it's the biggest asset anyone's ever going to buy in their lifetime. Compare that to a Marsbar, and Marsbar gets more rewards for its creativity about how they're going out in the world. storytelling tends to have a truth to it and that's the bit where I think property in general across house builder and agent brands they don't tend to have a truth to them and by a truth I mean some sort of insight and…
Kristjan Byfield: No
Tom Durrant: an insight is something that it's often a reason for being it's something that everyone's aware of but
Tom Durrant: it's not necessarily front and center and when you come up with an insight or a truth, someone might say it and then everyone will go, " bloody hell, no, that's true." So, a good insight would be someone like Snickers who say you're not you when you're hungry. and you're like, "Okay, I've literally never thought of that, but now you're saying it as completely resonate." So that runs through all of their advertising and…
Tom Durrant: it has done for years. And I think that a lot of property brands there's loads of iterations of that.
Kristjan Byfield: They had Collins in the football changing room and…
Kristjan Byfield: that was brilliant.
Tom Durrant: This is iteration after iteration of that and it runs for years and that I can't see that across any property brands really like it doesn't exist.
Tom Durrant: it doesn't exist. I just think it should and
Kristjan Byfield: I think the funny thing is we've talked agents focus on the technical…
Kristjan Byfield: but I find when you talk to senior people in agency now most of the ones I took I would say are kind of leaders of independence either owners or MDs of independence.  I also get to talk to some of the senior execs within the big brands. But I think focusing more on the independent market, which is as we know the lion share of the market. I think what's really interesting is when we sit down and chat agency amongst one another. yes, there is obviously that technical conversation. How are you dealing with this? I've seen you've been trying that new service. What do you think? Blah blah blah.
Kristjan Byfield: But I think what's really interesting is when you really talk to people, when you get into those very kind of honest, personal moments when you're chatting with one another about…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: why you started the agency, what is kind of the purpose behind the agency, what gives you the most joy.  I think what interestingly comes out of those conversations is it's not about the technical, it is about that people want to help people find their forever home that next step in their life. They want to make one of the, most stressful things in someone's life a genuine joy.
00:30:00
Kristjan Byfield: there are and I think what's really interesting like I said everyone I know when you drill down you get to this very intangible kind of quite soft fuzzy reason for being an agent contrary to public perception it's not all about banking dollar and…
Kristjan Byfield: it's not all about churning the numbers and of course there is an element of that to our industry and that's fine but I think interestingly Most people when you talk to them,…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Mhm.
Kristjan Byfield: it's an intangible driver or the reward is intangible and yet you don't see agents marketing and messaging align with that. you'll see it a little bit, but it might be a tagline of,
Tom Durrant: Yeah, tagline and that's it. But then it gets missed and it's fairly superficial and there's no longevity in there and you can't the thing is I just feel like stories when you have a story and it's unique, it's yours, it's very hard to steal someone else's story.
Tom Durrant: like you say, anyone can do professional photography, anyone can have decent floor plans or a very lovely logo, but if you've got a story behind that and then someone else uses the same story, you' there's something that is lovely and unique about storytelling. The other thing about storytelling is this emotional journey piece. buying a home it's full of emotions. it's the most complicated, irrational journey that anyone's ever going to go on. but if someone can buy into a story, it will help with trust. but b it will help them also share and talk about whoever it is they're dealing with from a brand perspective.
Tom Durrant: If that story is super simple and…
Tom Durrant: it's compelling about that brand then is super easy to share. The thing is stories last a lifetime. there's, some of the best stories out there. clearly stories they're centuries old. But again, have you heard that story about Eve Klein? Is that his name? the artist from, 70 years ago that came up with a special blue. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. …
Kristjan Byfield: yes. Yeah, I think I did.
Tom Durrant: So talking about creativity and the value of storytelling, the value of doing something different to everybody else.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Tom Durrant: This guy is an artist. He got very famous for coming up with literally painting canvases blue. That's all he did. It was a very special blue which he actually trademarked. and there's a very famous story about the guy that again because of this story, it just puts him in another league to every other artist. And that he had a big event in Paris. He was going to show off a new collection. And so he invited all the celebrities of the time to come and see this collection. And they were waiting outside in the cold and rain and people were desperate to get inside.
Tom Durrant: Everyone was so excited to see this blue because back then, they didn't have screens. everything was through the media and in fact most of that was black and white. So to see this striking blue would take them into another place. So they went in, they had drinks, they had champagne, cocktails. there was no sign of him and at the time there was no sign of the art anywhere. But they were waiting.  They're like, " we must go into another room in a minute to see this art on the wall." so they were waited, and after an hour or two, they're basically told to go home. And it was so disappointing that everyone was like, "I can't believe the audacity of this person to be invited to see this amazing gallery of this amazing blue that they've been waiting for years to see."
Tom Durrant: And then of course what happened was they went to the toilet and they started pissing out this blue weeing out this blue.
Tom Durrant: You can cut that. And what he had ease had done, he spiked all of their drinks with this chemical that made their wee blue and…
Kristjan Byfield: That's right.
Kristjan Byfield: I had
Tom Durrant: it was the exact and that story again compared to putting on this lovely event where all the canvases were blue.
00:35:00
Tom Durrant: No one's going to talk about that in 80 years time, but they are going to talk about the fact that he spiked all their drinks and they all started weeing this balloon when they went to the toilet at night before they went to bed.
Tom Durrant: And yeah, that hit the headlines the next day in the papers.
Kristjan Byfield: I mean that is amazing as well,…
Kristjan Byfield: right? Not only that bold emotional journey of then allowing be pissed off,…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: bring them building that excitement,…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: building them in and then allowing them to be disappointed, having to not give anything away,…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Having suic end product there.
Kristjan Byfield: not to even be like, wait till later." Yes.
Tom Durrant: Yeah and that created the story. so the point is it's all about taking someone on an emotional journey.
Tom Durrant: In terms of the work that we create now in house, when we look at the work that we create, whether it's CGI or whether it's design work or website, we look at three very simple facets and that's how we see creativity. If you're going to be boring about it, actually putting a framework around it. The way that you can measure creativity is around three things and that's number one is originality, which is what most people understand creativity to be, which is that thing original?  In other words, to my point earlier about averaging, does it look different to everyone else in a positive way? The second thing is about engagement and this basically means how is it going to engage the person emotionally. So when they look at it, are they going to feel happy or inspired or angry or will they have that desire or whatever it is? Yeah.
Tom Durrant: what's that emotional journey someone's going to be looking at. And then the third thing is execution from a quality point of view. So it has to look good whatever it is you're creating whether it's photos or video whatever because if it's a really great idea it's taking you on an emotional journey but it looks crap then it's just not going to land. So all of those three things have to go together and that's whether something is going to ultimately land from a creative perspective. so yeah storytelling is there for longevity.
Tom Durrant: It's there to help you differentiate on things that are outside of your normal features and benefits of providing the same service that 200,000 other people provide. Because once you have a story, it's yours to tell and no one else.
Kristjan Byfield: So, let's try and…
Kristjan Byfield: turn this from us just debating the power of creativity to talking about how agents kind of start this journey of embracing creativity within their business. So, I touched on the phrase storytelling earlier. I mean, we're quite early in this journey at the moment of this year. We're trying to figure out how we create content or some of our content. that like you say is fundamentally creative and…
Kristjan Byfield: fundamentally different. So I've obviously lambasted all the typical stuff out there. I'm not for one second agent saying agents shouldn't be doing professional photos and professional floor plans and free valuation else and…
Tom Durrant: No, no.
Tom Durrant: It's a mandatory. You have to do it. There's no getting
Kristjan Byfield: and that will get you some clients there are people who will open that letter who will look at that magazine ad and for whatever reason that embraces I think something whenever I talk about anything around marketing or client acquisition or fee justification whatever it is, anything around that space. And I see them all very symbiotic. it is about multiple messages, we're not for one second saying an agent should sack off all their marketing and…
Kristjan Byfield: just do something utterly bonkers and creative. let's say they don't want to rush out and do a Jaguar. Yeah.
Tom Durrant: No, that's a problem.
Tom Durrant: Yeah, that's the thing is sometimes people get scared by it because they think creativity means something completely wild and…
Tom Durrant: different. not what I mean. It's just about simply being that's all I'm looking for.
Kristjan Byfield: So I think for agents that let's try and…
Kristjan Byfield: give them some pointers about what this journey kind of looked like. so where do we think this starts?  I mean, I touched on earlier the fact that I think most passionate agents I've spoken to at a senior level, when you really drill down into it, there is this emotive desire in there that isn't tied into transactions or deals or earnings.  It's tied into, I said, finding people the dry dream home, making people impossibly happy, giving a family a chance to grow or flourish or, what it is. maybe you do a lot of probate stuff, maybe it's just helping people at the most difficult time in their life.
00:40:00
Kristjan Byfield: But I think would that be a kind of where we would suggest they would start is to try and start having those conversations and…
Tom Durrant: Should be all right.
Kristjan Byfield: get away and head towards the emotional and the ethereal and kind of understand at a core basis level because again one thing we've talked about is great to be creative but it's still got to be real, right? you can't mold this kind of creative story around a falsehood within your business. Yeah. You can't if you're a get deals done, turn deals round, we're just at transactions and then you put out this very creative campaign about what an incredible gentle nurturing experience you deliver. it's going to grind, right? It's going to juxtapose.
Kristjan Byfield: So, we think it's kind of where if agents are kind of step by step just trying to figure out what does establishing and understanding what that creative voice sounds like within an agency.
Kristjan Byfield: Is that where we think they start? Sit down and have a talk about what it is they do and why they do it.  Not from a step technical standpoint, but socially, those intangibles that come with a business. Is that a good place for an agency to start
Tom Durrant: Yeah. …
Tom Durrant: so there's going to be a million and one ways you can approach it because it is creativity and it's always best not have framework. Why not? But ultimately if that you're right and it feeds in again into that insight piece. So it's spending a day or two with all of your stakeholders. it could be people that you've worked with in the past, it could be people that actually work for you,…
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Durrant: it could be family members.
Tom Durrant: And often the best thing is to, ask your old daughter what you do for a living. try and get to the most simple definition of what you do, why you do it, and try and explain what daddy does for a business. and it's these little nuggets that you'll be able to pull out of, doing this little bit of research. that puts it on a human level that's not complicated because that's the thing that you can do is you can really just, overly complicate this into 60 pages of a brand deck. You want to keep it super simple because you want your story to be really, really simple. That's one thing I would start with.
Tom Durrant: The second thing is to look at my market and to simply take screenshots of all the websites of all the guys within a 20 mile radius and look at what they're saying. So is their what are they doing beyond the tagline and build a little brand positioning little X and Y that you can put together where do your competitors sit and from a messaging point of view how can your insight tie up into something that will differentiate yourself from the rest of them so if you happen to be so bloody lucky that no one else in the local area does do things professionally then perhaps
Tom Durrant: you can go for that, but that's probably not likely. But if it's something else that's very uniquely and only you that you can build a story around, then do that with your brand. It all comes down to brand and it depends on how much the agent is willing to touch that element of it.  if they're building a new website, that's a great opportunity to start because again, we've, had briefs in the past with, building out a website and this is basically the content and this is my logo and I want it to go there. And we're like, okay, we can do that. it's happy easy days, but that's actually not solving the bigger problem of how you differentiate yourself.
Tom Durrant: Creativity for me is the only answer in today's world that you can differentiate yourself. There's nothing else at all because anyone can use chatb to make images to help them with everything to help with copy when they're making property ads. so to think creatively is the only way to do that.
00:45:00
Tom Durrant: How do you do that when you feel your team aren't that creative? You can work with others externally to help you. but I think that it has to still feel authentically That's the thing. And I'm not saying that everyone has to go out and spend 10 million quid on a TV ad. it's completely mental.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Durrant: I'm just saying that you just need to think about the messaging that you're putting out there, the way you're doing it. your website's a good example of not looking like other people's websites. We are currently building a house builders website right now who they're fairly large.  We've done a big exercise and it says that out of their core competitors in their region, every website is exactly the same with the search bar at the bottom and now the same is only the logos that are changing because all the pictures are of couples mostly and families touching each other. There's something about touching. I don't know what it is. They have to touch each other. And this feeds into my whole point around averaging and optimization.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Durrant: everything starts to homogenize together when you start to think about your competitors not as other regional builders or estate agents in the area. Your they're competing on another level. So good example might be if there's a house builder that's famous for being around for 100 years. It's all built on craftsmanship and heritage. it's built around British values and doing things properly. And you start to look at other competitors in the market. their messaging is not really talking about that other than saying that they're high quality. you start to look at other British heritage brands outside of property. So actually you might look at the Morgan brand car manufacturer.
Tom Durrant: you might look at John Lewis and…
Tom Durrant: you start to get inspiration from those guys. So as a family business whatever kind of setup your agency has in terms of who you are as people and a collective and where you want to play in terms of differentiation a positioning point of view in the market. at yourselves don't even look at other agents for inspiration.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah.
Tom Durrant: Look at other businesses outside of that. Look at how leisure centers are doing it. I don't know why I say Leisure Centers, but literally look at anything else that has some sort of resonating story with yours and be inspired by that. keep your eyes open.
Kristjan Byfield: I mean I would other agents to caution you…
Kristjan Byfield: what not to do much more than to be inspired by because I think there is that uniformity to our industry.
Tom Durrant: Say I'm crazy.
Kristjan Byfield: you only need to go out there huge sways of our industry very literally work off templates we've got three or four main website developers to our industry and they are very open about the fact here are three templates you've got this or…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: this and choose which one aligns with your brand and give us your colors and give us your copy and tada and I think as a supplier I always kind of realize agents were a bit homogeneous as an agent myself, but you don't fundamentally spend that much time really going out seeing the market.
Kristjan Byfield: You look at a few competitors, you might look at some big boys you want to aspire to, but you don't really go out there. I think for me when I pivoted into also being a supplier which meant that I land on probably 40 50 60 agent websites each week and…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: by now I can literally go that's built by them that's built by them that's built by them it's another one by them and…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: it is only when you really go out and look at a lot of property websites that you realize quite how homogenized the industry is and I think you made a really really good point. We talk about the start of this journey. I think agents might become overwhelmed by what a creative campaign looks like and how that filters out into so many touch points within a business. But I think what you're absolutely right about is let's look first and…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: foremost at that first brand experience and it is one of two places. It's your digital shop front or your physical shop front, right? It is either your website or is walking into your high street shop. And so I think one thing agents can really do is to take a really honest hard look and like you said if you can't do it yourself find someone whether that's a friend who's more creatively inclined maybe they work in advertising or they're interior designer an architect or something like that or they're a creative lead in a completely different industry. so if you can't see it yourself,…
00:50:00
Kristjan Byfield: but I think physical branches I'm still amazed they've not come on. I think when we look at what Foxton's did 25 years ago,…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: really 25 years ago now, when they invented the cafe style office with the bank of fridges at reception and it stood out and it helped them stamp a mark on the London property market and…
Tom Durrant: Yes. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: there were lots of people who piled in off the back of that and almost completely replicated the design element brick for bring within other brands and…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: and over the time you've seen a handful of agents every different to hat and home. I've seen their offices quite funny. they've, really properly embraced their bowler hat lights and, all this sort of stuff. But no, there have been a handful of creative ones.
Kristjan Byfield: But I think interestingly, when you walk down your typical high street with five agents on it,…
Tom Durrant: This one.
Kristjan Byfield: the reality is they all kind of look the same. they've got the very standard homogeneous desk. They've got the blue carpet tiles. They've got a map on the wall. They've got particular cards showing either…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah. No.
Kristjan Byfield: what they've got on or what they've let or sold. And yes, you can dial that dial it down in terms of finish. But you can walk into most agents offices and go window card display Map on wall NEG desks by front door brand magazine tick you can and so again when we touch what differentiates what makes people feel different if we look at how retail's changed over the last 10 years particularly it's gone into perient this more brand the brand make you feel the moment you arrive on their website the moment you walk in that door do
Kristjan Byfield: you feel the same way and we can again take this back 20 25 years to kind of one of the big boys that did that was Apple when they launched their Apple stores and they look like nothing you'd ever seen before and there are plenty of other brilliant examples of things that creative but I think again time and time again you walk up and down your typical high street you go on your typical high street agent's website and if you line them all up on a
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: There's not much difference that…
Tom Durrant: David and you
Kristjan Byfield: how are you starting that thing? If someone's walked down a high school and walked into those five branches when they get home at the end of the day,…
Kristjan Byfield: how are they remembering who
Tom Durrant: …
Tom Durrant: 100%. so I ran an event called Brick Live recently. I'm going to do one for agents. I'd like to do one for agents. in that room was mostly house buildings. but I invited someone called Adam Morgan who wrote a white paper called the extraordinary cost of D.
Kristjan Byfield: Yes. Just really just Yeah.
Tom Durrant: And to your point around creativity and investment, you've been worried about investing in marketing and creativity and this whole idea where his argument was if you don't then it's going to cost you a lot more. and he has hard facts behind that. They had actually looked at 60,000 adverts and half of them were delivering a net neutral response.
Tom Durrant: In other words, people didn't find them happy or they disgusted or take it on their journey. it became like wallpaper. and they actually put some really solid numbers behind the level of media investment that brands would have to have for dull advertising versus creative advertising. and per year per big brand. This is by the way before you get worried about these Per year big brands for those brands that putting out dull advertising they have having to spend 10 million pounds a year in extra investment on media to deliver the same return as other brands were delivering creative ads.
Kristjan Byfield: Do you remember the figure?
Tom Durrant: And this is how he built this whole white paper around that.
Tom Durrant: And I mean I know yes you didn't actually say that…
Kristjan Byfield: What was that? Do you remember roughly what that top of? If that's 10 million as
Tom Durrant: what percentage I mean a heck of a lot right the big brands put in I need to find that bit out.
00:55:00
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah, I'm just wondering if that's same again or is that 10 times what they're initially spending?
Tom Durrant: I don't know that bit it's eye watering and…
Kristjan Byfield: You'll have to find that out and drop in the comments afterwards.
Tom Durrant: and through all this data mining and tests that they were doing they also ran another really simple test where they sat someone in a room and…
Tom Durrant: they got people to basically give they recorded levels of engagement and they found that half the ads that people were looking at were less engaging than another video that they were watching of cows in a field.
Tom Durrant: Really interesting stuff that says, from a brand and a marketing and an advertising point of view, if you're not doing something different or engaging, that's getting someone, delivering an emotional response, then you're basically going to have to spat so much more money up the wall to to get people talking about it, to have any sort of virality, or to stand out.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Durrant: So, if you were to invest in a new office, if it was me, I would invest in a lovely office, but I probably wouldn't make it look like everyone else. Yeah. I wouldn't have the same kind of experience. I don't know what the answer is, by the It's going to be different because it's different for every brand. yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: And that's the thing I think authentic,…
Kristjan Byfield: we're not saying there's this blueprint. I mean, that's the whole point of creativity, And like you said, you can't have a framework to creativity.  there's a framework of delivery, but you creatively have to be different. But I think you're absolutely right. you've got to be really careful you don't have this creative checklist that you have to follow through. but I mean I think also something we've not touched on and it's way too late in the conversation to dive deep into because we're getting close to running over time as it is. But one thing we also haven't talked about, I've kept this whole conversation about client and customer acquisition and feed generation.
Tom Durrant: Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: But what we haven't talked about is actually who are you attracting to work within your business. What is it that motivates the people who work for you today to still work for you tomorrow, in five years time. and I think we haven't touched on that but I know within our agency in base us doing things differently for authentic reasons was really really important for us as business owners.
Kristjan Byfield: We always wanted to kind of follow our path and we kind of always had that kind of blind faith that you kind of do things your way gravitate towards you that people gravitate towards you who align with those values but I think the same is true of your team right you're…
Kristjan Byfield: if you build this brand experience this brand message this unique we saw image within the industry…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: then yeah it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea both client staff but the ones that it is for they're going to buy into tenfold they're going to love walking in the office and the fact that they I don't know go and sit on a bean bag and work on their laptop or private they can go in the background and they can shut all the noise of the neg hitting the phones away because that's whatever it is,…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: there's more value to your brand presence experience to just how can I leverage it? can I How can I charge my clients more money? It is also about, how do I build this community of people that are engaged on this mission outside more than let's just do more deals. and How do we support that? And again, you look at the really aspiring brands that I see within agency. And there's lots of other things tied into that. There's community and charity work. there's innovation, there's engagements within housing, there's, trying to tackle social issues, whether they're localized bigger. And there's other strings that come into that.
Kristjan Byfield: But again, if all you're going to do is just agency and it's going to be very compartmentalized and you're going to look like everyone else and you're going to pay like everyone else and you're going to structure your business like everyone else,…
Kristjan Byfield: how are you going to attract and keep the best talent which right now is a huge debate within our industry.
01:00:00
Tom Durrant: Yeah, perfect.
Kristjan Byfield: people coming into if you believe what you read in the press, the aspiration of people to join real estate is declining. and I think a large part of that is because the perception is it is a doesn't care who I go and work for, they're all pretty much the same. I'm going with that.
Tom Durrant: Yeah, I agree.
Kristjan Byfield: But I think that just creativity isn't just outbound,…
Tom Durrant: You can only bring your No,…
Kristjan Byfield: It's about the team
Tom Durrant: it has to run through the whole organization. It's not just a clever video or a lovely logo or a lovely piece of copy.
Tom Durrant: These people are telling your story every day and they need to live and breathe the values and that story that you have as an organization. So it has to start from the top. I can tell when an agency is salesled or marketing led instantly normally by looking at their materials but also by listening to their team members and how passionate they are about the story they're trying to deliver.
Kristjan Byfield: Sure.
Tom Durrant: Creativity by its very nature is all about being at the cutting edge of innovation. because creativity ultimately is innovation. It's about new things. It's about doing new things. And therefore if your organization is creative generally you'll be doing stuff that's new and exciting and fresh. And if there is this challenge for big brands to hold on to self people so they're not going self-employed. I get that.
Tom Durrant: And I think that's because you look at the story of a lot of self-employed agents so they'll have these shackles that they couldn't do what they wanted to do in terms of providing a service and telling the stories they wanted to tell. if you have an organization that's marketing led that actually from a creative point of view as an organization,…
Tom Durrant: it's also really important to let people be entrepreneurial and to not be angry if something goes wrong. because things will go wrong when you're being creative. That's innovation.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah. Exactly.
Tom Durrant: New products will fail and new services will fail.
Tom Durrant: You need to embrace failure and that's a big part of creativity. So hiring the right people is really really important to grow your message and to be consistent with your brain because one bad egg can really ruin it for your organization when they're dealing with that person. but from a new hire point of view, all of these things, creativity is going to help you. And I'm sure that go back to him again. Just this is easy. He's a mile away from me now. Ben at Hassenome, I'm sure, if I'm honest, will find it easier than other agents in the local area because there's something distinctive and lovely about the story that they've got that's very unique to them and they seem very cutting edge.
Tom Durrant: And therefore, if they're cutting edge, the service they provide is going to be the very best, but also they can see growth and they can see potential there.
Tom Durrant: And I think it makes working there more exciting, too. It's not dull.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah, I think there's a few.
Kristjan Byfield: I think we'll try and kind of wrap it up around us. I think some of the agents are kind of stand out for me like you said Hatton Home the Martian Parson's never ending campaign.
Kristjan Byfield: If you're not aware of it, familiarize yourself with it because I think it's genius piece of agency marketing. you've got the likes of Location Location who do, beautifully unique website, but they do a vast amount around their community, like the toy appeal they do every year,
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Come on. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: the yellow location branded roses on Valentine's Day, …
Kristjan Byfield: yellow ribbons that they do on their door,…
Tom Durrant: That's it.
Kristjan Byfield: nothing else.
Tom Durrant: It's a very similar idea.
Tom Durrant: Not, the story itself, it's just distinctive aspect. There's no, but it's yellow, but it's consistent and it helps them stand out.
Kristjan Byfield: Yeah, it's nothing outrageously creative.
Kristjan Byfield: It's not like bonkers. You don't put that in front of someone and they go, I don't understand what that's got to do with property. …
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: there is that tangible connection of brand and then they've leveraged it beautifully. you touched on, in our agency, our website, I've felt for years, particularly when you're a boutique agent you can fall into that homogenized thing of websites looking very similar and very familiar. And I think there's a security in that, but, we've wanted for years to do something really different, and that's what we did last year.  And still a year later I go on our website I don't know probably 10 times a week going and looking at something tweaking something reviewing something and we've got quite a long strategy about our website is far from finished.
01:05:00
Kristjan Byfield: It's kind of, phase one is really where we are now. And there's going to be elements that we build out over that over time. But what I still love is I still come to our website, five, 10 times a week. And every time I land on it, I'm really proud and that it just feels different, but it also feels genuinely authentic.
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Kristjan Byfield: I'm not looking at something that looks like any other website I go on. and like I said, I'm going on 20, 30, 40, 50 websites a week on average, looking at different agent stuff. and I think, in letings where kind of client acquisition, I would argue, is harder than in sales feel a little bit more transaction. You got that emotive thing, but landlords, they're tricky buggers to get, but once you get them, you've got them. but then there's an array of things that will appeal to those. So, yeah, I think look, so in terms of things agents take away, go and genuinely try and look at agents that are doing things a bit different. and I'm not saying go out there and take inspiration and go and do, hey, our color's purple, so Valentine's Day, we're going to go and do purple roses on our local high street.
Kristjan Byfield: try not to completely replicate what you see there, but hopefully take some inspiration.
Kristjan Byfield: Tom, you touched on it earlier. What was the book called again? the cost of being boring. What was it?
Tom Durrant: So it's actually a white paper…
Tom Durrant: which it's called the extraordinary cost of dull. You can download that white paper at a m website called system one. If you googled extraordinary cost of dull then you'll be able to download it.
Tom Durrant: It's just really interesting. Yeah. Yeah.
Kristjan Byfield: And is there what's your number one kind of creative inspiration source?
Kristjan Byfield: What's your number one go-to? So, one thing whilst you think about that, one thing I love that you do the ability to kind of daydream. you give your team time to just window gaze to just dayd window gaz and let the creative journey kind of permutate a bit and…
Kristjan Byfield: I think look that's easier for your creative business but I think there's something to be said for that there's something I think agents have also got to be really careful that they don't go right chaps tomorrow at 12:00 we're having a meeting on creativity and at the end of that meeting go with 10 highly original ideas It's not quite…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. No,…
Kristjan Byfield: how creative works, is it?
Tom Durrant: And inspiration can come from everywhere. there's no one source if we've got a new project and we found it's relating to such and such we'll tend to go out we'll look so I don't have one source what I would say is we try not to do desk research on the computer because there are a million things that you can look at the hearts and…
Kristjan Byfield: I look at brand,…
Tom Durrant: these lovely
Kristjan Byfield: right? Look at things that engage you with a brand and…
Kristjan Byfield: try to understand what it is about that messaging or marketing that hooked you and is there something you can
Tom Durrant: Yeah, it's just sort of keep your eyes open,…
Tom Durrant: because sometimes you might dream it and…
Kristjan Byfield: And also guys,…
Tom Durrant: it just pops up in your head and you're like, okay. there's something really lovely about that." But generally it's just through keeping your eyes open and experienc
Kristjan Byfield: if you can't, we've touched on it. There are lots of agents out there who don't really have that creative streak. if they're honest with themselves, don't really have a creative bone in their body. And that's fine. We use experts in this industry. We use experts to survey, to value, to apply for mortgages, everything else. That's why I've got you on here today. there are creative experts out there. Don't feel like if you can't figure out yourself,…
Kristjan Byfield: You can't force creativity. So, if you haven't got it yourself, hire it. Don't undervalue it. Don't do the classic, we'll promote you in all of our advertising. It's a privilege for you to Shut up.
Tom Durrant: Go see.
Kristjan Byfield: Don't do that because any creative should rightfully slam the door in your face if you say that. but if you don't have creativity go and hire someone talk to Tom look at others out there as Tom's touched on.
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Thank you.
01:10:00
Kristjan Byfield: Don't just look at agency look at broader fields development property etc. Tom we're gonna have to wrap it up there. We could talk for bloody hours mate but I'm getting the window banged on for my next meeting. Bud, it's an absolute pleasure. Really keen to hear what people say. So when we share this stuff, please let us know your thoughts. what inspires you, what peaks how does this get your juices kind of flowing?
Kristjan Byfield: If this inspires a move, come back and tell us about it later. Yeah, that's it. But otherwise, Tom DCTR, thanks for your time today, buddy. Take care,…
Tom Durrant: Yeah. Cheers,…
Tom Durrant: I appreciate that. Yeah. Thanks, Christina. Thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure talking.
Kristjan Byfield: mate. Bye,…
Tom Durrant: Cheers, mate.
Kristjan Byfield: We'll leave a second there. I am gonna have to dash. I'm late for meeting. But cheers for that one.
Tom Durrant: Okay. Thank you.
Kristjan Byfield: Next week as we push it out,…
Kristjan Byfield: we'll tag you and we'll share links with you and stuff. But yeah,…
Tom Durrant: Thank you.
Tom Durrant: Thank I really appreciate that. Thanks for your time, Christian. See you. Cheating.
Kristjan Byfield: bye mate. It's been bit of joy. Take care. Bye.