20 years of challenger brand lessons with Auto & General CMO, Jonathan Kerr

Hey everyone, now if you want to know the secret to more impactful crater ads then this is good news. Stop obsessing over engagement rates and start pulling the three levers that really make a difference to your brand. Now what are they? They are creative quality, creator fame and brand fit and they're revealed in a brand new report from WPP Media System 1 and TikTok called the crater effectiveness playbook. This is your guide to making fantastic crater advertising that works for your brand. Now to get hold of it, all you have to do is go over to system1group.com and download the report today. Alright, with that further ado, let's go on with the show. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to OnSense of CMO. Now in this episode, I'm meeting who Mark Ritzon describes as the best CMO in Australia and Mark doesn't give praise easily. So what's this CMO done where he has spent 20 years disrupting the insurance category in Australia, taking a brand from nothing to 14% market share? How did he do it? When in this episode, I find out from Jonathan exactly how he did it and what does it take for a challenger brand to cut through a duopoly in a market? There are so many great lessons for anyone out there that's trying to do amazing work on limited budgets. Here we go. [Music] Jonathan, welcome to the show. Good to see you. And welcome to Australia. Yeah, it's good to be here, man. It's a slightly different climate to what I'm used to, yes, but enjoying it. And here, courtesy of Commercial Radio and Audio, so big shout outs to them, and we're both doing stuff on the stage this week, which will be a lot of fun. Anyway, we're here to talk about you and your career. So bring us to what you're doing now, because you've been on an amazing journey. For anyone who doesn't know, just talk us through the brand here, and I'm particularly interested to know where you come from and where you come to now, because it's quite a remarkable story this one. Yeah, so I was incredibly lucky to land in Brisbane. And you know, I kind of thought first, I'd be like, well, like, you know, I've worked with all the online bank divisions around the world, I wonder if I can get a job running an online bank or doing something like that, but it wasn't much interest in me for that. And so I was like a little bit of a loss, and then I found out about this business all the time in general, and did a bit of research, which wasn't as easy as it is now. And you know, realised the significant business they have in the United Kingdom, you guys will know us now as compare the market, and in South Africa with tell us your and a bunch of brands over there and hippo. And I realised that this is a significant business, but was very small and on an interesting growth trajectory, but still very small, but I couldn't believe that they were only on the phone. So they're a great direct mail business in the directories and really beginning to build the beginnings of what became budget direct. And I thought, geez, the timing was incredible, because I kind of walked in, met the team and just said, well, you weren't really advertising, but I'm here. And I think the next phase is to take you online. And they were like, yeah, we were just about to do that anyway. Let's see if we can make this work. So we invented a position called General Manager of e-commerce. And with incredible support, I got on with it. I love that. So did you pitch your own role then? Did the role didn't exist before? No. Um, I got an introduction to meet the CEO and then the chairman and, um, you know, it was just literally the conversation was much more, I can see who you are. I can see what the opportunity is. Um, have you got anybody to take you on that journey yet? And I can obviously explain what I've done. And I think it was quite a, you know, serendipitous, you know, that I was there at that moment. And I was very fortunate to see the CEO at the time was from the United States. And I think that my CV from, from the US, if it had fallen into the hands maybe of, um, an Australian leader, I think they wouldn't have recognized how big the university in Nebraska was. All of the work that I'd done in marketing licensing and sales there and realized that, hey, from a young age, I'd been involved in some quite interesting stuff. And so I think that sparked some interest. And then it was my job to close the gap between opportunity and job. And I, I guess I managed to do it on the day. But then that started this great journey, um, where, you know, immediately it was like, okay, well, no one's offering online quote, no one's offering online sale for car and home insurance. We only did car insurance back then, um, and it seemed an obvious platform to put in because I already knew what we were going to do to promote it. We know one was advertising on Google, um, but, you know, if ultimately your main advertising on Google is phone us, that's not really a very aligned proposition, um, and, you know, you want to establish new to, new to brand customers. That's critical to what you do. That was self selecting. So it was fairly lined up. But the one thing I want to mention though is that Budget Direct has been the price leader for all time I've been here. So I'm not daft. I like to market things that are great. And Budget Direct's proposition, you know, what the team has done in pricing, underwriting, and the delivery of our claims and all of our services to generate, you know, the most award-winning cover that's also the price leader. That's quite extraordinary. So I'm standing on the shoulder of giants with anything I've ever done. And, you know, it's a private business, which means we have long-term planning, long-term strategy, and that's turned us from a very small player to, you know, clearly one of the most successful fastest-growing insurers in Australia. Yeah. There's a couple things I want to pull out in what you just said. Um, the first one is there's an incredible career insight in what you just said earlier, which is understand what you are brilliant at, identify an organization that needs that, and put yourself in the way of luck. And that's what I think you've done, isn't it? Yeah. Which I think is absolutely brilliant. I do say one of my favourite expressions is hang out with lucky people. Yeah. It seems like a good idea, right? Yeah, I know. I found that so many times people said, "Oh, Johnny just got lucky." And I'm like, "Well, no, because the bit you don't see is the amount of unlock that happens." Yeah, that's right. And you matter of times, you have to cut the-- Yeah. You just see the highlight real. Exactly. Yeah, it's like that. But let's talk about price. I think that's really interesting. I've got a little bit of experience with the insurance market as a claimant, I suppose. But how do you achieve that mix of incredible value, but also because you'd expect, wouldn't you, as someone who's buying insurance, if you're buying it very cheaply, you're not going to get a very good experience on the other side of it, if you ever have to make a claim. So how do you deliver great service and great value from insurance while keeping the price cheap? Well, you have to fundamentally make sure that you set out to be the best insurer. OK, so you don't set out to be the cheapest insurer. You set out to be the best operational insurer. So that in pricing is, you know, extraordinary capability in identifying risk and the different subsections of risk. And the reality is the majority of drivers are very good risks. And the majority of homeowners are very good risks. And so then if you are very open about how you price, and you say, listen, we are actually going to go and reward the people who are the lower risk people, then you don't pollute your pricing by making them pay for other people or higher risks. Now, that proposition has really stood the test of time. And so it is in precision. But the cool thing is that that precision is applicable to a mass market. So you don't want to spend too much time being the winner of a tiny market. You have to have a vision of where this is going to go. And so that coupled with operational excellence, that is the secret source and a wee bit of decent marketing thrown in. Of course, of course. That doesn't make sense, doesn't it? Because most people don't need to claim on their insurance, right? That's right. So you've got a few people that are going to be very costly and a lot of people that are not going to be very costly. Yeah, and they should be rewarded for their history of good driving or maintaining a good safe position on what they do in their lives. And I think the reality is that insurance over time, I kind of look at the marketplace over the years, and I'm talking about a longer term than just my career. But for a long time, some of the really big insurers around the world, what they did was their expertise was taking a huge amount of money in in premium and then doing a very good job of investing it. And so they were actually making money out of money. And really they were very good at it and they provided a reasonable insurance service on the back of that. I'm not sure that they were that good at insurance, right? And so 45, 50 years ago, our founders came along and they were like, no, there really is an opportunity to be actually good at insurance. And so that focus, that always on optimization of all the things that we do, but in support of the customer, so the proposition lines up beautifully is really the secrets source and you know Hugo Boss said, you know, style never goes out of fashion. And I can tell you, you know, the same value for less is pretty up there too. And so I'm, you know, I'm trying to make sure that, you know, in our marketing, we honor the platform that was built for us. Our job is to tell that story better than anybody else. And in the same way is where have been fanatical about being the best operating business out there, we're just the same about optimizing and doing the market and we put in market. I mean, very humbly said that a little bit of marketing might have helped contribute to the last few years. Just for everyone who doesn't know that the story, so where have you got to in terms of market share, what has growth been like over the last 10, 15 years? Yeah, so for those tuning in around the world, so Australia is a fan of the duopoly. You'll probably see it in our supermarkets, our airlines, et cetera, et cetera. And insurance, historically had two very significant groups that basically almost had nearly 40% each. And so entering that market was often thought unpenetrable really. And then over the years, you know, we've managed to get up, you know, kind of near 14% market share. We have millions of customers now. And as a single brand, that's beginning to knock on, you know, being in top two, three for car insurance. We launched home insurance about five years after, and that is also on the same trajectory. So a lot of the brands owned by the two significant players have historically been state-based brands or whatever, whereas we're a national brand. And so on the back of, you know, great service and great pricing, we've really, you know, we've been very fortunate to grow, you know, three or four times system growth, you know, over the last 10 years. And we were already going quite well in the first 10 years. So it's been quite significant, but I think a really important thing that should be said is that our goal is not growth. Our goal is to be the best insurer. We have found that if we're the best insurer, the other stuff comes with it. We've never, ever sat out with a growth goal. And my title is Chief Growth Officer. We want to do healthy growth that we can manage a proposition that the market loves. The rest kind of takes care of itself. I think that's an exception point actually, because so often when people write marketing plans, they just go, what's our goal? It's to grow at 30%, it's to double the business, right? And then you end up doing the wrong things at the back of that. Whereas if you obsess about, who's my customer? What's my proposition? How do I deliver that better than anybody else in the marketplace? Guess what? Well, I mean, it comes down, you know, lessons learned over time, but strategy not tactics. So, you know, think about the lessons from Mark Ritzon, Bar and Sharp, all of these people and thinking about marketing fundamentals. I want to be a marketing person. And I want to be in all of those different levels to make it all work. And I think that is a critical thing that our businesses give me the opportunity to do. So, you know, if you set out to have the right to grow, because your proposition is so compelling, then that sets up the strategy. And then that flows into jobs to be done, maybe on the brand front, the advertising front, the pricing front, the distribution front. So, you can have a true north around that that's meaningful. And then it also means something to the CFO and to the chief risk officer and all of these different people, because you've got to come with a significant framework that can handle that. But when you can talk like that, you are talking the language of the commercial realities of growing a business. And I think that helps. It does. I did a survey actually recently with TikTok looking at the real job of a CMO. And 90%. Now, bear in mind, these are CMOs that have been on the podcasts in my networks. We're talking about high caliber, right? 90% of them only controlled one P. I was really shocked. I mean, I knew it would be, I knew the promotion would be the biggest P. Well, it wasn't surprised about that. But for 90%, I thought that's really interesting. And they would describe their influence over the other P's as low as well, which I thought was fascinating. It just shows that the role of a CMO is to step into those other P's and actually lead the organization. So, how do you do that? Because you talk very easily there about the other P's in terms of products. Well, I think you've got to earn the right. And so, the thing is that anybody working in a pricing function is very interested in insight. So reporting is one thing, insight is everything. And so the thing is that my team, and I have the most incredible in-house marketing team, they are leaning in to any signal that's out there. But what you find is those signals are also just as interesting and as useful to the pricing team. You can't just turn up and say, I don't like the price, although they've heard that a few times from me. But to actually say, I believe this is happening because. And then that team turns to you and says, I'd like to understand that a bit more. Because in Australia, for instance, and this might parlay quite well for the US audience, Australia might as well be five countries. The states, you know, and the metros are so significant that it's really a state-by-state war. So the brands that we compete with in New South Wales can be quite different the lineup with Victoria, where Melbourne is. And so the thing is that understanding what the others are doing and how they're doing it becomes really interesting. So I mean, my feeling is I didn't get invited to those meetings at the start, but I am very, very grateful to be part of the pricing committee and the underlying committee. Because I get some face time with the people that are actually going to go and do the really incredible work they do. And it's very respectful. And at the same time, you know, you are the canary in the coal mine as well. I mean, we are at the, you know, we're optimizing every digital campaign on the hour. Of course, we should be able to tell them what's happening, how the pricing is now working and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, I think you've got to earn your stripes, but then you can actually become a very valuable member of that part of the business. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. Now, going to the, the pee that most people have control over, promotion, what is it about insurance that around the world, US, when you've got state farm, you've got Geico, UK, Direct Line, obviously compare the market. I mean compare the market is just phenomenal. It literally is a kind of case study. And I think almost half the markets now. And that's just incredibly effective. So, what is it about insurance that somehow generates such incredible examples of marketing? Well, I think that there's a slightly different story as it relates to actual insurers like progressive Geico, Allstate, and Direct Line, for instance, Aviva, and Brands over here. And that is that, you know, we have quite a predictable annuity business about how much money we are probably going to be able to write the following year. And so, if you have an understanding of what your base is, now you are going to have to battle for that. You're going to have to retain all of those people. But there is a significant understanding of probably what your investment in the prior years is going to deliver in the go-forward years. Now, you would hope that means a good CMO can build a brand story about future demand. And so, you should be able to put the fundamentals of marketing place. And I think, if you think about the Geico Geco, if you think about, forgive me, I can't remember the name of the progressive lady, but there's a progressive lady, State Farm, I've got an amazing character. I think that these people understood that there are some fundamentals in building mental availability that have been basically coined by Byron and Edinburgh Bass. And really, if you have the opportunity to play that long-term play, it would be surprising if there's a better way. So, I think that some good CMOs and the ability to plan multi-year is one of the beauties of insurance. Now, compared to market in the UK, now that's a different type of business because they're a comparator and they won't have that annuity flow, apart from the fact that their brand is so fantastic that people will come back to them and they do come back to them. But really, you can imagine how helpful it was for me when I was putting together some stuff that really was to introduce brand marketing to us. And my friends over in the UK were on that journey at the same time. And so, you know, some of the stuff that we did with people in Australia will know Bouge, Bouge, which is a famous campaign here, a long-running campaign, and then what they did with Mircats, and then, you know, being able to kind of talk to each other and see how this long-term building of fluent characters and devices and things like that, sonic devices that make a massive difference. Simples is you know, an incredible thing in the UK, you know, so really I think that there is some really obvious strong fundamentals there. Our business is a private business which means it does give you the opportunity to put long-term plans in place and I wouldn't underestimate how fortunate we are to be in that position with the owners that we have. Your long-term point is so key. I mean you said to me last night I think you were saying my current campaign's eight years old, the one before that was seven and the one before that was five. Yeah, you know, I mean that's a very unusual position to be in and there's some brilliant, I mean I spent seven years working at System One and one of my favourite insights, this is idea of compounding. You know, we know how compounding works in terms of money but compounding works in terms of creativity and what we noticed when we did study if I think it was 50 UK brands, the most consistent started out with a slight advantage but then that advantage gets bigger and bigger. You want your tea? Yeah, your tea, they go all the way to your tea exactly. It's absolutely amazing and you know it's there in the results and I think you know this is what I've always talked to you because you've been there 20 years right, whereas you know most brand management might be there too and they feel like they've got to change it and make my mark and so on. So you must have a real insight into the power of delivering something consistently over time. Well, I think you certainly should get better with every mistake, right? So I mean we have been very lucky to pick up kind of some of these pillars that go together to make what it is. Consistency is really, really important but I always say to everybody but if you're consistently rubbish, you're still rubbish. So you do need to blend the art and the science of that but every single time over those three kind of relatively famous campaigns over here, the knowledge is compounded massively and also as a brand that was going from a very small base to really breaking into significance here, we're always coming back to the strategy and jobs to be done. So we always had a framework to say is this the actual best way? Has it run its course and I always ask myself that every couple of years because if you only ask that question when you're doing badly, you will always change. So you must make sure you do it every couple of years even if you're punching the lights out because that gives you kind of the objective position to say well how do I decide these things? You go back to your fundamentals, you read how to how to brands grow again, ask yourself those questions and then eventually you go okay well actually there might be a ceiling to who we're talking to here and there might be a better way but then we work with 303 in Australia our agency here and we say well we are going to brief it but we want you to do both we want you to show us how the current could even get better and is there another way? So it's not a case of we don't look at another way we just challenge ourselves but what's happening now is the learnings can keep compounding and so we are in a we have built a framework and a platform that gives us the breadth to do what we need to do and so yes it's funny you know when we're always talking about how can the CMO handle the boardroom and all this kind of stuff? Well I mean start talking about compound interest and then change that into compound brand health and devices and things like that right there you've picked up the lingo of the boardroom exactly you don't have to go that far yeah you know it's really interesting because probably one of my favorite examples in UK is Audi with their Kevin the carrot company that's I think it's over eight years old now they do exactly the same as you do every January they re-brief for a new idea up against Kevin and so they've got this benchmark and they can never ever be Kevin because Kevin's got eight years it's I think it started as I think I'm Brian saying a 3.8 star got to 5.9 star now it's not the same ad it's the it's the idea executed even better every single year familiarity in the UK it's Christmas it's Kevin you know the two things become associated and now they can't beat it yeah because it's so good because it's compounded so much that however good they try I tell you the thing when I think about those guys and John Lewis you know the one thing that we've never done is said there's one ad to judge us on every year and I'm like my goodness that's a high bar I mean we we've been running the insurance soul serge campaign now we're in year eight and every ad is supposed to be better than the last one and not all of them are better but they maintain and continue the narrative and what we found is because we have established these characters in a good way it allows us to actually do what I think is better advertising because we don't have to force the brand logo or something into the ad we've got our sonic devices we've got our four visual devices and what we know is if we show serge people just say budget direct they don't even say serge and so that has been the learning if you look back on our previous campaign captain risky which you know if you want to do a fun campaign that's the one the problem we had was he was so popular that when we showed a picture of him everyone said captain risky and I kind of need them say budget direct so all of those learnings about where do you pitch it and what role does the the character have in the narrative is really really important yeah oh that's such a good observation that reminds me a bit of Snickers you know the whole kind of you're not you when you're hungry it is you're owning an idea and then you're owning a character and you're owning the sound you know all those things like you don't have to put the brand in yeah you know you just see the scene and you know the detectives turn up in a different scenario it doesn't matter because you know exactly what's going on you know it can be a punch line you know it's going to be funny you know it's going to be disaster and you know it's going to be budget direct yeah and and if you think about it another thing that we learned when we did captain risky who was an American stunt man in Australia okay there were some things that were obvious about why we did that so we what we wanted to create an anti-character because he was the living embodiment of people we don't ensure budget direct was so well priced that people used to ask how can you be so cheap and so if you think about system one system two type of thinking if you just do an ad and say well we are cheaper because we don't ensure bad drivers it's wallpaper and it's pitching to system one rational you know and that's not how people put you on their shopping list that's not how people are remember remember you so having a fairly outrageous stunt man who's not very good at stunts by the way go out there and be the metaphor for the people we don't ensure that was highly highly engaging but remember we learned those lessons like for instance audio is really important to what we do in this market radio is really important to us and an emerging into podcasts and other types of areas are really important for us we you know I deliberately picked an American accent because I couldn't hear any other advertising with it in Australia and I'm just as interested with people taking our ads in when they're not watching the TV but they're hearing it and radio as well and and so we learned a bunch of lessons from that and we had the cut through we wanted and we we leveraged the idea of a heuristic where everybody would understand the gag straight away without us explaining it a terrible stunt man is very risky you don't want to ensure him easy then we go into charge with insurance solved and we wanted to have something that again they could leverage the heuristic and as everyone understands what an insurance detective or a detective is there to do to solve the problem find out what is going on here and obviously he can also deliver the fact that budget direct is the solution and that's where insurance solved came from but doing it in such a way that people recognize the characters as budget direct and it doesn't we we're trying to avoid vampiring the brand and captain risky vampire the brand whereas Sarge is perfect for us to vampire me you take the life out of the the brand and it's captain risky yeah absolutely direct okay see me yeah and this is one of those ones you can fall in love with yeah so I fell in love with that with captain risky like I was so proud and he out he has a he had a had a or I think he's still out there doing it by the way but he had an expression kick it and rip it because he for the Americans out there I remember Super Dave Osborne which was this joke stuntman character and he was always on David Letterman when I lived there and I just thought he was brilliant and he was totally useless and he would always you know before he did his big stunt he would say something and so our guy captain risky said kick it or rip it and that cut across everywhere people Australia was saying it and all of these things but at the same time I you know that was that moment where I kind of was looking at the brand health the research and stuff like this and I was having to be honest that we'd created an icon but you know budget rate was definitely second fiddle to the recognition but what he did do is explain our proposition but once you've actually achieved that that's no longer the job to be done yeah so your strategy tells you where to go and then you have to execute brilliantly and with our delivery partners we you know with 303 and we use good oil productions here the best in the business and and I think if you get a chance to see some of our ads I think we'd give progressive and gyco and direct line a while we run for - For the money. - Yeah, absolutely, wood. I mean, it's proper Hollywood grade stuff, and it's brilliantly entertaining, very funny, great acting, and yeah, yeah, very memorable. So well done. It's actually on the audio point. My colleague, Orlando, who's done some amazing work looking at left and right brain features. And in terms of the ability to create an emotion and ability to create memory, audio is amazing. So whether it's jingles, music, distinctive accents, like you're talking about American accent in Australia, all those things just like create memories for people. And that's what you're trying to do in terms of, you know, be remembered when you think about insurance. - Well, I think so, you know, our saying is, we've got to earn our engagement, and that has to be across everything we do. And actually, Sarge is a Scotsman, and obviously I'm a bit biased, but I don't even have the right accent, but it is a beautiful accent, and there's no one else. It can be no one else. When you hear it, see it, whatever, it's us. And it also has a little twinkle in its eye, and, you know, a brand needs to become a personality in its own right, and those fluent devices need to sit well with that. And so, yeah, I think audio plays a massive role, and if you also think about, you know, the way fashion plays a big role in marketing, well, you know, jingles went out of fashion, and we realized that we'd actually done so well with our audio devices with Boucher Boucher, which was a huge hit for us. And then, kick it and rip it was massive, and then we wanted to go back and actually to a proper audio identity. So we have insurance solved, which finishes all of our ads and stuff like that, and is relentlessly consistent. And then immediately just, you know, almost you expect it now at the end of the ad. People actually know that this is where the ad is done playing, and at the same time, when you then hear a Scottish accent on radio coming through with the memorable final piece, it's very strong. - I love your Boucher thing, 'cause it's like a really cultural thing, isn't it? So whenever we're in America, we would always go tarjet, rather than target, and in the UK, primarney, rather than privat, you know, it's like, where have you go the most discount retailer? - Yeah. - Everyone tries to upgrade to it. - I don't, I always wonder, like one thing I don't think you should be is to up yourself or to proud to ever understand and leverage something great that you've seen before. So, you know, being a student at the University of Nebraska and not having a lot of money, you know, the top of the market for me was a new tarjet shirt at the time. And people just rejoiced in it, because we're all in the same boat. - Yeah. - And so when we were trying to teach everyone in Australia, that, you know, our greatest strength is our name, and our greatest weakness at the time was our name, 'cause budget has connotations. And we wanted to say, well, wait a minute, budgeting is also a really positive thing. And we're like, well, we need to kind of re-address this. But again, if we went hyper-rational and we just said, okay, we want you to think of our name differently. You should be very proud to be good at budgeting. It would have been, you know, a dead cat bounce it would have been rubbish. And then a guy called Grave came into a pitch session one day and we were looking at a bunch of options. And there was four or five things pitched and they were all, I mean, with respect. They were great. And then, well, Grave, I've got anything else. And this guy was one of the great jingle writers in Australia. And he just said, I have this idea, you know, and he just mumbled, you know, Boucher, Boucher, and Boucher, Boucher. And we were talking about how do you make people think differently about the word? And maybe one of the greatest ideas is get people to sing it. But at the time, he wasn't referencing my experience with Target, Tarjet. So I just remember going, there's something big in that. And then we all got around it. And it became the famous Boucher, Boucher campaign. - I love that. That's a great example of what Orlando says. What's too silly to be said? - Mm-hmm. - Me son. - Yeah. - Yeah, okay. - It's fantastic. - Yeah, isn't it good? You know, it's also the role of humor, isn't it? Because, you know, you can land a very serious point about the value of your car insurance with humor. And again, you can sing something that might be silly if you said it, but if you sing it, something out, it sounds amazing. - And then if anybody gets a chance to check it out, if you go look at Boucher Drake's, it's all on YouTube, all of our old advertising. You look for Boucher Boucher. You'll see that, well, how did we do it? Well, we cast a French character, female character, who would always get our name wrong and say, and court and sing, Boucher Boucher, and say, I'm with Boucher, I'm with Boucher. And then the Australian counterpart would say, it's budget love, budget direct. And so we found a way to get it in. And then, as you can imagine it, over the passage of time, it ended up with people singing it in the shower and all these type of things. And really it gave us an opportunity to say hello to Australia and say, hey, I think it's time to think of us for what we're really good at. The only thing cheap about budget direct is the price. - I talk to marketers all day. Many of them say the same thing. Traffic is down, leads are down, and they're not sure why. Until they realize what has changed, most of their customers now trust AI to recommend the right brands to them. And the first one that AI recommends, they go with. Visibility in AI search comes down to whether AI trusts your content, but most brands have no idea where they stand. So, how do you show up when someone asks AI about the things that you sell with Hubs for AIO? Hubs for AIO shows you exactly where your brand stands in AI search and makes clear recommendations on what to do to improve it without having to guess. So when someone asks AI what to buy, you're already the answer. Try it for free at hubspot.com/AEO. - Now a lot of the work you do is all in-house, isn't it? - Yeah. - You have a lot in-house, and what does that allow you to do that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do? - First of all, I would say that everybody's circumstances are different. We grew our in-house team very organically. You know, so when I joined marketing, I think there was eight people or something like that. And, you know, there's 140 now. And what we realized is nobody cares about your brand or your money or your data or any of those things like you do. And we were able to bring together some extraordinary people and give them a bit of an interesting opportunity because in agency land, you're always working on six brands and people are chasing you for one thing or the other. Imagine being given the opportunity to focus every day on being better than the competitors on this one brand. So we built that up, but we also built up the data side of our marketing department at the same time. And so we were building everything on insight. And so it kind of came together and it became a self-funding sales. You know, we were always a growth division. We were not the cost division. We were going to take this incredible proposition to market better and better. I was very, very fortunate because remember, I came in as the general manager of e-commerce because we didn't know what to call me. And that meant that I was going to be on the hook for actually delivering sales. And one of the things that I think has got very disjointed is CMOs not being responsible for actually selling anything. It's actually quite funny, there are only awards that I ever wanted to enter with the FEs. And that's because I'm not in a coloring in competition. I'm in a marketing competition. And it's the only one that really based things on results. And so, you know, that was our focus is that we would take responsibility for the cost of creating a lead. And it needed to be a good one that we could convert because we were on the hook for selling it. So I think those things that probably start when you're quite small and give you an opportunity to build the platform you wanted to do. We do, however, remember, there are certain things where you need people that are truly world class in an area of creative or whatever it might be. And so you do need to be smart enough to know when you need to ask for expert help. But most people want to get involved with the business that knows its numbers and understands how it really works. So they get quite fascinated because we can tell them what works as opposed to hope, which is a pretty good thing. It keeps you much closer as well to the cold face, doesn't it, with you? I mean, I think whenever I've done things in-house, it's always been necessity because I'm in a smaller business. But you're very close to the customer, you're very close to what you're making. And you can move much quicker, your execution's better. Yeah, I mean, I get a feedback faster. Yeah, and I'm not, you know, the cost of taking a dashboard or a set of data and insights and making it beautiful to present to me is something I have zero interest in. I want the raw data immediately to discuss. And, you know, we don't have a filter layer because we are it. And we also have a very strong test and learn approach. So we're not scared to try things that might not work. So as long as you create an environment where people feel that they can be safe in doing that, then you're in a good position. I think that there's lots that we could do better. I always say we're far from what we can be, but I wouldn't trade my team for anybody. And as you know, it extends into media buying and planning. We all do that. We do that completely in-house and direct. So we really are across all of it. What I love about that is the incentives aligned, don't they? Right. Because your incentive is to grow the business, deliver the best value you possibly can. Whereas as soon as you've got media planners or you've got creative agencies, then suddenly your incentives can be misaligned, can't they? Particularly media buying, where they might have bought a big deal with some big TV network and suddenly you're seeing that network on your media plan, you know, that kind of thing. So what does buying media teach you about media? Look, I mean, I think the conversations that we've had, we worked directly with all of the media companies that own the actual stuff they're selling. And there is a certain respect for anybody who can actually tell them what works. So the fact that you're sitting down and they might be putting forward something that they believe works that we can either say, no, that is actually valuable at that level. Or it really isn't, is a different type of discussion. So if you say this is what we're willing to pay for that versus what is the price of that? That's a different, a different position to take. Now, one of the things I talk about with all of the people we buy media from is you'll see me again in six months. You'll see me again in 12 months. And you've been seeing me for 20 years. So it's also important to be very respectful. And they know if I say no too much, not we can't do it, whatever. It's true. It's not because I'm positioning for this one deal that's going to last for six months, because I'll see you again in six months, you know. So I think authenticity, but backed by actual real knowledge is important. Now, obviously we do see great value in working direct, you know. So I think that remember everybody's situation is different. What they have to hand, what the support they get from their business is going to be different. And sometimes, and in probably many cases, a great media partner can be fantastic in helping you buy and plan. But in our situation, you know, we don't want to buy media that's already been sold once already. One thing that's very clear is it gets me a lot of CMOs and you kind of have like the working CMOs that are close to the action they're doing the job and then you've got a kind of non-working CMOs that are more figurehead. Now, it's very, very clear from our conversation. And I think it's because you built the business from the bottom up, you're very close to what's going on. You're also ahead of the game in terms of technology and what's moving and so on. I'd love to know your view on AI because you've probably got a very qualified view kind of being up close to what's going on. So what's your view on AI and where is it actually impacting on marketing and where is it not impacting on marketing? Well, in terms of day to day, you want to split that into two totally different categories. So on one hand, the impact of AI overviews and actually people turning to chat EBT, Gemini, Plexi, etc to actually start doing their researching is having a big effect. It's having a more significant effect on SEO traffic than I think probably anybody immediately thought it would. It's different by a different sector and that's really relating to the complexity of the question you ask a search engine and so really understanding where is all that traffic going. Now, the good news is the traffic is still going somewhere and it needs a resolution. So yes, you might go on a journey to the left or to the right but if you still need car insurance, you're going to end up a provider like us. So that is something you need to understand better than anybody and put yourself in a position to have very good visibility but also positive visibility because the AI is going to be inhaling all of the things said about you across the internet. So you just make sure that you've got your house in order. On the other hand, you've then got the promise of efficiency and that is part of the holy grail that everyone's talking about. So we're a very operational business in insurance. So we're using machine vision for customers on the side of the road who can then start doing their car assessment with their own mobile phone and that's not just taking pictures. That's actually analysing the picture and what that can do is it means that we can route the person to the right repairing center quicker. We can order the parts to arrive when they get there. So that wraps up in a very strong proposition for the customer. There are other areas in marketing where right now the promise is slightly better than the reality. So you're seeing a desire to create actual creative with AI and if you've got a high bar like we do, that's still a little bit off and so you've got to be careful that you don't jump on the gimmick because gimmicks probably don't do you so well. But then where there's a lot of opportunity is in ideation and democratising the idea factory. So I'm working to make sure that I don't have just a few people coming up with ideas but I have 140 people because a good idea can come from anywhere and but lots of people didn't know how to articulate it and actually they would get stuck behind words or systems or processes. So you know when we leverage inside our business you know Gemini 3 with nano banana and stuff like that and actually give it over to people and allow them to breathe in with an idea that's actually half formed that can speed things up and it can also I mean there is a lot of truth in a picture is better than a thousand words right. But all of those things are coming through and then on the day to day the access to information is really exciting. So and I'm actually talking about unlocking your own information. So we all have great databases and they're quite historically quite formal in their setup. They have a wording convention that you need to know even ad words and Google Analytics. There's a certain need for navigation. So I want to put insight in the hands of everyone and so overlaying the ability to query anything in natural language that is a game changer because I want to empower more people to make better decisions. So I think we naturally kind of get excited about you know has Coca-Cola you know put a new Christmas ad with 17 extra wheels in place. I think that's that kind of moment in time. The fundamental thing is working out how you can actually maintain your quality at scale because AI can really help you in that space because we all have to manage way more channels now. So I think those things are coming together. There's still a bit to go on quite a lot of it but it's pretty obvious it's going to get there. So it's an exciting time but you have to make sure your team needs to become AI native. They shouldn't be threatened by it. They should want to become orchestra conductors. You know you don't need to be first violinist. You want to be pulling the band together and that's the opportunity for everyone and guess what you can teach yourself how. Just thinking about your journey over the last 20 years everything you've achieved up to now what would you say from a challenger brand point of view are have been the key principles to your success if you had to summarise them. Number one having the best product offering out there and unashamedly consistently for the folk around the world watching this you know budget directors one car insurer you know outstanding value award 19 years in a row and we've won insurer of the year nine years in a row like this is a solid proposition and so the first lesson is make sure that you either are creating or you're inheriting or you're preserving a fantastic offer to the customer. Then after that having supportive shareholders and owners that have the strength to get behind someone who really is putting their heart and soul into a strategy based plan and he's happy to ask for years of support and and it's interesting as well because the people I work for are way smarter than me but I mean they would know that if I'm saying I can do this and achieve this with less than I need or within a ridiculous period of time they should kick me out of the boardroom so when I go in and say this is the five year next journey this is what we're going to do this is what we're going to build to I mean I think it has some credibility in its own right so what I'm talking about you can't hope your way to success the idea of being a challenger brand is great it's fun it's the most fun because you're the person chasing them down but at the same time time you do have to be fundamentally sound. But after that, you've got to get a team together that loves winning, that is fired up every day to be better, to outnavigate, out optimize. So I'm a, you wouldn't guess it anymore, but I'm a swimmer back in the day. That's why I went to the US. And I get out of bed to compete. And a lot of athletes find at the end of their competitive run, where do you find that same excitement in your life? Well, believe it or not, it's actually the secrets. It's in insurance. And it's being a challenger brand where you can get all these people together on with a true North position. But they all understand there's no easy way. At Nebraska, their great saying is in the grit, the glory, the fact that they will celebrate the effort. And so there's no hacks. There's fundamentals, best execution and passion. And then finally to wrap up thinking about the role you play as a CMO. What, and you've got a unique perspective here, 20 years is an incredible tenure. And particularly when everyone talks about the CMO role changing every four years, whatever it is. What are the key attributes to the success for a CMO in the long run? Well, look, I absolutely say to everybody, anyone who works for me, don't wait to be great in terms of building your knowledge base. So I didn't actually really, apart from university, which was awesome. I was incredibly curious and I desperately wanted to understand it all. So I really do understand SEO and I really understand PPC and I really am trying incredibly hard to understand the emergence of AI and what it's going to do to us. System three is when I'm going to call it. But I think don't wait for anybody to do it for you. Become great and become undeniable because when they turn to you with a question, you at least have a position to take, but it's based not on hope, but it's based on principles. And that's why, you know, I tell everybody, I know they should get all across Ereburg bass and how brands grow. And then they should also do Mark Ritz's mini MBA because I mean, it helps you line back up against the fundamentals. And, you know, you could you could look at that course and you could be, oh, I'm 20 years into it, but you realize how much you forgot. And you realize that the safe harbor is in these principles. And so it's the best time you could ever spend. And I can tell you that no one's too good that they couldn't learn from those two sources. I totally agree with you. I remember I met Byron and Reddy's book the year it came out. I was very lucky actually because he did a tour of the UK because I literally met him the first year. Reddy's book was like, this is just transformational. And then it probably my familiarity probably drifted a little bit. And then when I was in a really difficult situation on Lucas Aid and didn't quite know where to turn, I thought, I better reread the book. And it was brilliant. Yeah, I could suddenly I was like, reminding myself of getting what matters. And I was reading, again, the kind of like the purchase frequency. And I thought, I wonder if it's true on Lucas Aid. So I went and did, I looked at data and now very in my number one energy drink in the UK. So I was thinking, oh yeah, I'm sure people drink a slight maybe 10, 20 times a year, two. I said, wow, humbling right? Really humbling. And then the data actually got more extreme than that. So I then said to the team, so what penetration have we got? Right. And in 12 months period, our penetration was 26%. And I said, okay, extend the window to three years, because if people are buying once a, on average, twice a year, maybe there are some very light users penetration in three years, 46%. So 20% of the UK population bought less than once a year, but more than three times. But once it'll be three years, that's insane amount of light buyers. That's ultra light buyers. And then I remember exactly the meeting where I was because the CEO was going, right, you've got eight weeks to relaunch the brand. And I went back and said, we need eight years. This end eight week job. This is eight years, right? Because look how many people buy it's less than once a year, you know what I mean? It's insane. I mean, you've got, you've got to think completely differently. Well, and then suddenly, consistency is everything because you're not going to reach everybody in an eight week. No, and think about that now in my world where the average person will have one and a half cars. So they're only going to purchase it once maybe a year. But then what happens is if you do a good job with retaining them, they don't actually enter into a purchase again. So the actual level of frequency by definition is almost none. And so then what you realize is you have to think about what you're building to generate future demand. And it is all about mental availability here. I think what's really important and what was great about what you just said there was, okay, the principle is understood. The law as Bayern would call it. You need to understand that, but you need to show that you also understand your category. How do you then apply that in your category? And to me, if you're working in a business, that should be your secret source because you take the principle and apply it brilliantly. So I don't actually think there's many tricks to this game. I think actually pulling together some really wise opinions. You think about all and what he's written and what he's done. I mean, that's another person that you will be a hundred times better for reading. But the bit that I notice that we're dealing with now is whether or not the people coming through want to be that full marketer and are willing to put in the time. But it's never been more accessible to get it. So I would just challenge you with a real positive tick. And I would say it's never been easier to get yourself in a position to succeed. But it's on you, not your employer, not your friend. It's for you to invest in yourself. And the ROI on that will be massive. I love that you said that. It's funny actually because one of the reasons I actually started doing this podcast was I had a habit for when I used to be a client's life marketer rather than talk about marketing. I used to do marketing. I had a habit. Every time I started in a new role, I gave my team three books, right? Three marketing textbooks to read. And I said to all of them, right, you must read these in the first two weeks of working for me. And then we can talk, right? And I was so Luke said, Robyn is some Tory where I was doing that. I had a team of about 60, right? Out of that team of 60, only three of them had already read how brand's great. I'm like, wow, 5% in a department working on two brand leaders in the category, huge A&P spend. There's only 5% of the of my team that had already read the book. And I was like, wow, that's interesting. So as good as it is, there's just not enough, you know, I mean, we're well overexposed. We're hugely overexposed aren't we to kind of mark great work and bar and square work. But I think there's so much more. So I thought, how can I get that insight and education out there to the masses in an easy way? Yeah, it's been through in terms of it. And like having conversations with people like you was basically the way to do it, because then people would listen while they're on their way to work and absorb all the principles. That's right. I mean, you know, it would be amazing to get you three together. Yes. I think that would be this golden moment. This is number one, by the way, of my, my to do list. Yeah, we talk about jobs to be done. No, I tell you what, the most downloaded episode of all time of this podcast is Rory Sutherland and Scott Galloway. Yeah. And it happened by accident. So I was interviewing, so I've had an evening with CMOs, right? And I was interviewing one then the other. And there were, there was two questions that I thought, oh, wouldn't it be interesting for them to debate those two questions? Because I think they're going to have different answers. The first question was, did Jaguar screw up? Screw up. Well, he really knows the brands, right? Because Rory has a very contrary interview, thinking that actually they had no choice. And it's the right thing. Scott's been very damning on them, right? Second one is Scott's provocation, the era of brand is over, right? Rory's obviously on one side, Scott's on the other. So I literally said to him, tell you what, here's the mic, you two debate these two points. And we just left, we just left the cameras rolling. It was never meant to be kind of an episode. But the team said, no, no, we must put this out. This is great content. So we decided to put it out. The most download episode of all time, combination, there's two people. I think Byron and Mark are literally the combination of those two, the way they think. What would you do? What would be your setup? What would you like them to debate? So we need to find, we need to find the fault lines in marketing where they're most likely to disagree. So let's take differentiation versus distinctiveness. Yes, right? They've both written about it to greater extent. Mark is a bit more nuanced. Byron's a bit more black and white. I'd like to debate that nuance. For example, I am very lucky to call them both friends. So Mark, to camera, Mark and Byron, I challenge you to go on the uncensored CMO and have a wonderful afternoon discussing what you don't agree on. Yes. And I think that could be the biggest ever. Hello it's producer James here with a very quick interjection. We did actually record this very episode with Mark Ritzon and Byron Sharp a few weeks ago at Cannes, and this episode with Jonathan was recorded a few months prior, so he didn't know it was going to happen. If you haven't listened to that episode, it's episode 276, released on the 8th of July, titled Byron Sharp versus Mark Ritzon, the five-market interest. We agree on. Go listen to that. Now back to the final few minutes of the Jonathan Carr here. Well, maybe to wrap up then on that big bombshell, so let's make sure that it does happen. What would be the best bit of advice you've ever been given in your career? So I had a professor at the University of Nebraska, and he literally was a proper madman from New York, and he was coming back to the University to lecture as a gift really back to the University, and he was incredible, and I remember just being in awe of him, and then I think I said to him at one point, you know, "What's the number one bit of advice?" And he said, "Okay, always have a spare white shirt in your closet at work. You never know when you're going to spill coffee on yourself." And I was like, "Well, I'll always remember that." So that's the funniest thing. Talked it. Yeah, talked it. But I think the best advice I've got has been received is just, do not give up on your core principles, but you can't just turn up and spit out your principles. You've got to actually do the work to be able to own the room in a way that people believe that you really have principles worth building something on. So I just don't think that there's any shortcuts really. But at the same time, also, never be too proud not to leverage a good idea you've seen elsewhere. I think that that can come as a cropper for some people. You've seen UCMOs going in, and they have to reinvent everything, and I'm not sure that's always the best way. Do the work, understand what's best, and then execute better than anyone else. John, that's been amazing, mate. Thank you so much for doing this, and I really enjoyed this is the first podcast recorded in Can. Oh, fantastic. I'm very proud to be on the show. Great to have you, mate. Thank you. So I hope you enjoyed that episode of Uncensored CMO as much as I enjoyed making it. Now, by the way, I've got a new newsletter. So if you'd like to get my thoughts on the one thing that I take out from each episode every week, then do subscribe to the one thing newsletter. I'd really appreciate it. Also, I have another podcast just launched Uncensored. Renegades with the fabulous Cory Marcher Soto. She is one of the world's best CMOs. She's an absolute rock star. Every week we pick one topic, spend 20 minutes trying to fix it. So check out that. It's in your feed Uncensored Renegades, and finally, I want to give a huge thank you to my sponsor, System One. They generously provide so much support for this podcast. It would not happen without them. It's a big thanks and lots of love to System One. I'll see you next time.