E200: John Thornton

Mike Shields [00:00:00]:
Hi, and welcome to episode 200 of the eCom@One podcast. Today's guest is John Thornton. You may know him as the chief copywriter for Surreal, the protein based cereal company who bought Barry Scott back as the guy responsible for the blue versus green debate for innocent drinks. He's the master of making boring products interesting. Find out how you can add humour to humanize your marketing to engage your audience. Enjoy this exclusive live podcast.

Richard Hill [00:00:34]:
Well, I think we'll have one more. Huge round of applause for John Thornton from Surreal. Oh, thank you. So, obviously, you stepped through a lot of a lot of different campaigns, a lot of different things there. And, I think what I'm really interested to know, what's the most outlandish, craziest idea that you've done, and what results did you get with it?

John Thornton [00:00:58]:
So I did do one after that family photoshoot I showed. It did really well. And so I was like, what's like if something does well, I try to find a way to push it further. So I was obviously, get your tops off. So I persuaded our founders to do a a photo shoot just in their pants, and I bought them some, like, tighty whiteys and sort of wrote surreal on it as if it was, like, Calvin Klein, but, like, handwritten and and shit. And I was basically like, it's like and we because we were launching a banana series, so the headline was gonna be like, dulce and banana. Looked like an underwear shoe. Just about persuaded them.

John Thornton [00:01:36]:
And I I never like to promise that something will do like massive numbers, because whenever I promise massive numbers, it flops. And then something you're expecting to do fuck all does great. But here, I was like, this will definitely, definitely work. So I've been there maybe 6 months. We're in a photo studio wearing their pants, having all these pictures that absolutely hating it. And then we put it live and it got like 20 likes, which is quite Yeah. Quite, quite awkward. But so what we did then, my theory is that LinkedIn didn't like seeing their nipples, as in the platform or the people, not sure.

John Thornton [00:02:16]:
But basically, if they just if something works, I'll try and find ways to do it again. If something doesn't work, and we've put, like, time, effort, money into it, sort of tried desperately to find a way to make it work. I think sometimes just, like, changing almost, like, the way into it can help. So then I like, the next day, we did a post, and instead of just leading with the image, we put, like, a warning contains graphic nudity, and then sort of talked through the little story of how we'd guaranteed this to I promised our bosses this would work, and it hadn't worked. Yeah. And it rather did much better. So kind of got a handle on it.

Richard Hill [00:02:52]:
So less nipple, more copy.

John Thornton [00:02:54]:
Yeah. And I did black barber nipples on that one in case, like, the platform didn't like it and stuff. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:03:01]:
So it must be quite interesting sitting in your sort of team's office or, you know, on your on your calls. I've got this idea. Mhmm. You know, how do you get these ideas signed off? Because I think, you know, some of the guys in the audience are thinking, well, what could we do in our business? How far can we push it maybe with our brands? How do you sort of stack it up to get, obviously, you've been there quite a while now, so obviously in the early days, it's probably a bit more challenging.

John Thornton [00:03:24]:
I think because with them, I think because like literally day 1, they've been taking a piss out of themselves. Yeah. And it worked. They were kind of like on board from day 1. And with other people, and like, innocent, we didn't have much sign off process. I would basically trust that I could post more or less what I wanted, and I'd read it by my boss if I wasn't sure. But occasionally, I would have to get a sign off. And sort of what I try to do, it's like the baked beans movie.

John Thornton [00:03:53]:
I had to get a sign off, I think, because I it was, like, part of a bigger campaign or whatever. The sort of how I presented it was I try and break it down into ideas that have already been done and worked elsewhere. Basically, they're always, like, seen in people. They just sort of want proof. And so I found, Ambessie's had teamed up with Northern Monk to do a roast dinner beer. And so I was like, weird food combination, weird brand combination. That performed super well. And then when I was like a teenager, there was this Facebook group called, like, beans in places beans shouldn't be.

John Thornton [00:04:30]:
And it had sort of a 100,000 members. Every post, it'd be like a wall clock filled with beans or a croc shoe filled with beans. And every post would get 1,000 and 1,000 of likes. So I was like, beans work. So I was like, weird food works, beans works. This is just weird food and beans. So it's sort of all that stuff works, so this should work. And it did work pretty well.

John Thornton [00:04:52]:
So that's kind of the dream sort of process.

Richard Hill [00:04:55]:
To sort of show the powers that be, the sort of the idea in a fashion somewhere else and then adapt it to your brand environment.

John Thornton [00:05:04]:
Yeah. Basically, it's like it in some guys it has been done before and it worked and nothing went wrong kind of thing.

Richard Hill [00:05:13]:
So obviously, quite on the wire, some of the things maybe, you know, depending on your perspective, you know, how do you deal with, maybe some of the negative side of social media that comes through? Because I think that's what worries a lot. Obviously, different brands, different brands, sort of, ethics, different brand guidelines, you know, obviously complete. You're probably at the far end compared with maybe a

Richard Hill [00:05:34]:
lot of people sat in

Richard Hill [00:05:35]:
the room. Maybe not so with a few as well, but they're dealing with those, negative social media. You know, obviously, you've got millions of views. But obviously, amongst those comments, there's obviously a lot of mixed opinion probably on certain campaigns. How do you do it?

John Thornton [00:05:53]:
Oh, yeah. Some people fucking hate them. Like, Innocence movies, some people find super annoying. Surreal, some people find super annoying. Some campaigns people don't like. I think for starters, it's, figuring out who doesn't like it and why they don't like it. And if you actually care that they don't like it. Yeah.

John Thornton [00:06:11]:
I see some people, well, sometimes senior people in a business you're in will see, like, one negative comment and be like, oh, God. I like, especially like, the classic is always people like, in COVID, when it was like Christmas, we did this sort of parody, this is an innocent, this parodied children's book about keeping Santa safe. But it was just for social. It was very, like, not adult themed, like, genitals, but adult themed. Like, we're talking about the furlough scheme and all of this stuff. So it was directed at adults, but dressed up as kids. And I did absolutely fine for, like, 3 days. Didn't do massive numbers, but did completely reasonably.

John Thornton [00:06:50]:
Our audience liked it. And then on, like, day 3, it landed in some weird far right circle of Twitter, and all these COVID deniers came out and said we were pushing government propaganda and, like, more bizarre stuff than that. It got real extreme, like, full on. And they were just like, these people, nutcases, don't care we've pissed them off. Actually a good thing. I think I try and decide where basically whether I will win in the sort of court of public opinion. And so there we were like, let's just double down. So we wrote like a piss take apology, being all so sorry that we've upset you with these rhyming couplets and things like that.

John Thornton [00:07:32]:
We put like, we're going to boycott ourselves, and then we just started retweeting all the like on the hindered abuse we were getting, just like, I think what the kids called clapping back, which when you're often with the negative stuff, you just kind of have to suck it up. But every now and then you get a chance to put them down. It's worth taking just for your own mental state of being. And Svennad did like 6 times better than it had been doing, 6 times better than the Christmas campaign we've done the year before. Even then, though, we like because then you get all these comments like, oh, I'm never gonna buy your products again. But they literally say product. They never are like, oh, I buy this smoothie, and I'm not going to buy anymore. They don't buy them to begin with.

John Thornton [00:08:12]:
There was one guy who was like, oh, I'm in the supermarket right now, and I've hidden £200 worth of your stock. And we treated that like, imagine seeing this bloke walking around the supermarket weighed down with juice. It's not happening. But some of us seeing people see that and they're like, oh, maybe we shouldn't have done this. You have to be like, no, no. They're like, they don't have profile pictures. They don't have every names. You can scroll through and see what happens.

John Thornton [00:08:36]:
Yeah. So that's when it's like illegitimate negative pushback. When it's more legitimate, it's kind of case by case. Sometimes you can be like, oh, okay, we've missed a mark here. Let's delete that really quickly. I think it's better to, if you're quickly seeing that, it's not worth being like, oh, maybe in an hour, those people will find it happy because actually the people seeing it first are probably your, mainly your fountains.

Richard Hill [00:09:01]:
Yeah.

John Thornton [00:09:01]:
People who like you most. So if they're not liking it, I'd get it down sooner rather than later.

John Thornton [00:09:06]:
So if

Richard Hill [00:09:06]:
I look at the profile that's saying what they're saying?

John Thornton [00:09:09]:
Yeah. They they actually seem like genuine Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:09:12]:
That resonates with some a couple of people in the room, mostly, that I know that have had some interest in comments in certain industries.

John Thornton [00:09:18]:
Yeah. I think almost the worst case is where a post is doing really well, but some people don't like it. And then you're like,

Richard Hill [00:09:26]:
oh Can I can I go for it? You're you're always doing numbers. Outsid, ready to go.

John Thornton [00:09:30]:
But they sort of maybe have a point as well. That's, yeah, I don't like

Richard Hill [00:09:34]:
that one.

Richard Hill [00:09:35]:
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Richard Hill [00:10:16]:
So I think change the direction for a bit. I think, collaborations. You know, obviously, you you mentioned a quite a few there. But I think in terms of, like, the the the stores in the room, you know, sort of step us through sort of how you approach collaborations, you know, the sort of getting the right collaboration, then the initial discussion to the commercial side, maybe if you can, or, you know, how then do you sort of do a deal to then work and actually agree that collaboration with a brand that align with another brand and the benefits it's had for your business?

John Thornton [00:10:49]:
Yeah. So a lot of the collabs I showed were like purely social.

Richard Hill [00:10:54]:
Yeah.

John Thornton [00:10:55]:
Just about awareness. So they're relatively straightforward, basically how we approach them. I know if you reach out to a brand and you're like, can we talk about doing a collab? Unless you're massive, they're gonna be like, nah. Whereas if you reach out and you say we've had an idea, then they'll be more likely to get on a call. And then if you show them an idea, like, if you've already had it, you show them it. Yeah. That gives them something quite easy to yes or no. And especially if it's just so short and they're like, it doesn't like, it doesn't then take much effort from you.

John Thornton [00:11:32]:
Just made content for them for a day. As long as they like it, they'll be quite happy. And that's how we found quite a lot of them. And then once you've done one, you then put it in a deck for the next one. You're like, we did something similar. These were results that worked really well, but helped to persuade them. And so then it's kind of you sort of build momentum a bit that way. So, yeah, we've had to kind of idea first, then the conversation second.

John Thornton [00:11:57]:
The more and like I said, they don't have to sort of make fully strategic sense as long as it's going to like, just perform. The more commercial ones, we did a flavor collab with Candy Kittens. Yeah. And the flavor collab with Gymshark. Those ones are a bit more sort of logical and commercial, and I don't fully understand the sort of back end side of that. But it's still, when we were talking to him, we made sure to have, like, lots of ideas to show the wider campaign again. So it's almost so they can picture as much of it as possible, because these things do take a lot of time and effort. And so you want to sort of you don't want them to be think anyone to be thinking about that.

John Thornton [00:12:37]:
You want them to be thinking like, oh, yeah, this does make sense for us. We can see what we get out of it. Yeah. It won't be that much more time and effort. Is it

Richard Hill [00:12:44]:
quite a long process with the bigger brands like that?

John Thornton [00:12:48]:
I think it's sort of like how long does it be for streaming? Like, the Gymshot one, we'd actually already kind of got a flavor that was ready to go, whilst we were having almost a separate conversation with him, and he just sort of came up. And so then it was basically when he'd turn around if we turn around packaging and a campaign in 3 weeks, then everything else falls into place. So that, yeah, basically took 3 weeks, but only because the flavor was Yeah. Sort of already there.

Richard Hill [00:13:15]:
Okay. So we, as a family, nibbed to Sainsbury's the other day, then picked up, these 3 packs.

John Thornton [00:13:23]:
Thank you very much.

Richard Hill [00:13:24]:
And there was a comment about the price Mhmm. You know, and the premium price. And I but I think that's a really good thing to chat about because I think pricing in e commerce, you know, is a huge element that I think a lot of stores miss. You know, they're all price we don't go to the bottom of the price, possibly in the price war, and then it leads to all sorts of problems. But obviously, as a premium brand, it's aiming for a more of a higher price point. Now how how important is the branding, the copy, the messaging been to be able to achieve those price points?

John Thornton [00:13:54]:
Yeah. So pricing, maybe not my strong area.

Richard Hill [00:13:57]:
Yeah.

John Thornton [00:13:57]:
But I can parrot what my boss tells me. I guess, yeah, around the copy and the brand points of view, like, it has to, if you're charging a premium, you need to look and feel premium. Yeah. You know, you're sort of, yeah, when you see those, if you're shopping on Vinted and the jeans are sort of, they're fine, but they're covered in stains, I want it to be 2 quid, basically. I'm not paying 50 quid if I feel like that. But, yeah, I guess kind of how we try and position the price, we are a bit more expensive than like cornflakes. But if you, we also have like completely different nutritionals to cornflakes. Really, you're not buying us as an alternative to cornflakes.

John Thornton [00:14:40]:
Yeah. We're, because we're like high protein, low sugar. Giving you a full spiel here. It's right here, isn't it? Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:14:46]:
It's in protein, heaps and carbs.

John Thornton [00:14:49]:
13 grams of protein. That's more than percent corn rich. But yeah, so you basically, if you if you compare it to a bowl of cornflakes purely on price, they're cheaper. But if you compare it, the servings in that, to a protein bar, we work out considerably cheaper than like 6 protein bars.

Richard Hill [00:15:07]:
That's very much your messaging, branding. Yes. You know, you're not selling a cereal. You're selling potentially part of it is you're selling an alternative.

John Thornton [00:15:15]:
Yeah. Well, it is a protein product, which is in the shape and form of cereal, basically.

Richard Hill [00:15:20]:
Yeah.

John Thornton [00:15:21]:
It's sort of a bit to try and get across.

Richard Hill [00:15:23]:
Okay.

John Thornton [00:15:24]:
Probably not explained that very well.

Richard Hill [00:15:25]:
No. That's fine.

John Thornton [00:15:26]:
My boss will do

Richard Hill [00:15:26]:
a good job. We're gonna come to the audience in about 7 or 8 minutes. So a couple of questions. We'll have time before the end. So any any questions, guys? So I think, obviously, you've stepped through a lot of campaigns. You know, there's some very, how would I say it? You know, crazy, outlandish, brilliant, brilliant ideas. But I think a lot of it does come down to, you know, cracking copy, copywriting and ideas. You know, what, Where do you get your ideas from? Where do you sort of, you know, sort of know in the probably 50 or so stores that are sitting in the room, you know, and they're sort of trying to come up with ideas for campaigns, social, you know, obviously all the different platforms we'll touch on at the moment.

Richard Hill [00:16:06]:
But, you know, where do you get your ideas? And how important has copy been? And any tips for the guys around the copy side?

John Thornton [00:16:14]:
Yeah, I sort of, I think the, almost the idea is more important than the copy. Yeah. Often, sometimes the ideas are like copy led. But something like, I don't have a baby in fame, but copy is like less important there. So it's, I think the first thing, firstly, we try and just both innocent and surreal, just do a lot, take a lot of shots because a lot of them are gonna miss. Yeah. And so you just up to your chance of something hitting if you're taking more shots. As long as you're not, I suppose, taking shots too quickly that you're not putting anything to the shot.

John Thornton [00:16:49]:
But, yeah, I guess the each process is slightly different, but the ideal process is almost that baked bean smoothie where we were literally like, okay. Here are all the potential things we could talk about for this new smoothie is oats, cinnamon, fiber, vitamins, breakfast, as being positioned as a breakfast movie. And, like, oh, cinnamon fiber vitamins are not interesting. And you try and sort of peel off them and you like, what relates to fiber, what relates to vitamins, you still don't get anything interesting. Whereas breakfast, you quite quickly get to baked beans. As that's almost like the dream process where you just sort of spider diagram off until you find something you can link back. I think a lot of the ideas almost, are just finding a link you weren't expecting. So like all our collabs, it's almost like, here's the link between deodorant and cereal that you'd never realized.

Richard Hill [00:17:47]:
So you see it now with an notepad link?

John Thornton [00:17:50]:
Almost, yeah. Like the deodorant one.

Richard Hill [00:17:52]:
Yeah. That's a good one.

John Thornton [00:17:54]:
The deodorant one, my colleague Ruth had actually reached out to them and said, can we do a collab? We've got an idea. They said, yeah. We're sure. We'd love to hear it. And then she's like, okay. Cool. They're up for a chat. Now we need the idea, before the meeting.

John Thornton [00:18:07]:
So that was literally, like, everything we can try to connect between the 2. And then you have a copy. I think the sort of my process, if something's not coming to mind easily, I'm normally, like, overthinking. And so it's just like, what is the simplest way to say this? And then normally that will be the best way, or you can just add a little joke on at the end. So it would just be like the most straightforward way, then a touch of personality. They can kind of almost be separate.

Richard Hill [00:18:41]:
I find it sort of the most amazing skill, copywriting, and and sort of ideas, turning ideas into copy. Some of the guys that we work with and a couple of the guys in our team, I just find it such a skill that I think most ecom stores sort of leave. You know? And it's just quite mundane copy quite often, and just the effort put into the the brand and the copy, I think, is, you know, something that is just missed so many times. Now I'm really intrigued. Going back to Barry Scott, how did you get Barry? How did you get him to, agree to do that?

John Thornton [00:19:14]:
Yeah. So that one, I can't even remember where the idea came from. I think it was partly so, in a sense, we'd made some adverts with Duncan from Blue, which has done really well for us. And there's certain, like, celebrities and people who are in this sweet spot where loads of people know them, but they may be later on in their careers. And so basically, their fears may have come down versus the height of their career, but their actual, like, how recognizable they are still exist. So trying to find those people, like an Innocent who sponsored, like a league 2 football club. Yeah. Called Forrest Green because they're the world's 1st vegan football club.

John Thornton [00:19:53]:
So they got, like, they're basically a challenger brand, but in football. Yeah. As they have that, like, oversized reach for their sort of price. So you can sponsor football. You You can get on FIFA, things like that. I mean, we weren't on FIFA. We were on my shirt, which is what I wanted, but whatever. You can kind of get out.

John Thornton [00:20:11]:
So then we were, yeah, we were kind of trying to think of, I guess, trying to try when you're trying to that advert where we're trying to land a lot of messages, but in an entertaining way, it sort of landed on the easiest way to do that is just a parody of our adverts. You're used you're used to then being hit by messages, but you're just like you basically dot in between a joke, a message, a joke, a message to keep them sort of watching. And then it was like, okay, we're sort of parried in that kind of style. Is there anyone famous for that style? It's like, oh, there's Barry Scott adverts. So we looked him up. He's an actor called Neil Burgess, and then we were like, is he gonna be up first? Is he not? Looked on sort of his social, and he was doing sort of his own little Barry Paradis. So, okay, maybe he will be. And we worked with a video production agency called Noosa, who were great, and they, like, they reached out, handled the conversations.

John Thornton [00:21:07]:
Basically, Neil just sort of quite liked the script and was up for it. He said he'd been reached out to about others, stuff, kind of along those lines, but maybe didn't like the project so much, but that one he was up for, and then, like, on the day, he was like

Richard Hill [00:21:20]:
So that goes back to you preparing the idea. Yeah. And when you start an initial conversation, you've got a pitch rather than just an email flat no probably or not much to go at. You've got a full Yeah.

John Thornton [00:21:32]:
They almost know exactly what they are getting themselves into or turn it down. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:21:37]:
Well, thanks, John. We're gonna do a few questions from the crowd. So anybody got a couple of we got a question right here. I think it's Emma at the front there, near the front.

Emma from Stokes [00:21:51]:
Hello. Emma from Stopes Tea and Coffee. Thank you for this amazing day and for bringing such caliber as John into the room. Really grateful.

John Thornton [00:21:58]:
Thank

Emma from Stokes [00:21:58]:
you. My question is to John around the the whole concept of, like, the personality and putting that out there that's so exciting and powerful. But how do you manage that on the other side of it? So are you literally, like, monitoring your feed and speaking back to it hour by hour? And how do you split your personality, like, into the marketing team to make sure they are reflective if they're the people that are responding on your behalf?

John Thornton [00:22:25]:
Yeah. So, especially at Innocent, that'd be, me sort of monitoring some, and then our customer service team. We had 3 customer service people, and they would sort of one of them would be on social sort of at all times. It'd be like 2 ish people's full time job, me and someone else. And in terms of that personality, we would we're pretty like, Innocent, the tone of voice guide is, like, 40 pages long, so it's super detailed. I get sent online freelance projects I've done. Sometimes you get sent the the guide, and the tone of voice is half a page in the wider brand guidelines, and it's almost just a list of we say this word, not that word, which doesn't cover, like personality is more like the words are less important. It's more like the idea behind it.

John Thornton [00:23:13]:
But so, yeah, that was a really detailed guide to begin with, how you how you talk, how we do. And then we used to have meetings once a month with all the people who would write words in the business where we pick out a random selection of stuff we'd posted that month, and we just kind of go through and be like, was this on brand? Was it not? Could it be better? What could we done differently? Which is super useful for everyone, as that helped us all sort of sound very similar. And then at Surreal, similarly, we sort of I kind of focus on one channel. Someone else focuses on another channel. Someone focuses on customer service. I think on customer service, we're a bit strata, and people are upset. You don't want to be trying your little jokes so much. But you do still want it to feel personalized.

John Thornton [00:24:05]:
On that one, just a quick thing we noticed from those meetings, Innocent, was if you, in Labo's emails, if your first line to them feels very personal, like directly responds to what they said, and your last line does, in the middle, you can put that sort of generic template answer, and the whole email still feels very personal. So that was a great learning. But, yeah, we sort of, I don't know. There's just a lot of examples floating around. I think if you see each of you see sort of what it's meant to sound like, you sort of absorb it. And I probably should. We probably should have a software like an in a similar review and point at people. But I think we're got quite a lot of other stuff to do.

John Thornton [00:24:51]:
So it's maybe not that full consistency isn't as much as a priority or, like, our emails are quite salesy there. I sort of give them a once over to sort of take off for absolutely, like, bits of furbish from a brand, but sort of in a business, I'd say I'd have to pick your battles a bit more. So I sort of there's so much stuff which if I was innocent, where I was, like, much more focused, I'd be, like, say no to it and polishing it. But here, it's sort of like, the big stuff can get the polish, some of the smaller stuff. The hell happens. So it depends a bit? Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:25:30]:
Yeah. Is that answer okay, Emma?

Emma from Stokes [00:25:32]:
That's brilliant. Thank you.

Richard Hill [00:25:33]:
I know it. Fantastic. Joe at the front.

Joe Glover [00:25:38]:
Hey, mate. Hello? This might be, representative of my own usage usage habits rather than, like, your strategy.

John Thornton [00:25:45]:
Mhmm.

Joe Glover [00:25:46]:
But I've noticed that, you seem to do a lot of stuff on LinkedIn in Mhmm. Maybe even LinkedIn first. And that doesn't seem like a natural sort of bedfellow for, like, selling a a brand and selling a product and stuff like that. So I'm curious if that's true, and if so, how you ended up in that place. And just sort of speak about LinkedIn generally as a as a tactic for social media because that feels really interesting.

John Thornton [00:26:09]:
Yeah. Sure. So, basically, when when I was at Innocent, we would have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram as our main channels, and the HR team ran the LinkedIn. But because of whatever time it was, 2018, 2019, over years, it sort of they'd got a 100,000 followers, but the content was garbage. It was my boss who was like, we're a social media team. We should be running that. And we literally at first, we would just take a Facebook post, wouldn't change it at all. If it had a 1,000 likes on Facebook, it would get 4,000 likes on LinkedIn, I think, just because it stood out and was a bit different.

John Thornton [00:26:45]:
And then if we found if we tweaked it and tailored it to be a bit more business y, then it would do even better. Then we had all these arguments with the HR team and the senior team that we were being too silly on LinkedIn. And I actually got banned from a company LinkedIn account, which is a great day. But so I sort of took that knowledge then when I was starting at Surreal. And it's sort of then when I joined Surreal in 2022 ish, I think, by that point, starting on Facebook and starting on Twitter was super difficult, especially not putting money behind this. Like, a real grind to grow followers. I think on those platforms, people have kind of shifted away from following brands so much. There's some like legacy brands which still get it, but as a new one, it's a lot harder.

John Thornton [00:27:33]:
So then we just kind of carried on. And sort of from my point of view, I mean, it's got, like, the same number of users as Instagram, so there's a lot of people on it. From my point of view of just running it, the sort of content you can run, I can treat it like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, because it's caption photo, which is sort of my strength. I'm can't really do the sort of vertical video TikTok Reel stuff. But, yes, I could kind of use a similar ish content, and it would work there, and that stuff wouldn't work on Facebook, Twitter anymore. And also when you're starting out, the algorithm is quite friendly. Like, how it works is, I'm not an expert on this, but basically, if you're, so for the 1st 6 months, we would post off of our personal pages and just type surreal and send people to it kind of thing. And basically, if your if your friend likes the post, their followers will see it.

John Thornton [00:28:30]:
And so then if one of their followers sees it, likes it, and their followers will see it. So it spreads very naturally. It's quite easy, even with a small following, to sort of your friends are probably going to like it to like then get a bit of spread as well. If it's actually got like wide appeal, it'll go far without you having that big following. So that was sort of, that was why it started working and because it worked, we carried it on. I think it also helps

Joe Glover [00:28:56]:
that on

John Thornton [00:28:57]:
a lot of the older channels, most brands are now trying to do the funny, silly stuff. Like, you look at when Instagram launched threads, every brand always on there messing about from day 1, which is kind of great to see on the one hand, but it means you're if someone sees a 100 posts, if yours is a 100th, they've seen 99 silly posts. Whereas on LinkedIn, there's, like, there's some more serious stuff, so it's just easier to stand out, really.

Richard Hill [00:29:20]:
Brilliant. It It's a tricky one, isn't it, LinkedIn? I think, for brands. But we'll maybe talk about that a bit more. A last question. I can see Andy. I think Simon?

John Thornton [00:29:30]:
Hi. Yeah. Simon, as I said. I run a consultancy. I work with agencies and and small businesses. And something that you've mentioned in your in your reel and here is the brand partnerships piece. And I think for small retailers and econ stores, it's really hard to get to your audiences. And I've always said brand partnerships, if done well, they can be really effective to tap into an audience, you know, be where they are kind of thing.

John Thornton [00:29:53]:
So what would be your advice to small businesses to get these brand partnerships off the ground? Because obviously it's one thing to actually have a conversation with a with a business. Right? You want to make sure they're culturally aligned, like, I know, like Rory at Jimbox loves that, like messing about itself, doesn't it as well? Right? But if you've got a certain tone of voice that's quite a bit provocative and a bit different, that's another layer as well. So, like, how do you decide who you want to partner with? Do you have, like, a sort of a scorecard? Like, what's your approach? That would be really interesting to hear.

John Thornton [00:30:21]:
Yeah, I think there's, there's not a written scorecard, but it's totally like a mental one we have. We basically, often the idea, it won't be for like this. Sometimes the idea will be, okay, this brand, what could we do with them? Sometimes it'll be almost like this kind of idea needs this product, this category, who in that category might say yes to it, and so then we'll look at whose vibe is closest to our vibe, who is, like, happy, being a bit more out there. And then, like, because they then it's, like, less of a sort of shock to their system. So normally, we'll go after, like, the challenger brands in a space rather than, there was one we did with an Internet company recently called Cuckoo, basically, because we're never gonna get through 20 players of sign off at Virgin Media or BT or something like that. Also, just to your point on, Colas, what I should have mentioned earlier, they the piece they do like, the awareness stuff does great, but also the sort of the bit you can't measure, but which we found amazing is, like, the credibility you get. Sort of, people see, oh, if that brand has worked with them, they must be okay. And then it makes it easy for the next brand.

John Thornton [00:31:37]:
But also things like retailers, buyers for we're now in Sainsbury's, like you mentioned, in fact, a lot of that, what really helped was the collab we did with Candy Kittens, who were already in retailers, and the Sainsbury's buyer reached out to us after that, and you basically never get inbounds from retailers. So that kind of credibility piece is worth its weight in gold.

John Thornton [00:31:59]:
It's like social proofing, isn't it? You know, go with them, then it's valuable.

Richard Hill [00:32:03]:
Thanks, Simas. I think going back to the, the room, you know, in terms of collaborations, partnerships, there's a lot of brands in the room. And I know our team will do our best to connect you, but make sure you have some great conversations at lunchtime. Right. We're gonna bring this to a close, but I'm gonna finish with a quick fire quick fire round.

John Thornton [00:32:20]:
Nice.

Richard Hill [00:32:21]:
So we'll kick off with if your brand had a theme song, what would it be?

John Thornton [00:32:28]:
Probably like, sugar sugar. Do do do do do. But we put, like, no no at the start. So we're like, no sugar sugar.

Richard Hill [00:32:35]:
Love it. Love it. Love it. What's been the most outrageous marketing piece you've ever done?

John Thornton [00:32:41]:
Ever done. Yeah. Maybe the top plus stuff. Yeah. One we never went through with, at Innocent. We used to you know the little hats they put on my smoothies? Sometimes men would tweet us pictures of them wearing their little hats, not on their heads. Ouch. And so we did we did, me and my boss sort of started coming up with a campaign around that, and then we decided maybe we shouldn't sort of bring penises into our

Richard Hill [00:33:10]:
Bit of a line there. Yeah. So TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, which one can't you live without?

John Thornton [00:33:17]:
I would happily get rid of all of them. Made my life a lot easier. My favorite would be, like, Twitter about 10 years ago. That was that was good. Then Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:33:28]:
Not bad.

John Thornton [00:33:28]:
Yeah. Not not so much. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:33:31]:
What's one productivity hack you would share with the audience about organizing your day and your work?

John Thornton [00:33:38]:
I am atrocious for that. I, innocent, I never once successfully wrote, like, a monthly content calendar. 95% of our content was written on the train on the way in. So not not my special suit, but Okay.

Richard Hill [00:33:52]:
We'll move on. One more collaboration.

John Thornton [00:33:56]:
What what

Richard Hill [00:33:56]:
could it what would it be if you could collaborate with any brand in the world? What would it be?

John Thornton [00:34:00]:
Oh, sex toy company.

Richard Hill [00:34:07]:
The what? Sorry.

John Thornton [00:34:08]:
A sex toy company.

Richard Hill [00:34:09]:
Okay.

John Thornton [00:34:09]:
Just free toys and my cereal.

Richard Hill [00:34:11]:
Love it. Perfect. Yeah. Little action man in there. Yeah. What's the weirdest thing you've ever used to promote your business so far? Obviously, you mentioned baked beans. Yeah.

John Thornton [00:34:24]:
My bottle nipples. Or, we did a thing on London Bridge once, where we someone stood at one end of London Bridge. Basically, in the morning, everyone arrives at London Bridge Station and walks north over a bridge, so it's probably one of the few places where you can guarantee foot traffic only going in one direction, more or less. So we stood at the start of a bridge with a sign saying, 3 spoons. Just handed out 3 spoons. And then I was stood at the most obviously, most people walked straight past that. I don't know. That's just fucking weird.

John Thornton [00:34:56]:
Some people, like, take it out of curiosity. And I stood at the other end of the bridge with a sign saying, like, free cereal if you took a spoon or something. And we gave him a box of cereal. So he had this, like, because Lundbridge is quite long, so he had this, like, setup where they don't realize there's a setup, and then 3 minutes later, there's a payout. So that was quite fun. A spoon? Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:35:15]:
That's your takeaway. Should've took a spoon.

John Thornton [00:35:17]:
Well, John, it's been an

Richard Hill [00:35:18]:
absolute pleasure. Is there anything you could share as a final couple of questions come in that you could share, that's come in for surreal on the sort of road map that you know about that maybe you could let us give us an insight into?

John Thornton [00:35:32]:
Launch with a new retailer very soon. It's the posh one. What does that begin with again? W. W. Ends in Atros. Probably allowed to say that. It's probably fine. A Christmas ad where we've not decided whether we'll run yet or not.

John Thornton [00:35:49]:
Oh. We didn't run it last year. You're on the wild line? Yeah. Then I don't know. That's just Probably should probably plan some more stuff.

Richard Hill [00:35:59]:
Well, John, it's been an absolute pleasure. I like to finish every episode with a book recommendation. Do you have a book to recommend to our audience and listeners?

John Thornton [00:36:08]:
I don't really read. I just got on Twitter. I have struggled through I mean, it's a good book. I'm just not not got the attention span, but, it's called Born to Run. It's all about barefoot running, which I didn't think I'd be into, but maybe maybe I'll go. You've not actually got your shoes

Richard Hill [00:36:25]:
off yet? You're thinking about them?

John Thornton [00:36:27]:
Not yet. I will probably stick, but, you know, go full East London and go barefoot. Yeah.

Richard Hill [00:36:31]:
Well, good luck with that.

John Thornton [00:36:32]:
Oh, thank you.

Richard Hill [00:36:33]:
Well, thanks for coming on the show.

John Thornton [00:36:34]:
Random Exelters. John, everybody. Thanks, everyone.

Richard Hill [00:36:49]:
Wow. 200 episodes. It's hard to believe we've come this far. When I first started this podcast, I had no idea how much I would learn, how many incredible conversations I would have, and how much inspiration I would take from so many guests. To the guests who've shared their wisdom, their stories, thank you. Each of you have left a lasting mark on this journey. I am so grateful for the opportunity to learn from you. The podcast has been a platform for growth, not only for myself, but for every listener tuning in.

Richard Hill [00:37:22]:
It's given me the chance to dive deep into the topics that truly matter, to challenge my own thinking, and to keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible. I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity to do this. This milestone isn't just about hitting a number. It's about the community that we've built, the knowledge we've shared, and the inspiration we've all gained. As we celebrate this 200th episode, I just wanted to say thank you to the guests, to the listeners, and everyone who's been part of this incredible journey. Thank you for believing in this vision, for sharing in the experience, and for helping us all grow along the way.

Richard Hill [00:38:11]:
If you enjoyed this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you

Richard Hill [00:38:14]:
are listening to this podcast. You're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Have a fantastic day, and I'll see you on the next one.