Building the UK’s Most Engaged Telecoms Brand on Social | Tom Fenwick-Smith

In this episode of Connected Thinking, Niamh Green, Account Director at SEEN Connects, sits down with Tom Fenwick-Smith, Senior Conceptual Creative & Strategy Social Lead at VodafoneThree.

With a career spanning film, digital and social, Tom brings a unique perspective on how storytelling, culture and technology intersect. After helping make Three the most engaged telecoms brand on UK social, Tom has been pivotal to the VodafoneThree merger and building their social strategy.

As the creator economy continues to grow rapidly, this conversation explores why audiences are increasingly seeking connection and how brands can respond through more culturally relevant, social-first strategies.

Together, they discuss:
→ Why audiences are craving human connection
→ What a good creator brief looks like
→ The power of sharing relatable stories
→ How brands can move beyond ads to create engaging content

Stay tuned for more episodes of Connected Thinking, our series of chats with standout voices from the world of marketing, where we unpack what’s trending, what’s shifting, and what’s coming next...

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Tom Fenwick-Smith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomfenwicksmith/

Niamh Green: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niamh-green-925704125/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Connected Thinking, our series of chats with standout voices from the world of marketing, where we unpack what's trending, what's shifting, and what's coming next. I'm Neave, your host and account director here at Scene Connects. Today I'm joined by Tom Fenick Smith, Senior Conceptual Creative and Strategy Social Lead at Vodafone 3. Tom is an award-winning creative director working at the intersection of social, culture, and technology. With a background spanning film, digital, and in-house agency leadership, he spent the last decade building social first brands and campaigns that drive both cultural relevance and commercial impact. Lovely to have you, Tom.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

That sounded quite fancy, didn't it?

SPEAKER_00 0:38

Right. It was quite the intro. Tell us what's been going on a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Uh well, I um I don't know, I've had quite a weird career. So so I started my career in the film industry, and I used to work as assistant director because I always wanted to be a director. So I started making big feature films. So I've basically been on the journey with us as people, going from big cinema to mobile phones. So I started in big films and then ended up working in social, then in augmented reality, virtual reality, more social, innovation, and then kind of here. Um and really spending a lot of time working with creators now as part of my marketing plan, as part of the strategy. Um that's kind of where I'm at at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

That's quite the career.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Yeah, yeah, it's different. It's different. It's it's been like a very interesting journey. The key thing with all of it is that you still see that people are really after storytelling. So it doesn't matter the size of the screen. They just want connection and a story to be told.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

It's all emotion-based, isn't it? You want to actually feel like you can follow something or you can like empathize or um kind of like relate to what you're seeing as well to connect with the content.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

100%.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

So let's kick things off properly then. You help make three the most engaged telecoms brand on UK social. Talk us through what that looked like.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Well, I it was it was a really interesting opportunity. So at the back end of COVID, I was kind of looking for a role. I was approached to come and join three to help build that in-house agency. And it's kind of it's quite a growing conversation within the advertising scene at the moment, the power of in-house. And uh there's a lot of really standout in-house agencies, Spec Savers being one. Sips and Bites, another great example. So it was a really interesting proposition for me to go and join. When I joined, I kind of recognized that like I could push my talents towards social quite quickly. And at the time we had a brand proposition of life needs a big network, which really translates into real people doing real things that matter with the phone at the heart, is kind of how I interpreted it. And at the same time, TikTok was really on the rise, right? And the micro and nano influences were really starting to gain traction because they had a lot better engagement and better authenticity. So for me, it was a really interesting moment where you could make a real strategic play to putting them more front and center. Whereas they might have been like the peas of the Sunday roast, right? Now you could actually upgrade them to the beef. Um, and you could create creative platforms around them which would strategically land to ladder up to that proposition. So we had a couple of test cases where we did one, a really good campaign with our partnership with Gogglebox, um, and that was testing out real phonism, so things that people generally do when they're second screening and watching TV. So again, coming from a really strong insight like we would in traditional advertising, but then building a creative platform where you could just bring in multiple creators who have got that, they could be all different shapes and sizes, different comedic flows, whatever it is, and they all fit together and you create an ecosystem that goes out in conjunction with the TV show itself. So that was our test case, and it absolutely smashed. I mean, the the budget for that was way less than the above the line, but the brand recognition after that was way, way higher. So it showed the guys internally the power of social, and that gave us a really good foothold as an internal agency and as an authority in the voice. So we've then kind of built on that as we progressed over the last few years. Um, and we do a lot of work with creators because that brand proposition, although we're in kind of mid-change at the moment post our merger with Vodafone, which is very exciting and things still to come out. Um, and we're developing that at the moment. But it it just gave us a really good platform to be able to build off for any of our propositions, whether it was working with Chelsea, any uh partnerships with other phone companies, anything it kind of we could knit something in together quite nicely.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

That's amazing as well, because I remember that partnership um with Gogbox just from watching it on like all of the different channels. But you were really kind of almost ahead of the game with the shift to the smaller influences as well, like from when that happened. And I think it's really interesting to see that the brands that really picked up on that at the time and where they're at now just had such an edge where, you know, agencies like ourselves were almost trying to kind of convince our clients that this was a different route that we could go down and the benefits of it. So you guys would have been one of the case studies that we would have been, you know, showcasing to our clients. And now we've seen so many make that share.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Oh, thank you. That's really kind of you said. I had no idea. Back in my older days, I worked at a great digital agency called Polk, which ended up becoming part of publicists. And but we did a campaign there called the Wembley Cup, which was when influencers on YouTube were like massive. But it was a very pivotal project for me because the power of what they can deliver was kind of shown. And again, it was quite ahead of its time, that campaign. And it didn't, I don't think it quite got the recognition in the industry. But as a business KPI, it absolutely smashed, right? So you could see that because of that old YouTube influences where the guys went skyrocketing up, you know, we're talking multi-million views, side men, all of those kind of guys. You could feel that people were really crying out for smaller creators who felt more personal, more like your mate than a celebrity, because they kind of jumped the gap a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

100%. And this whole industry is about trust, right? And it's exactly what we're trying to do. We're trying to get people to kind of trust the recommendation of the influencers or creators that they're using. Um, a campaign that we've actually ran um through Connects for Arla Protein. You'd think protein, you know, you want to be working with these like big sporting ambassadors. And yes, there is a role for an ambassador there, like 100%. It's something that we're exploring. But their whole thing is around storytelling and like people's everyday lives and how like protein doesn't need to be an inaccessible thing. It can be something that you fit into your routine. Everyone needs it. You don't need to be going to the gym and deadlifting or running marathons. Like, you need it for your day-to-day life and making it accept um accessible and easy for people to just consume on the go was super important. So when we kind of looked at the strategy of it, it was a case of right, okay, do we go down this like performance sportsman route? We can tap into it, yes. But it was more about people who were trying to, you know, do the couch to 5k or parent with three kids who's running around and, you know, just trying to get their protein in, but routines can make it really difficult. Um, and people just trying to kind of do that little bit extra. So we did tap into those kind of creators who had real lives, and it was one of our best performing campaigns. I know the client was absolutely buzzing. Um, and it's definitely a case of do we would take forward for exactly that. If we're talking about life, we need to be talking about real lives, not just something that's super glossy and doesn't feel always as relatable.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Yeah, it's interesting. I think, you know, back in the sort of old traditional advertising, you kind of look for the divergent idea and the divergent way in. I'm not saying you don't do that with creators, but one of the things which I notice is that we often look for a very relatable story, but very divergent talent to tell the story. And that's where the kind of creativity in the casting comes in. Um, and that's what makes it watchable. That's also what makes it fly organically because it's an interesting voice telling a relatable story.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Telecoms isn't the easiest category for cultural relevance, right? What's your playbook for turning a functional brand into one that people actually want to engage with?

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Oh, I don't know if it is like I I would argue different. I would say that the difference in brands for telecoms is that is the is the thing which makes it really interesting, right? Because we all sell a similar thing, which is like wobbly air, right? But we also sell connection. And the thing that about connection for all of them is how as a brand you bring that connection to life. And I think with three, we've been really lucky, as I said, with life needs a big network and how that translates uh into something which is quite meaningful. And all of us, you know, if we go through if I go through my phone, it is the last seven years of my life now. Do you know what I mean? If I scroll through the photos. So there are genuine stories in all of our phones. It is at the center of our lives. It's part of how we tell our stories to each other, it's part of how we generate the story of ourself at the moment. And I know that sounds quite lofty, but I would say that telcos is actually such a rich space to be able to tell like very meaningful stories. And if I look out at our competitors, a lot of them are doing very good jobs as well. Like it is a it is, I think, a really it's anything, it's anything you want it to be.

SPEAKER_00 9:20

I think when you explain it like that, it makes sense in the sense that like my whole life is on my phone, right? Um, whether it's personal life, work, everything that I would be lost without it. But the connections point is something that I think um is super important because, you know, you could be as far away as possible or, you know, sat here, we'd probably want to send, like, I don't know, a video we've seen or whatever to each other. Like it has so many different um kind of like opportunities to show up. So I guess it's something that you kind of try to portray in all of the content that you were creating, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Yeah, I think so. And I like everyone's mobile behavior is slightly different, but it's always quite um uh like identifiable. Like you may use Substack more than I do, but I kind of recognise that behavior. Do you know what I mean? It's always a bit relatable. Um and because of the way everyone uses their phone differently, I mean it's like dad mode, right? Classic. Everyone gets dad mode, like off the bat. And those are like the little stories that you can kind of pull out and you can talk about, and that they're totally relatable. You can build campaigns around them. Um, you can take the mick out of your dad with it. Like it kind of works on a on a lot of different levels.

SPEAKER_00 10:27

We actually, when she said that, we did a campaign for Georgia Asda, and it was their back to school campaign, and it was all about like the parents' WhatsApp chat and all of the stuff that happens in there, like you've not bought the uniform or etc., or they needed to have these particular shoes, or like the age-old thing, right? As you had to have white soul trainers rather than black soul trainers if you're wearing them inside, right? I know that was something at my school anyway. And it would have been typical that if you'd have gone and done the the schoolware shop and you'd bought the ones with the black soul and they were going back and they had pee the next day, the bit of a panic. Um, and it was a way of tapping into culture that no one had really done yet, but was so relatable for what we were kind of talking about. So it makes sense. And like you say, it's those like real life moments and how people are using the phone and how we can play into them, you know, your dad mode with the thumbs up, or the panic in the PCA chat, um, where you can tap into cultural moments where the phone is being used that's probably already been talked about on social.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

While building creator ecosystems, what's your philosophy on choosing creators? So, what role do the creators play in your marketing mix? Tell us a bit more about that.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Uh well, I I think at the moment that they're they're quite a strong bit. And I think one of the reasons is they are um very good at delivering a message in an authentic way, so they generate connection really strongly. They're quite cost-effective for that. Um, and also they they're always there's always something different that you can find, right? There's a there's a lot out there, and as I talked about before, it's like finding an interesting voice to tell quite a relatable story is kind of one of the things. And something I always try and push towards, and it's kind of a philosophy that there's a thing that I kind of touch on. I feel like being sort of strategic or creative at the moment in this space is almost like being like a TV commissioner back in the like 90s, right? What you're looking to do is find a platform that you can bring to life, and then it doesn't matter who you cast in it, they can own it a little bit in their own way. Um, and you know, we've been saying for years the power of a creator is to let them be authentic. So we if you think in that mindset, then you're always going to kind of be delivered something quite unique. And I think, you know, there's always a few hit and misses when you work like that, just like there is with TV shows. And I think this is where, like, my my history in working film and TV before this, I see these similarities where you're kind of allowing these guys to work together. That's where the authenticity comes from. So therefore, you get a good result. And at the moment, with everything that's changing in our ecosystem, and we were talking a little bit about AI before, and I know it's on every podcast from here to God knows where at the moment, but one of the reasons the creator economy, I think, is booming so much. I mean, it's going to be something like 480 billion, like a huge thing next year, according to Forbes, is because people are searching for a connection, right? Uh, they're not, and some of them are using AI as therapists and stuff like that. And it's kind of, you know, we're finding our way through this cognitive overload and looking for some connection. So I think as a brand, it's really important to be able to speak with some authenticity and deliver conversations that are worth people's time. Whether it's uh, you know, I quite want to spend time with that brand because the content is good. And like really that moment sitting on the train, whatever, you've got 20 minutes. I just want to enjoy myself for 20 minutes. That's like sacred time when you can't be touched, right? So I think it's quite important to have those authentic voices coming through uh and let them tell the story and they then sell your brand really nicely, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Ultimately it's entertainment, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Whether it's an ad or not, you just want to enjoy it, whatever that looks like, right? Depending on your audience, you're gonna have different definitions of entertainment and what's, you know, appealing to them. And we talk about scroll stopping content. It's the same when creators are thinking about their own content as if it's gonna be an ad, and ultimately they want that ad to perform well as well, right? They don't want it to look jarring and their audience then lose trust in them or think, why are you promoting this? Or that was a bit naff. Um, so I definitely agree with you on there. And then I think on the kind of like AI conversation around, you know, the fact that we're kind of looking for that connection. This is a huge topic of conversation at an event I was at literally yesterday. Um, and just remembering what this industry is all about, people aren't searching for a brand to tell them that a product is really good. Like if ex-brands tell me that their new shoes are amazing, great, of course you're gonna tell me that you're trying to sell to me. But you want to have that trust and the relationship with somebody where it's almost like your mate telling you, and it it sounds really simple. And people who work in the industry have been talking about for years, but sometimes it still doesn't land with clients. And, you know, we we give creators a brief that is really important. We shouldn't just be expecting them, go, here's the shoe, sell them. Like, yeah, some of them might really fly with it. But especially when you're working with some of these smaller creators as well, they do need a little bit more help. It's about getting the key messaging in there and go, this is what we really need you to kind of convey. Pick some of it. This is the most important bit, some secondary bits here, send over your concepts and let us know what works best for your channel and your audience. Because we don't know and the brand doesn't know, that's why we're turning to them. And that's where you're gonna see the best results from content, whether it's paid social, regardless.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

It's always um, it's always a funny conversation when uh if you work with a creator and they basically send you back an ad, uh, and you're like, like, thank you so much. Uh, you've done a really great job here, but we can do the ad. We need you to do you. Um, and I know that sounds a bit bit trite, but it's kind of true. Like, you get them for their style.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Back on your your point about AI, with these AI influences and things that are coming through, you don't know who's behind that and creating that. So, how can you trust? Yes, they might have millions of followers, but actually, do they have influence? Do they have the power to kind of persuade um shopping power or consumer power and behaviours? They they they don't always have that. It's that that trust and knowing who's behind what's sent serving you the content.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

They were a really good thought experiment, right? But they are what I would call an engineer's solution to a creative problem. Like I that's a Rory Sutherland thing, but I just think it applies here because people would have said working with creators is quite tough. Let's make a fake one, right? When they miss the whole point of the reason uh is because people want to work with real people. And I think we're gonna see this like come to a head at some point. And what is again why I think creator marketing, over-influenced marketing is becoming, you know, such a dominant force. Um, and not everyone's particularly happy about that, but I don't think it's gonna go anywhere, right? I think it's actually gonna go from strength to strength as AI continues to build and as traditional media continues to shrink because we're moving more and more towards mobile. It's not, you know, I still, you know, many years ago I remember social was the side piece, right? Now social is the piece, right? And rightly so, because that's that's where the action is. And it's a different mindset. It's a different way of talking with people, it's a different way of negotiating with them for them to spend their time with you. It, you know, it's not like um it's not like an ad anymore.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

Bab, so with the growth of all these niche communities and something that we talk about a lot in the space, where do you decide as a brand to show up for your community, your audience? Like, what do you think?

SPEAKER_01 17:55

It it really depends on the business problem, right? And I think that's that's where I we always like to come back to from a strategic point of view. What is it that we're trying to solve? Because a lot of it is a solve, right? Some of it is entertainment and you're leaning towards your TikTok two metas. Um, some of it could be more partnership-based for LinkedIn, some of it could be more partnership for Reddit, Substack, you know, it it all kind of depends on where you want influence, right? Or where you want conversation. I think as a brand, we do a lot of work where we sell kind of what we offer as a service. We have partnerships with other people where we get to work with them. And then we also have partnerships with other mobile phone providers where we can develop stuff for the launch of their phones and stuff. So a lot of that in social heads towards your more TikTok, Insta style content. Um, but that that doesn't limit us at all. It really depends on the problem we're trying to solve. And if we can find a really interesting niche insight that we compare to why, then you might want to do a more LinkedIn-based campaign or you might want to consider Substack. Um, and I think it all just depends on that initial problem and the insight that you can grow out of. Because I think those fundamental rules of advertising are still really, really important and not to be skimmed over, especially the strategy of what the problem is and how you're trying to solve it.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

So, what's the next big opportunity that you see in the creator economy that brands are massively underestimating?

SPEAKER_01 19:25

I think there is going to become a high watermark for creators coming soon where there will need to be a decision on where they really play within marketing and how important they are. Um and I think that that's going to change slightly the ecosystem of how we deliver marketing. What I don't want is for the creator industry to be moving towards adopting more AI because I think it needs to stay what it is. And that's not to be a dinosaur, but if anything, it needs to double down on the human, on the connection, right? And allow all the people doing AI to do AI and work out what it is. Innovation-wise, it's going to be quite bricks mortar, how the world functions, why we get our information where we go. So it's not a particularly sexy answer or very fun that, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:08

But it's where people are searching for information. Yeah. Like we talk about how these platforms now, especially TikTok, is a search engine. The first place that I will go, and I mean I'm on the cusp of Gen Z, very much millennial, uh, is TikTok for an answer to anything. It will be, you know, where's the best places to eat, or even like professional career advice. And I know you've touched on Reddit, maybe it's somewhere I should go and explore. Um, but if people are not only spending their time for entertainment there, but also searching for answers and information there, we talk about AI and people going to ChatGPT, and yes, it's still going to be there, but ultimately people are still going to these platforms and looking for that source of trust and information. And if brands can continue and some of them kind of step up a little bit more to be part of that and be showing up there where people are looking for the answers or looking for guidance, that's where they're going to see real results.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

Some of the interesting stuff that's come out. There was there was a really great NIVIA campaign where they talked about, I was on stage, in fact, you I think you were there for the for the marketing thing, but where they were talking about NIVEA and how uns scratching under arms became like a trend that kicked off off the back of a campaign because they got a lot of data back. And I think this kind of reverse cycle of understanding data of viewing habits and engagement to create more content and generate more ecosystems, I think that's underplayed quite a lot. But that only really works when a client can commit to an ecosystem. And I think that that that's really fundamental in creative marketing is creating an ecosystem of different voices and seeing what engages and also what uh insight comes out of the community back at you. Because that is really interesting, and that's like genuine insight, uh, which you may not find from you know searching like high and low for a great insight. can continue to build that. And that, you know, from a strategic point of view, it's wise to consider that as part of the campaign.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

No, I completely agree. One of the um talks that I went to yesterday at AdWeek, they were talking around how things can go from a fad to a fashion to like a cultural shift, then going into like mainstream behaviour. And I think a lot of the times brands can we can talk about reactive content, right? And it seems to be a bit of a buzzword. Every brand wants to be reactive. They want this. Number one, half the brands can't be because the legal and the approval process takes two to five business days, if we're lucky. And secondly, just because you can show up there doesn't mean you should. I think with a lot of these kind of fad and fashion things, it can be a really nice to have, but we can spend a lot of time and a lot of kind of um budget showing up for that one moment that actively isn't going to turn into anything long term. And we're looking at kind of like full funnel marketing with influencer. It isn't going to reach anything down the bottom there. So one of the things that I think that brands with creators a bit similar to what you were saying there is listen to your strategists when they're saying to you, this is where we need to be showing up and this is kind of how we can tap into that moment. And like you say, a lot of it is going to come from what are your audience actively saying about the brand? What do they want from the brand? What do they want to see? There was a great campaign that they spoke about for ELF and the bronzing drops and a competitor brand much higher price point had released these bronzing drops and I bought the moment and spent the 30 quid on them. But they are amazing and they're great and they're lovely. Would I buy them again? No, because ELF have now completely tapped into that. They did a live stream with their CEO had the CMO and the CEO and the CEO was you know asking like what do you want to see from the brand? What do this? And they were inundated with bronzing drops, please some of the comments were absolutely hilarious. He then walked out and went straight into the prod dev team and said I need bronzing drops. Like that's what they're asking for. The prod team were like yeah they're coming like next year. And they were like no we need them like now, this quarter ASAP. So they did that and they had huge success. So a brilliant example of listening to your um community and your audience through social where they're actively feeling like they can speak to you and it paying off for them.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Well weirdly coming back to Reddit that's basically asked me anything right which they used to have on Reddit all the time which is basically the same sort of thing. And like Millie Bob Millie Brown Millie Millie sorry I don't know I mean Bobby Brown. Like her whole thing was incredible around makeup where she she's CEO of the makeup group right yeah that's right. So yeah I mean it was it was really interesting stuff. The other thing I think which could be um something to grow is brands building creator stables which I think might be a trend that starts to grow uh in the coming years of a collective group where we would potentially just use those creators on en masse at any point because I think a lot of brands I think it'd be wise to sell that to brands because I think they'd want them on tap. I think just to upstage upscale that reactiveness I think it's going to be quite important. Because I think you're right not everyone needs to be reactive but everyone needs to be in the zeitgeist of that conversation.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Right. So quickfire favourite book or podcast you'd recommend favorite podcast uh that's entertainment.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

I can't I can't kind of miss that. Also the Edelman podcast is is really really good audiobooks so I'm very dyslexic so I do a lot of audiobooks. I would say uh Kathy Burke's autobiography is phenomenal uh well worth I listen to a huge amount of autobiographies because I find people fundamentally interesting Jimmy Carr's autobiography is incredible absolutely incredible uh and I'd really recommend it it's not a full autobiography but it's just a very interesting read so I'd recommend that massively finally what's the best piece of advice you've received uh if it's easy at the beginning it'll be hard at the end but if it's hard at the beginning it'll be easy in the end.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Well thanks so much Tom for joining us on Connected Thinking.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Pleasure thank you for having me. It's been awesome