Ep 36: How you can make product marketing inclusive with Jonathon Thornton
Shownotes
In this episode, Joyann is joined by Jonathon Thornton, Senior Creative at Surreal.
Together they delve into a wide variety of topics including the comparisons of social-first and social-last marketing strategies, how to respond to comments and how to successfully include International Women's Day and Pride into your marketing efforts.
You can watch the podcast here.
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You can find the transcript here.
Useful links:
Burger King, Women Belong in the Kitchen
Warburtons Mad about the Bread with Samuel L Jackson
Warburtons GoodBagels with Robert De Niro
Bic International Women’s Day ad
Surreal Celebrity Names Campaign
Transcript
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:15:05
Joyann Boyce
Welcome and welcome back to the Marketing Made Inclusive podcast. I am your host Joyann Boyce. And today we are joined by one of the funniest slash, most sarcastic marketing social marketers that I know.
00:00:15:13 - 00:00:47:01
Johnathon Thornton
Yes, I am. I probably works in marketing for like ten years, so it sounds horrible. First for a like little shampoo grooming company where my job was to just write product descriptions about shampoo. So every different way of saying nourishing I've found. I can also spell Schwarzkopf correctly. That’s pretty good. Then I worked as, I worked at Innocent smoothies for about four and a half years.
00:00:47:01 - 00:01:13:04
Johnathon Thornton
I was social media manager and copywriter there. So mostly I argued with people about colour of blueberry nearly poisoned the nation's children with some punk milk and just generally saw what you can get away with. No one knows what you do and until it's too late. Then I did some freelance stuff. Some freelance for a ketchup company, a yoga pants company, wrote some tweets.
00:01:13:04 - 00:01:27:18
Johnathon Thornton
for great pottery throw down, did one day work for the United Nations. No more. And then now I work for a start up cereal company called Surreal. I write silly little adverts about high protein.
00:01:27:18 - 00:01:44:15
Joyann Boyce
There's so many elements in there. I know John from his Innocent Smoothie days, and if you don't know Innocent smoothie days, when they be reckless on Twitter, this is the person that was responsible for that. I don't feel like that as reckless nowadays.
00:01:44:17 - 00:01:49:00
Johnathon Thornton
I wouldn't use the word reckless. I'd say like.
00:01:49:00 - 00:02:04:20
Johnathon Thornton
It's more like giving the appearance of reckless, but very, very full out, like trying to look chaotic and like it was like almost like playing a character of a social media manager. If that makes sense.
00:02:04:22 - 00:02:10:03
Joyann Boyce
So a character of a social media manager while being the social media manager.
00:02:10:05 - 00:02:12:06
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:02:12:08 - 00:02:21:14
Joyann Boyce
Yeah, very meta there. I have so many questions about its various elements. Like how many ways can you describe Nourish or. Did you say nourish?
00:02:21:16 - 00:02:28:01
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah. nourish. Maybe like hydrate or replenish.
00:02:28:03 - 00:02:33:05
Joyann Boyce
Okay. Your copywriting skills must be top tier then.
00:02:33:07 - 00:02:50:12
Johnathon Thornton
That was very much a quantity game. I had to write 80 product descriptions a week. And then my also SEO copies are like, like 300 words about perms And I would say there's only about 50 ways you can say about perms.
00:02:50:19 - 00:03:05:00
Joyann Boyce
It’s bringing me back to my social media management days. And it's not happy memories of having to rephrase the whole thing over and over again. But before we dive into that element of marketing, I'm curious to know what does inclusive marketing mean to you?
00:03:05:02 - 00:03:32:13
Johnathon Thornton
I kind of think of it as like Marketing that appeals to everybody, or at least everybody who you would want to appeal to. Probably, I would say more than everybody, because I reckon plenty of companies would argue they are appealing to everyone they want to appeal to the but by doing that they're not being inclusive. So, yeah, I also I guess I would say Marketing that reflects the world around you.
00:03:32:15 - 00:03:34:11
Johnathon Thornton
That's pretty important.
00:03:34:13 - 00:03:39:01
Joyann Boyce
Okay, social media marketing. Would you say the same thing applies to it?
00:03:39:16 - 00:04:07:24
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah. So I would say, I reckon most of the people, on the whole, because people work and social probably skews, I would say younger, but there's more sort of junior entry level jobs in there then some other parts of marketing. And so I would say the good sides of I'd probably more on average, there's like more awareness and like inclusivity.
00:04:08:01 - 00:04:19:20
Johnathon Thornton
But then when you draw, if someone drops a howler, they are more likely to go out like found out for it. Like that Burger King, women belong in the kitchen one on International Women's Day.
00:04:19:22 - 00:04:21:17
Joyann Boyce
I have not seen that one.
00:04:21:17 - 00:04:23:18
Johnathon Thornton
Oh, it's a beauty.
00:04:23:18 - 00:04:54:02
Johnathon Thornton
So it was interesting because they ran out of print out as well. With a headline that Women Belong Kitchen, and it was meant to be raising awareness about how in sort of like the chef industry, women are actually like really underrepresented and so they wrote in some scheme to sort of try and change that. If you read for small print it was to help like scholarships for like for women and it was like this big like multi-country International Women's Day campaign.
00:04:54:02 - 00:05:18:24
Johnathon Thornton
So it's a little bit sort of questionable. But anyway, there was debate about whether the headline Women Belong in the Kitchen on like a print ad, you could debate about whether it's like how to feel about that. Anyway. But on Twitter, what they did was they, they just tweeted their first tweet and then made a thread throughout the thread for all the other copy.
00:05:19:01 - 00:05:55:11
Johnathon Thornton
So literally about one tweet stood on it’s own. And so then you know like all the little misogynistic, like 15 year old boys and everyone else is like just retweeting that gleefully and sort of taken it out of context. Even within the context, you could be like maybe don't phrase it like that, but I reckon you could lot debate whether it reads like that or not but yeah purely how it stood on Twitter in like not sort of silo way but they got kind of lucky because that was also the day when Harry and Meghan did that Oprah interview.
00:05:55:13 - 00:05:57:03
Joyann Boyce
So yeah, that's why I didn't see it.
00:05:57:05 - 00:06:00:15
Johnathon Thornton
And when they put out the apology midway through the Oprah interview.
00:06:00:15 - 00:06:26:04
Joyann Boyce
So yeah, so there's two elements to that. One is so fascinating to me how people can create things for billboards and not see how it just wouldn't work on social. Like sometimes I look at stuff like that, it just wouldn't work. But they just try and translate the copy the same way. And there's so many brands. I saw a billboard recently.
00:06:26:06 - 00:06:56:12
Joyann Boyce
I was looking at ads that have been banned by ASA. Fun if anyone wants to do that. But it was one that was like, ’Your wife is Hot’ and they were talking about temperature and cooling. And I was just like, this doesn't work in a billboard or tweet or any other format. And it's clearly obvious. But the one place a little bit more nuanced like that Burger King one, I really feel like and it may have changed recently, I feel like social gets underrated for the craft that it is.
00:06:56:14 - 00:06:59:05
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah, because that's very much like a.
00:06:59:05 - 00:07:18:06
Johnathon Thornton
Ignoring whether you would ever use a headline or consider that headline appropriate like a Facebook post with that headline and all the rest of the copy, same as a print out is like different to yeah where it’s just purely stood alone. Or even if they just added a little more context or a photo of a scheme.
00:07:18:06 - 00:07:43:19
Johnathon Thornton
In that tweet it would have reduced the negative impact. But yeah, I guess it's interesting what you saying about that, the move in when stuff is like replicate from a billboard or like you'll see people like sharing like two minute TV ads and things like that. It’s interesting, but you can almost kind of like track where it's been, they thought about social last or they’ve thought about social first. So like Warburtons, I’ve not actually seen that.
00:07:43:19 - 00:08:05:01
Johnathon Thornton
Samuel Jackson one yet. I've seen it being shared but not watched it. But like that Robert DeNiro one was like, clearly they thought about social and also managed to roll it out to like type TV but it's sort of like it's been designed to be good enough to work everywhere. Whereas yeah, plenty don’t.
00:08:05:03 - 00:08:36:12
Joyann Boyce
Plenty don’t and it's so risky I find to think about social last because that's the area where the conversations are happening. That's the area where, you know, people are influencing the perception of your brand, of your area. And I think that was one of the beautiful things about your work with Innocent drinks is it was very conversation oriented. It was very kind of whatever the audience was saying, you're engaging even when they were saying some dodgy things, because that's another thing that happens.
00:08:36:12 - 00:09:00:22
Joyann Boyce
When I remember it was the Sainsbury's ad for Christmas and they just showed a Black family talking about like Christmas gravy or whatever, and people went all over the place with it and a lot of times when brands received backlash for being inclusive, they apologise, well when it's bad they should apologise. But when it's good, I think they miss an opportunity to engage.
00:09:00:22 - 00:09:07:10
Joyann Boyce
Kind of like what you did with Innocent. How did you approach when it was negative and flipping it?
00:09:07:12 - 00:09:46:20
Johnathon Thornton
I guess, I sort of there's different pools of negative. I would say there's like even just something like if someone was saying it was like too expensive and too sugary, I probably wouldn't like retweet that with a joke like, whereas if they were like. So that was one campaign we did around like during Christmas 2020. We did like, we made this like mock children's story about how we were going to protect Santa with a hazmat suit.
00:09:46:22 - 00:10:06:04
Johnathon Thornton
But it was very much like it wasn't aimed at kids, it was aimed at adults. It had jokes that were like Santa going on furlough and this and that and it was absolutely like fine for three days. It didn't do great. It got like, if it had been like a tweet we just, like, fired out. We'd been happy with the response, but know we put money and time into it.
00:10:06:05 - 00:10:39:03
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah, it's kind of like, that’s the same response we get for something we drop out in 5 minutes. Then like three days later it landed in some weird dark circle of Twitter where all these COVID deniers were like getting up in arms saying we were like scaring children by saying Santa was going to get it and all this stuff. And so then we like, got some of the most unhinged abuse I've ever gotten on social, like proper like conspiracy theory, like people talk about like the New World Order and all of this. They’re probably talking about 15 minutes cities now.
00:10:39:04 - 00:11:10:00
Johnathon Thornton
So but, but yeah, so something like that. We were kind of like, well everyone knows these people are like, like, you know, full of shit. So this is a free ticket to go wild. So then we were just like retweeting them all and just being really sarcky to them back. People were saying stuff like I your marketing team needs to throw themselves in a fire and we were like okay but we'll have to throw ourselves in one at time.
00:11:10:00 - 00:11:38:03
Johnathon Thornton
To respect social distancing. And so yeah, when it's like kind of like, a lot of what I do is just like it'd be figuring out the court of public opinion basically will I, will I win in a court of public opinion and with COVID deniers you’re like yeah we can win this one. Whereas like, I don't know, like cost and stuff, probably.
00:11:38:03 - 00:11:44:00
Johnathon Thornton
don’t want to highlight people saying that. So yeah, it's a balancing act.
00:11:44:02 - 00:12:10:11
Joyann Boyce
It is. And I because it, what it’s making me think of this elements where, you know, the majority are going to be on one side of it, but as elements even like with the Harry and Meghan thing you don't know because it really depends on where your content ends up, what you get. And I also think about, I don't know if you saw the whole Bud Light situation with all.
00:12:10:13 - 00:12:12:11
Johnathon Thornton
Oh the trans influencer.
00:12:12:17 - 00:12:25:14
Joyann Boyce
Yeah. That one was an interesting one because I kind of looked at it from not knowing America being like, oh, you know, people are mad again. They're always mad.
00:12:25:16 - 00:12:26:09
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah.
00:12:26:11 - 00:12:31:19
Joyann Boyce
They buy the product to then blow up the product. So from a marketing perspective, sales have gone up.
00:12:33:02 - 00:12:55:04
Joyann Boyce
Terrible perspective, but they kind of like completely withdrew and didn't engage in it at all. Have there been any scenarios, I guess because you deal with like probably more softer, softer products than alcohol, but any scenarios where you've been on the line of things that are a little bit more nuanced and a little bit more like controversial?
00:12:55:06 - 00:13:20:21
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah, I guess there was, there was one once where the old philosophy at Innocent was basically that if you have a nice conversation with someone, follow them. And I was back in like, God knows what year like 2010 or something silly when social was overall a much nicer place. And so over the years I ended up following like 20,000 people.
00:13:20:23 - 00:13:41:22
Johnathon Thornton
And every now and then someone would, because you know now on Twitter, it might put someone's tweet in your feed and it'll just say like, so this person, this person you follow follows them and that's why it's in your feed. So every now and then someone would tweet us because something that popped up from someone we'd follow, which was just like not appropriate and they’d be like weird you follow this person and you’d look at it and be like.
00:13:41:22 - 00:14:05:00
Johnathon Thornton
That is weird. Yeah, we’ll unfollow them. And it turned out we were following some like real big time transphobic figure like full blown. And someone, someone tweeted that and a customer service person was like, yeah, yeah, we should, we should unfollow them and they. So they unfollowed them and they replied to personal but they’d also tagged this bigot in it.
00:14:05:02 - 00:14:21:12
Johnathon Thornton
And so then, then they put like, yeah, we’ve unfollowed them. And then this person started just like abusing us and they dragged all because there's like transphobic community also like tighten in there.
00:14:21:14 - 00:14:22:22
Joyann Boyce
They have a lot of time.
00:14:22:24 - 00:14:47:24
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah yeah. I don't know where they have the, and like it’s the same with those COVID deniers. A lot of them are probably friends to be honest. Where they, yeah like you were saying about like, they've got be angry about something and almost the goal is just not to be that thing like but it's also like jury duty where when, when you are the thing you just have to take it for a bit and then it'll be someone else's turn.
00:14:48:01 - 00:15:15:22
Johnathon Thornton
But it also was quite hard. And I reckon the, it’s when, and if you’ve worked in social a long time, you know, it's like a very vocal but very small number of people. But for like, the sort of see any people around it they kind of like look at these sort of hundreds of threads of abuse and they’re like well this is the whole country, or especially when they’re saying like, they always phrase it like I'm never buying your product again.
00:15:15:22 - 00:15:17:12
Johnathon Thornton
And you’re like...
00:15:17:14 - 00:15:18:24
Joyann Boyce
I don't think that's the case.
00:15:19:03 - 00:15:34:22
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah, it's like if you being like, I buy this specific drink each week and now I'm not going to do it. I'd be like, maybe you are a customer, but when they're like, they don't even know the name of it. You’re like not sure you are. So yeah.
00:15:34:24 - 00:15:36:06
Joyann Boyce
That's fascinating.
00:15:36:08 - 00:15:38:05
Johnathon Thornton
That's good fun.
00:15:38:07 - 00:16:10:03
Joyann Boyce
Because it's like the actions were happening. I guess I saw a post from Hootsuite today that like apparently over 80% of social, that’s an exaggeration. 40% of social media teams are one person. And to think, you know, the customer service person did something and then you the social media manager having to deal with all of that backlash and it's such just like, don't tag, it's so logical but maybe because you work in social with like you don't like the person you unfollowing.
00:16:10:05 - 00:16:41:04
Johnathon Thornton
It was like it was because of a new way Twitter worked then where like the old school way put their handles in that tweet. So then they like, made some way where the handles were obviously in and you had like a couple more boxes, but also like the there's a flip side, I would say, gen, pretty much all problems and like little controversies I had on social, the social team caused which is one, I've never had to deal with one way.
00:16:41:04 - 00:17:09:07
Johnathon Thornton
It's like the company policy high up, of course, you tend to like you remember when, when the Queen died and then Centre Parks were like, well, we're going to shut and kick you all out for like 6 hours or something. Like proper bizarre policy their social team then must have taken such a kicking and that’s like nothing to do with them.
00:17:09:09 - 00:17:11:00
Joyann Boyce
It’s so hard.
00:17:11:01 - 00:17:34:22
Johnathon Thornton
One of the first jobs I applied for in social was just to be like customer service exec or something at like Chessington World of Adventures. And then I looked at what their Twitter content was like. And they put out one tweet a week about their about their meerkats. And then you look at what that all the tweets are sending and it's just them apologising to people who are complaining about the queues.
00:17:34:24 - 00:17:42:04
Johnathon Thornton
And I thought, hmm, do I want this job? Thankfully, they didn't offer me it.
00:17:42:06 - 00:17:44:05
Joyann Boyce
So you won either way.
00:17:44:07 - 00:17:47:21
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah. Yeah. I worked in Argos for a while.
00:17:47:23 - 00:18:07:23
Joyann Boyce
On that note of, like the social media managers having to deal with the backlash of the higher ups, what are your thoughts on the gender pay gap bot? Because that's essentially the social team having to deal with a decision that's been made intern, like not decision, but a report that's done internally. And then the gender pay gap highlights that report.
00:18:07:23 - 00:18:13:08
Joyann Boyce
With any tweets related to their International Women's Day content.
00:18:13:10 - 00:18:44:02
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah, I guess that's like that's a bit of both. Obviously, the social team aren’t in control of everyone’s salaries, but you are in control of like what you put out. And so if you putting out a really like if you know your, your pay gap is like 30, 40% and you put out some like really just like colour by numbers International Women's Day post, then it's going to drag you out.
00:18:44:07 - 00:19:03:16
Johnathon Thornton
So it's kind of like a bit of both. I think this International Women's Day is an interesting one of social. It’s so hard to like, even before gender pay gap bot because like, people would still be like, well, what's your gender pay gap? It's of all the sort of days it’s like.
00:19:03:16 - 00:19:14:12
Johnathon Thornton
Because normally our objective like say Innocent, if we’re posting it it’s because we want the post it hit like big numbers, that's kind of like our objective.
00:19:14:14 - 00:19:36:21
Johnathon Thornton
And so there's not really a way to do that on International Women's Day. Like unless you do something bad, like you never really see a company like, yeah, it's just hard. I bet you have to just be respectful and think like, I mean, you talk about this a lot and you talk to like, is it conversation you should be joining?
00:19:36:23 - 00:20:04:14
Johnathon Thornton
Saying that actually, my old boss, Helena, this is like a I can’t remember what year this would be, it's like 2014. She did a post on International Women's Day because Bic had launched these Bic pens for women. And obviously, there's literally. And she did this amazing post where I was like, proper, like super piss take, like, oh, we're so happy.
00:20:04:14 - 00:20:24:11
Johnathon Thornton
Look how happy all the women on our office are. And then she just had loads of pictures of women from around the office. And one advert had written things like, wow, look, I can write my own name now. Or like, I don't, I didn't need to get my husband to write this. And maybe like the last one was like this picture of a woman in the office who just, like, scribbled and couldn't, couldn't use it.
00:20:24:13 - 00:20:55:11
Johnathon Thornton
And then put that out, which, like it's the gutsiest thing ever. I think, I can’t remember if they got any from a certain stationery company or not, that was like one of our best performing posts ever. And the comments were like amazing. It was so funny just like women being like, just like carrying on the joke like, oh, I had to ask my husband permission to write this comment and things like, it was like proper, proper gold.
00:20:55:13 - 00:21:00:22
Johnathon Thornton
But yeah you rarely see a company directly bash another company on International Women's Day. I think that's what we're missing to be honest.
00:21:00:24 - 00:21:29:12
Joyann Boyce
I think that's what it is, like with the hashtag days and just all of the stuff around inclusivity. I feel like we're missing some of the sarcasm and some of the mediocre as well. Like, whoa, everything's mediocre at this point because everyone posts the same thing. But there's no like, I want to see someone do like dyslexia month and do like a really good creative, fun thing rather than just saying we support dyslexics in a workplace.
00:21:29:14 - 00:21:55:09
Johnathon Thornton
Is it the RNIB? The Royal National Institute for the Blind or something. They've done some good campaigns around, as have actually the. The RNIB one was more recent. And the kind of like the blood donor people, the ones where they got like brands to take out As, Os and Bs from their names and things like that.
00:21:55:11 - 00:21:56:20
Johnathon Thornton
I can’t remember the RNIB one.
00:21:57:05 - 00:22:22:11
Joyann Boyce
I need to check that blood Daniel because I've seen the recent blood donor stuff I notice specifically targeting the Black community and they're getting all the YouTube influencers to talk about donating blood. And I just like, I like that, but they're doing it mainly on YouTube videos. I haven't seen anything on social, but just I love hashtag days when you, you know, need a reason to post and you have nothing to post about.
00:22:22:13 - 00:22:36:06
Joyann Boyce
But I feel like one it’s supersaturated. I think I saw for like this month. There are eight different themes happening in October as we're recording this and it's just hard to keep up at the same time.
00:22:36:08 - 00:22:38:04
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah, and it's said like,
00:22:38:04 - 00:23:12:07
Johnathon Thornton
you need that entire company to be posting about this thing? Maybe not. Maybe I think it is. I feel like it's shifted over the last 10/15 years, but like I reckon it probably was a point where like the supermarkets even just vaguely mentioned mentioning pride was actually like kind of was progressive in a way where as now it’s gone to parliament now, it's just like a box to capitalise.
00:23:12:09 - 00:23:16:03
Joyann Boyce
Now they publish BLT sandwiches and called it LGBT and.
00:23:16:05 - 00:23:16:15
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah.
00:23:16:15 - 00:23:40:12
Joyann Boyce
Don’t do that please, if anyone's having any ideas for pride, don't do that. Speaking of pride and like Pride Month, how would you even approach that to market a cereal company or would you like. Yeah, would you touch it with a bargepole? I don't know why I said bargepole. That sounds like offensive, but not in that way. But yeah, cereal and pride.
00:23:40:12 - 00:23:42:13
Joyann Boyce
I don't see the connection.
00:23:42:15 - 00:24:25:01
Johnathon Thornton
Yes, I guess because like on the one hand, brands like Skittles and Absolut Vodka sort of do regular Pride campaigns and they don't have any light obvious link to I think Skittles they've kind of been like rainbows but because they've, I've read Marketing articles of people being like because they've actually so consistently done it year after year, they've kind of like earned the right or so. But, which is like, I don't know, you can debate and there's always like questions of like.
00:24:25:01 - 00:24:32:04
Johnathon Thornton
If just like any generic company tweets about that kind of thing, you often get questions like so what are you doing about it.
00:24:32:06 - 00:24:59:22
Johnathon Thornton
20 charities and things like that. What we used to do at Innocent we kind of got into a we found what was sort of like felt like a right area to be in was, because we’d debate, some years we were like, should, is it weird for companies to be talking about and just trying to profit off it? So some years we wouldn't say very much or we were like, Is it disingenuous?
00:24:59:22 - 00:25:25:24
Johnathon Thornton
Well, we don't do anything for the wider LGBTQ community, like the charity donations go to other things, things like that. In the end what we found was so it felt like the right level was we would just talk about what like company policies we had to make it a nice place to work for LGBTQ people or in like Black History Month.
00:25:25:24 - 00:25:52:05
Johnathon Thornton
We might use that for like a sort of inclusion diversity update or talk about like set up some affinity groups for like LGBTQ people, people of colour, etc. So maybe talk about what they were going say was kind of like, I guess it's like, well, I suppose our old policy was like, but we're not doing anything with charities or like the LGBTQ community.
00:25:52:05 - 00:26:12:24
Johnathon Thornton
So we mentioned more about them, but actually as a company that we do do it for the LGBTQ community within our four walls. So we would kind of talk about that and that was normally cause they would have like some pretty solid policies, like very good sort of parental leave,
00:26:12:24 - 00:26:33:12
Johnathon Thornton
which like it was kind of like regardless of your gender as a parent, you get like this much time off and things like that. Our take to sort of just focus on those things was actually felt much more genuine and useful than just like popping a pride flag on the logo.
00:26:33:12 - 00:26:40:11
Joyann Boyce
And relevant. And it's also like amazing evergreen content because those policies aren't going to disappear next year.
00:26:40:11 - 00:26:41:18
Johnathon Thornton
So yeah.
00:26:41:20 - 00:27:02:13
Joyann Boyce
You can plan ahead, you can work that in and celebrate and build the employer brand. I really like the aspect of taking what you have internally if you have, because I think what Skittles did is they removed the rainbow for a month, which was interesting. And then it was just like, but how what, why? But people enjoy it.
00:27:02:15 - 00:27:04:04
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah.
00:27:04:06 - 00:27:19:17
Joyann Boyce
People enjoy it. Okay, that's really interesting to look at the internal stuff. So do you think if you had to compare, I don't know, product versus non product socials who has it harder?
00:27:19:19 - 00:27:22:02
Johnathon Thornton
What we talking from Non-Product?
00:27:22:04 - 00:27:25:00
Joyann Boyce
I'm just thinking we could either do like tech companies
00:27:25:18 - 00:27:53:03
Joyann Boyce
Tech companies like softwares or I don't know, because every time I think of charities and stuff, they have pride and everything kind of right because it's in their ethos. But I feel like product versus software, physical product versus software, both can go really wrong really easily because they don't really have any connection to people.
00:27:53:05 - 00:28:26:20
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah, it's interesting with so like food, which is like cereal, smoothies, both plus like I reckon if you took a lot of the unhinged brands on social if they often are in food and I think that's because it's so hard to, there's actually nothing else to say like you can’t, so there's this at the other end of the spectrum and still product but like the this phone case company called Mous and it’s M O U S and it’s basically all the videos all the comments go through I'm trying to break phones in locations.
00:28:26:22 - 00:28:58:03
Johnathon Thornton
I quite like the extreme of like throwing the iPhone as high as they can or dropping it off the side of a building. And that's like to me that's like showing the products fully in use, but it's also just engaging content. It's very like really struck on Twitter there, whereas for like smoothies can't really show it and use you could go down this whole like healthy, healthy route, same would be nice Surreal like we could go very like protein gym fitness.
00:28:58:05 - 00:29:21:05
Johnathon Thornton
It's not my it's not really what I can do. So I do stupid jokes but like, same with like KFC, McDonald's, etc. You can't you can't go down a like, foodie, foodie route of like, glamorous shots of food. So you kind of like once you’ve knocked everything else out, you are just left with a lot of personality interests.
00:29:21:07 - 00:29:44:07
Johnathon Thornton
On the software one. I saw this one company. It was, can’t really remember what they were called, they’re basically called like flowchart or something or flow. They make flowchart software. And I saw a video because they basically use these old like Tumblr memes of like flowcharts of like really silly things. And they just made these videos.
00:29:44:12 - 00:30:01:18
Johnathon Thornton
The one I saw was of like dogs and like a big dog is called a doggo, a small dog. It's called a puffer. You know, it's like very sort of internet language. Just going across this big flow chart. And it was only at the end of a two minute video that they're like flowcharts dot com or something.
00:30:01:20 - 00:30:10:18
Johnathon Thornton
I was like, woah, I've just watched an advert for flowchart software. And then I went on my profile and it was all stuff like that.
00:30:10:20 - 00:30:12:03
Joyann Boyce
They found a niche.
00:30:12:05 - 00:30:32:19
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah, they managed to nail it with what’s a pretty boring proposition otherwise. Then there's some where it’s like, you know like check out software for your website. Um, yeah, I am like, wow, what could you do there. I think is interesting that the stuff Hootsuite have been doing recently, you mentioned them. Like the.
00:30:32:19 - 00:30:35:04
Johnathon Thornton
What they're saying about like social media.
00:30:35:04 - 00:30:55:07
Johnathon Thornton
They did this big report recently, 80 pages, I was like I'm not reading all the all about work and social and I guess that's like, because I was talking to someone the other week, I know someone one who does some like social media software thing and that's the kind of thing you tap into, just like content for social media managers.
00:30:55:09 - 00:31:33:13
Joyann Boyce
The things that they care about. And just focus on that. Because the reason I find products so tricky, especially from my perspective, is all my recommendations around inclusive marketing involve people, and the most I can do with a product is tell you to change the skin tone of the hand holding the product. But yeah, you mentioned food as well and I was thinking about Wendy's and it's interesting that I think they’re like the American brand tone of voice to the Innocent drink but I wouldn't know because there's so much just the comedy.
00:31:33:13 - 00:31:37:04
Joyann Boyce
There's no other elements of it to make inclusive.
00:31:37:06 - 00:31:51:16
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah it’s it’s actually interesting the innocent one so one of my friends who's like an academic doing a PHD they defined it more properly to me, all I really can I say is racism.
00:31:51:18 - 00:31:53:06
Joyann Boyce
Doing a PHD on racism. Cool, yeah.
00:31:53:08 - 00:32:26:04
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah, I should. I should know it to a little bit more degree but I'm not doing a PHD for pretty obvious reasons. I can only write jokes on Twitter. But so they, they asked me once about like, does Innocent like talk about Eid or does it talk about this or that. You're very, it's like it's what you'd call very British humour so they were kind of like it's not very like white middle class village fete British humour.
00:32:26:04 - 00:32:45:20
Johnathon Thornton
I was like, yeah, that is fair. And so you kind of like even just like that tone imagery and some like one is just like rolling hills and things like that. That's what only one part of Britain.
00:32:45:22 - 00:32:58:00
Joyann Boyce
Only one part of Britain is countryside. Like when it's always interesting to hear how Americans view Britain, they just view London. And that is kind of a reflection on our marketing and a reflection of everything else.
00:32:58:06 - 00:32:58:21
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah.
00:32:58:21 - 00:33:09:01
Joyann Boyce
But then even when you look internally at the ads and this content that we have it is either extreme countryside, extreme city, there seems to be no.
00:33:09:03 - 00:33:13:07
Johnathon Thornton
You know, like shitty, shitty great towns.
00:33:13:09 - 00:33:14:07
Joyann Boyce
Which is the majority of the country.
00:33:14:08 - 00:33:35:21
Johnathon Thornton
I saw this great thing of like, I saw this great thing on Twitter the other day of like, I don't know it was like a field or something is like Netflix and they’d done half of it in this super yellow tint, they were like Mexico and half of it a grey tint and like Poland. It's kind of the same with yeah, as soon as it's in London they put such a grey tint on a.
00:33:35:23 - 00:33:43:02
Joyann Boyce
High rise buildings, fire then and then everything outside of that is like apparently countryside and horse riding.
00:33:43:04 - 00:33:44:08
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah.
00:33:44:10 - 00:34:03:03
Joyann Boyce
Huh. That's in the humour one is really, the humour aspect is really ringing some bells in my mind because I guess maybe because I've lived here so long I didn't or I've been around a certain type of humour. I didn't think about classism within. And then that's another way you can have inclusivity.
00:34:03:05 - 00:34:04:09
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah.
00:34:04:11 - 00:34:14:09
Joyann Boyce
Oh, that's so fascinating. So that's with those product based brands, they can explore in that tone of voice and explore in what they're using to talk about.
00:34:14:11 - 00:34:22:09
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah, because you see like a lot of like a lot of big football clubs now, the language they use when they're
00:34:22:09 - 00:34:44:09
Johnathon Thornton
kind of sounds makes them sound like 15 year olds because they know their audience is kind of 15 year olds, at least to an extent. And yeah, like that stuff's quite interesting as well. Like even, even within that, like trying to be funny on Twitter, there's lots of different approaches to it and like different tones.
00:34:44:19 - 00:35:13:23
Johnathon Thornton
Saw someone did once, a thing where they just like, I think it was a marketing, it was like some marketing people were debating whether if you follow like, if you were the sort of person to follow brands on Twitter, one of them was kind of basically arguing that they would guess basically you have either a personally follows brands or you not personally follows brands, but they basically they looked at the followers of like Innocent and then the followers of KFC
00:35:14:00 - 00:35:40:10
Johnathon Thornton
Who you would say was I reckon you'd guess would be a pretty decent overlap because they are just being silly on Twitter. They're very like mainstream British brands and such. Well, technically American, but whatever. There's pretty much no overlap between our follows. It was like 2 or 3%. And so there's like even sort of companies being funny on Twitter have a completely different audiences.
00:35:40:11 - 00:36:04:00
Joyann Boyce
That’s so interesting because the other aspect of it, I was just like even Innocent being funny. I would still think of it as a health thing and I wouldn't think of KFC as a health thing. Then are you following this accounts for their nutritional facts on the. Ok. That's interesting. So I just have to address an elephant in the room that we've just spent like 45 minutes calling it Twitter.
00:36:05:02 - 00:36:06:02
Johnathon Thornton
Uh huh.
00:36:06:04 - 00:36:08:21
Joyann Boyce
And it's no longer called Twitter, it's called X.
00:36:08:23 - 00:36:23:03
Johnathon Thornton
Well, I guess that's one, they can change their name, but people are still going to call it what they want and the like, Innocent smoothies, they’re technically called Innocent drinks. Everyone, on the street will call them Innocent smoothies.
00:36:23:05 - 00:36:28:19
Joyann Boyce
Oh, my days, they are. I'm imagining the bottle, it is drinks.
00:36:28:21 - 00:36:30:01
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah.
00:36:30:03 - 00:36:34:08
Joyann Boyce
Milk as well. Oat milk is not a thing. It’s apparently oat drink.
00:36:34:10 - 00:36:47:18
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah, you’re not, you’re not allowed to call it milk. Yeah. And then the meat lobby is arguing that you shouldn't be allowed to call like veggie sausages, sausages or veggie burgers, burgers.
00:36:47:20 - 00:36:55:16
Joyann Boyce
But then no, that ones are too far fetched because what we call it bean patty, bean, bean slab.
00:36:55:18 - 00:37:04:07
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah. And sausage you've got like mushroom protein cylinder.
00:37:04:09 - 00:37:22:07
Joyann Boyce
Anyways I had some inappropriate jokes related to that, but I will digress. What do you think in regards to where Twitter is now? Where do you see it going and is it, in your opinion, still worth a platform to build for a brand?
00:37:22:09 - 00:37:48:10
Johnathon Thornton
For brand is tricky because I still in my own time spent a lot of time there. You can get into all ethical like, should I be loosely encouraging Elon Musk or whatever? But loads of people are still on there, everyone's doing that, so it must be fine. That attitude never get you into trouble. From a brand point of view.
00:37:48:12 - 00:38:12:12
Johnathon Thornton
I think. Same with Facebook, it's just such a slog now. The way they’re built, to build a following on those channels. So with Surreal, we've, we don't put much into those channels. We kind of like with big campaigns that are doing well elsewhere. I’ll be like, might as well stick it on but they’ve got very few followers so its.
00:38:12:12 - 00:38:48:18
Johnathon Thornton
It's not, it's not focused kind of thing. So that's really still some company that would make more sense for the others. Like, I don't know, the annoying thing is that it’s still the main channel that like journalists look at. Uh, I think if, if, if to compare post with let's say a million views from a from a brand I man views on Instagram, on Twitter and on let's say LinkedIn, the only one that's going to get picked up is the one on Twitter, in like the press.
00:38:48:20 - 00:38:52:04
Joyann Boyce
That's where the press still are.
00:38:52:06 - 00:38:53:12
Johnathon Thornton
Mmm.
00:38:53:14 - 00:39:09:21
Joyann Boyce
Which is Twitter's always been interesting platform when it comes to like representation because it, I feel like it's the most classist platform. Like I think the majority of the population aren't there. I think they're still on Facebook.
00:39:09:23 - 00:39:41:14
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah, that, those numbers, it has a way smaller users than the other ones, doesn’t it? In some ways it's like I wouldn't say the most equal level, but it's kind of like the only one where you can like just, it was like when Elon Musk first took over there was just someone was tweeting like, look, no other rich person or celebrities checking their own Twitter, but this guy is like, we have to all bully him guys.
00:39:41:14 - 00:39:49:04
Johnathon Thornton
Which is, which was good stuff and like they're like you can guarantee he’s searching his name.
00:39:49:08 - 00:39:59:12
Joyann Boyce
Yeah that's the one thing that used to outsell. I think it probably still does where that name isn't hashtag or hasn't asked them, but they've replied. Like you’re searching yourself.
00:39:59:18 - 00:40:01:22
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah.
00:40:03:14 - 00:40:24:02
Joyann Boyce
So there's a, my favourite part, one of my favourite parts of the podcast is we're all about making things inclusive. Now I am thinking you have recently did a campaign for Surreal where you had non-celebrities endorsements, but people with celebrity names.
00:40:24:04 - 00:40:26:03
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah.
00:40:26:05 - 00:40:33:02
Joyann Boyce
It would be good to see how we can maybe make an inclusive video version of that.
00:40:33:04 - 00:40:33:19
Johnathon Thornton
Mm hmm.
00:40:33:21 - 00:40:36:03
Joyann Boyce
Or picking another one.
00:40:36:05 - 00:40:56:01
Johnathon Thornton
We did, we did make a video for it. And it was quite a that was an interesting one from like approaching it from an inclusion point of view because first we wanted to get the most famous names we could and we chose athletes because it's like a protein product.
00:40:56:01 - 00:41:11:06
Johnathon Thornton
Then my kind of like bar for fame was for my mum have heard of them and will an American have heard of them, which then the American side rules out a lot of like our Olympians.
00:41:11:08 - 00:41:20:04
Johnathon Thornton
And then my mum rules out a lot of people, so like the short list we drew up with was like Serena Williams,
00:41:20:04 - 00:41:33:20
Johnathon Thornton
Michael Jordan, David Beckham, Messi, etc., but is actually like, by that bar you were like, the number of like stratospheric female athletes.
00:41:34:16 - 00:42:06:12
Johnathon Thornton
It is like I mean, it's like if you look at Instagram following, there'd be plenty like Naomi Osaka, especially in tennis or like a lot of the lionesses and the US women's soccer team. But who would have huge followers and like lots of fame on some levels, but not on like others. So it's kind of like that to juggle of like we can't just have it be men.
00:42:06:14 - 00:42:25:09
Johnathon Thornton
And then there's also because like quite a lot of athletes were Black, we couldn't just have white people with, who happened to have those names. So that was the other thing you had to kind of we have to judge which names we thought we could find more of. So like Maria Sharapova, I'm not sure how many Maria Sharapova’s there are in like London.
00:42:25:11 - 00:42:28:17
Joyann Boyce
So, hold on, the people you found were actually had those names.
00:42:28:23 - 00:43:01:24
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah, yeah. So we found someone called Serena Williams. Someone called Dwayne Johnson. So like Dwayne Johnson, Michael Jordan, both those names, we were like both feel quite gettable. But yeah, someone like Zlatan Ibrahimović, there’s probably less of those. But then you still had to be like even though you're very much set by what name, what people you can find, we still had to be like, well we can't.
00:43:02:01 - 00:43:14:21
Johnathon Thornton
It would feel wrong to be using Black athletes names and all white people. Even if it is, they are those names but there’s something about it which would feel wrong.
00:43:14:23 - 00:43:24:20
Joyann Boyce
So interesting. Who made the call when that was, was there just a, it was a group discussion or was it kind of like and that it just feels wrong. Let's just do it this way.
00:43:24:22 - 00:43:44:15
Johnathon Thornton
Right, kind of right off the bat we were like, we need to like everyone I think even regardless of who those names belong to, if like, the whole line-up was white we’d have been like that's not quite right. So we kind of we kind of set that off the bat and it was just like extra impetus on it because.
00:43:44:17 - 00:43:45:24
Joyann Boyce
Then it was related to people.
00:43:46:01 - 00:43:47:03
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah.
00:43:47:05 - 00:44:01:10
Joyann Boyce
That's so interesting. Do, is that approach to name things that wouldn't be appropriate at the start? Like do you set those hard lines early on in, in most campaigns or was it that one that you felt it the most?
00:44:01:12 - 00:44:19:04
Johnathon Thornton
I think no, I would say for, so. I've, I didn't work, for one of my first jobs after uni, I did quite a lot of work for a like a children's media organisation who were very like, their whole thing was what they wanted, like.
00:44:19:04 - 00:44:30:13
Johnathon Thornton
It was around the time of like toys be Toys where there's a lot of campaign about how like the pink aisle and boys toys, like things being labelled boys toys, girls toys. When that was getting challenged a lot.
00:44:30:13 - 00:44:51:03
Johnathon Thornton
And they would try to do that within like children's books, they wanted female characters who weren't just princesses and things like that as I worked with them a lot and so from ton of like that gave me quite a, there with all our characters, you'd have to be like, okay, what gender is this person going to be?
00:44:51:03 - 00:45:24:02
Johnathon Thornton
Even is just like a lorry driver who gets mentioned for two lines. You'd have to like weigh up what gender to make them. And also, like more illustrated would have an outlet way of what skin colour they had and things like that. But so I guess kind of from that point on I was quite, being quite in the mindset of should be trying to like not just go for sort of what my brain defaults to.
00:45:25:00 - 00:45:59:24
Johnathon Thornton
So anyone kind of thing and then like so yeah. We kind of I think, sort of even if I don't say it’s in the back of my head on, it's kind of like, although it’s like. Like video, when would make videos at Innocent we would try and show like a diverse range of people, pages, genders, etc. So that was tricky just because not even wants to be in a video and not everyone is good on camera.
00:46:00:04 - 00:46:00:17
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah.
00:46:00:19 - 00:46:02:16
Joyann Boyce
And those are the times.
00:46:02:18 - 00:46:13:14
Johnathon Thornton
If you've got less of one group for another, you can be like you would be weighing up for like, do we don't we kind of thing.
00:46:13:16 - 00:46:35:06
Joyann Boyce
But I think there's a element of having those conversations mitigate some of the stuff that we see gets published. And just like saying because I think sometimes in teams and it sounds like you in really good environments where you could publicly like if you felt something publicly, say it in the group and go check it and so forth, but in teams people have that feeling and then they don't.
00:46:35:08 - 00:46:40:14
Joyann Boyce
And then that by the time it gets to publish is like, Well, I did think that was not great.
00:46:40:16 - 00:46:41:17
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah.
00:46:41:19 - 00:46:49:07
Joyann Boyce
But it’s about that company culture being able to speak up and say, yeah, this is we need to reassess this or we need to go back to the drawing table on this.
00:46:49:09 - 00:47:06:23
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah. And it’s also what we do like, is like the culture kind of like whether they say is like a dealbreaker or like nearly do like a high priority or just like a not a priority at all, kind of thing.
00:47:07:00 - 00:47:30:03
Joyann Boyce
Interesting that was interesting because I didn't realise you guys did the video for it and I it's good to hear the other side of a campaign that I would like to even, though you've probably almost got sued several times. For anyone who doesn't know the campaign we're talking about we'll link it in the show notes, but it's for Surreal, which is the company where John is working.
00:47:30:03 - 00:47:37:06
Joyann Boyce
I realise I never said your last name, but you can now let people know where to find you on the Internet if you want them to find you.
00:47:37:08 - 00:47:59:23
Johnathon Thornton
Yeah. Yeah. I don't really use Instagram or Twitter. There's not much point. You follow me on there. You can connect to me on LinkedIn if you want. My name is John Thornton and there's quite a lot of other John Thorntons. For instance, just connect to a few. I don't really post on their either to be honest, I don't focus on social media unless I'm getting paid by someone.
00:48:00:00 - 00:48:04:10
Joyann Boyce
That is the most bougee social media manager statement ever.
00:48:04:12 - 00:48:12:05
Johnathon Thornton
Look, if you're good enough or something don’t do it for free, is a quote from the Joker and the Dark Knight. But whatever.
00:48:12:07 - 00:48:34:10
Joyann Boyce
Fair point. If you’re good at social, that's the other thing, they always comes to social media managers personal accounts it’s like I spent all my creativity and energy on the company account. Of course mine is crap. But anywhos, thank you so much for joining me. John. This has been a really fascinating conversation exploring the worlds of social and inclusive marketing and hearing it from the corporate side.
00:48:34:12 - 00:48:48:21
Joyann Boyce
Thank you everyone for listening to the Marketing Made Inclusive podcast you can find me on all social media’s at Joyann Boyce and all links mentioned will be in the shownotes, so tune in next week while we continue to explore how to make marketing inclusive.
