Featuring P. K. Woode
An ad campaign is a set of advertisements that revolve around a single message and are intended to achieve a particular goal. But do you get the right result when you set out to create your first Ad Campaign? In this episode, P. K. Woode talks about what to do and not to do when you decide to set up an Ad Campaign for your business. Over 30 minutes long conversation (the longest so far), P. K. analyses the Ads and talks about myths in creating Ads on Social Media, most especially on Facebook.
[0:09] Hi, my name is Enoch, and thank you for tuning in to yet another episode of the Colours of Social Media podcast. This episode and all other episodes is about digital marketing, and episodes are released weekly, and it's always hosted by me.
[0:24] A few things I've covered include content generation for social media pages, social media image sizes, and secrets of email marketing, and I always try to choose relatable topics that will help you as an entrepreneur, or as a small business owner.
[0:40] You can listen to me on Anko, a port podcast, or however you get your podcasts. In today's episode, I'll be talking to P. K. Woode, and by the time this episode ends, I'm sure you'll learn a thing or two.
[0:55] I'm saying this because P. K. is a creative consultant and a business strategist with vast experience in digital, experiential, and media. And just like you and me, he is an entrepreneur making things at the House of Wood.
[1:10] At the House of Wood, Mr. Wood will design and build things for you, out of wood, metal, concrete, and more. But mostly, they build things out of wood.
[1:21] Not only did I invite P. K. on this podcast because of his years of experience, but it is also because of the way he creates art campaigns. And that's why our conversation will be about art campaigns.
[1:35] Here is P. K. on how to create a winning art campaign. So, P. K., once again, thank you for joining me on this episode of Colours of Social Media.
[1:51] As you know, Colours of Social Media podcast is about digital marketing. And once in a while, I invite my friends over, and we talk about digital marketing.
[2:01] So, we started this conversation on Twitter, and we're talking about a whole lot of stuff. But then, the one that became prominent was about how individual digital marketers and agencies alike run their campaigns in Ghana.
[2:21] Thank you for having me. So, I believe the conversation was about attribution and endpoints, and about the fact that a lot of times, when we are running a campaign, the major problem that we run into is that we think of our campaigns in the wrong sense.
[2:40] So, like, for instance, if I'm running a campaign where IDE, my thought process should be about sales, we are going to go like what most people do.
[2:51] Is that rather than thinking about the sales and optimizing everything they do for the sales, they go out and start buying for awareness as a first thing.
[3:00] Yeah. Correct me if I'm wrong. That's what our conversation was about. That's perfect. That's perfect. But it's certainly done. It's certainly done.
[3:07] And the mention of attribution is making me switch my question because I wanted to ask you attributions later in the conversation. But since you've brought it up, let's just start with this.
[3:21] I want you to tell me your understanding of attribution when it comes to digital marketing. So, this is a generational problem. So, attribution is really more of accountability.
[3:32] Because if you think about it, and me, I'm a big fan, personally, of first principles. So, if you think about it, then this is going to go back a bit in the history of advertising.
[3:42] Right. Let's take it a step. Advertising, yes. So, let's start from before computers. The first kinds of advertising were really kind of like sneak oil salesmen, literally.
[3:53] It was very difficult to prove advertising was actually working. Then I'm going to probably fudge up the dates a bit, just for the sake of telling the story.
[4:02] But when we had the Mad Men era, and then people like Adobe and Go trying to standardize their thinking and process, and prove that, yes, indeed, marketing did contribute.
[4:14] So, for instance, there's a scene in Mad Men that really stands out way. The titular character, I forget his name right now, Don Draper. So, Don Draper goes to this woman's store, I think she's a heiress of a big chain.
[4:30] And then they were thinking about doing a big fancy campaign and stuff. And then he walks in and he's like, all you really need to do is increase the discount you're giving on a particular day and make it into a particular sales drive or something like that.
[4:43] I forgot exactly where it was. But here they were, everybody else was thinking about this big fancy campaign, right? Because, of course, you need to say that you the ad agency.
[4:53] Yeah. Where the reason why they changed. Yeah. And this, the reason why you can step back is fundamentally, a lot of digital agencies, if you look at the progression of agencies, first there was people coming up with creative process and images and stuff.
[5:10] Yes. Then planners came into play. But planners were basically like helping the accountant side of the company be justified in their expenditure.
[5:20] Which is where the teams above the line and below the line from the actual accounting teams. So it's been the case continuously is above the line.
[5:29] So for the longest time when digital marketing came into the scene, it wasn't considered above the line. In fact, in Ghana is so considered below the line because you didn't really see how important it is.
[5:41] Exactly. And you have to prove because fundamentally for a company, it's I'm spending X amount of money. So I can get X amount of returns, whether it is a brand measure that they have.
[5:54] Say brand lift or more people loving the brand, whether it is more sales, whether they had a perception problem. Yeah. I mean, the situation where one company can have like five different agencies, a PR fame and a consultant fame.
[6:09] And then they have a sales company also on the account. So the question is who is driving the business? And that's what attribution is. It's like who's accountable for the shifts or what things combine.
[6:22] If you think about it in that sense, then the standard attribution measures that a lot of people think of on digital don't really work. You can't say I run a digital campaign.
[6:32] It's weird. And that's why the sales went up. What else was happening? Yeah. Are you sure it was your campaign or maybe you were just lucky? Exactly.
[6:42] And of course, you know, it's like when TV came out and this is really funny. People think that this whole confusion about digital advertising is new.
[6:51] But according to the old hats, when TV came on the scene, there was the same amount of confusion. How do we treat TV? How do we deal with it?
[7:00] Is it worth it? I mean, sure. A lot of people are watching it. But these ads are running at actually waking. Can you prove it was the ad? Can't you just get someone to mention our product on TV like they do on radio?
[7:12] Fine. You know, all of those. How long is too long for a commercial? Yeah. All sorts of fancy things. And people advertising things in the wrong time slot.
[7:21] All of that stuff is the same issues we had in digital marketing. And fundamentally, the question is, how do you prove that the money you spent gave you the results you got because of your digital advertising?
[7:35] Not because something else happened. Like, for instance, imagine if I run a digital campaign for some drink I've imported from a grocery and then it takes out a debut by accident.
[7:49] Somebody on day trash happened to be taking the drink and the camera caught it. And that's the reason why my sales went up. But then because my company was running at the same time, I attribute it to the company.
[8:06] Exactly. That's not exactly it. Okay. Obviously, there's something very interesting that I've seen happen where because people tend not to remember the ads that you've seen because we've been suffocated by ads.
[8:21] A lot of them. A lot of them. But they won't realize that the ad that they actually saw online is the reason why they went and bought the thing.
[8:29] It's really funny. Yeah, it is. Interesting. Interesting. Listening to you, PK, I know you have, like, vast experience when it comes to running an ad campaign.
[8:40] So I just want to ask you, what do you think we are doing wrong? In this case, it's digital marketers or even agencies. What do you think is going on when it comes to attributions?
[8:54] So first things first, we promise things that can be delivered with digital marketing. So I remember we talked right after talking about attribution on Twitter.
[9:05] I brought up this term endpoints. I don't know if that's the appropriate system. But for me, that's fundamentally the best way to look at the campaign.
[9:15] The endpoints. So if you're a marketer, the end goal, the endpoints. So on one hand, an endpoint is, sure, this is the end goal you have for the campaign.
[9:26] But at what point in time did you arrive back at us? Exactly. Do you as an agency or a marketer? So there's a slight variation. So you have an objective.
[9:37] You want to increase sales. That's cool. Then there will be a digital objective, which may be driving leads, driving people to your inbox or something.
[9:45] But that is determined by how much control and integration you have over the entire marketing campaign to put this in context. For one campaign, I may have access to my client's customer data.
[10:01] And then because of all the fancy things as an agency or as a marketer, I'm assuming that you don't work in-house with the clients. So you may or may not have access to the information.
[10:14] So you as an agency have to be realistic. Without this information, based on everything I know about the platforms, this is the endpoints for my campaign.
[10:23] From here on out, this is where the company has to step in. So if I can send people to your inbox, for instance, but if you as the client don't have a sales team or a customer response team, converting those people, you won't get any sales.
[10:40] And that's a frank conversation that a lot of us need to be having with our clients. It's a very difficult conversation to have, but it's a very necessary one.
[10:48] That this is as far as this wonderful technology can be. So if I get you right, you mean as a digital marketer, it's not all the time that you have to, you know, use sales as the ultimate objective.
[11:04] You can decide, you know, you can decide on the objective that you want to go with a particular campaign, right? So kind of, but not entirely.
[11:15] All right. So let me take this again. So essentially what it is is assuming their objective was to increase revenue. Yes, then sales can be one of the objectives, but it's not always that it can sell.
[11:30] So for instance, if my product is not available or junior, as a digital marketer, I can't prove that the products were bought. On junior. Because of the ad.
[11:42] It would be very difficult to be, or any other e-commerce sites where I can actually track the sale. For something like insurance, you still need an agent to do the handle.
[11:53] So it's like I've marketed in a traditional company structure. There's a marketing team and the sales team, the marketing team brings leads and potential customers.
[12:02] But then that's it. That's where their job ends. The sales team has to convert those customers into paying customers. But because of e-commerce, a lot of agencies, and of course, because you want to promise everything.
[12:17] You should do everything. You know, at this company, there is no way, like there's literally no digital way to sell the product. It's like you built a train.
[12:32] The train is going, it's a high-speed freight train. You have your ad. It runs. It might cease it. They engage. It's okay. What can they do to get the desired points of the advertising?
[12:45] If they can't buy from the ad, how are you going to promise sales? That doesn't make sense. If there's no landing before they can click order and buy, they shouldn't even promise sales to begin with.
[12:59] The best you can do is promise, which is a contact to a name of a person for them to convert. True. Interesting. Okay. How many ads have you run?
[13:13] Well, before that, you just run me through your journey. That was a very funny question. To be very honest, I can probably only tell you the number of ads I run this month.
[13:27] Wow. Which is a lot. It's a lot. I think in terms of strategies I've built within the last three months, I would say easily close to 50. Five zero.
[13:44] Five zero. Yes. Wow. And how many of them in your own, you know, the objectives that you set out, how many of them score check the objective that you set out?
[13:55] How many on average? Yeah. That's the same thing. Even though I would consider, well, I've been told not to say I'll consider. I am a very good marketer.
[14:05] That's right. I'm a very good marketer in the broad sense of things. The reality is that not every single campaign of mine has been a success.
[14:14] There are always externalities, right? So like plastic one I give right now is that you have to handle part of the process to your client. I think the client's internal infrastructure is not set up properly.
[14:28] It affects the overall goal. So yes, in terms of the basic data, KPIs over performed because I've optimized my campaigns beautifully. Retargeting was so you got all the right people interested in the product.
[14:41] But at that key point where it was supposed to convey to revenue, there was a gap there. Or maybe there was an issue with the creative, something in the lead.
[14:49] All of those things. But generally, I see I gave myself like an 80 plus percent on most accounts in terms of my reading. That's fine. That's fine.
[15:01] And it is such an impressive score. I must say. So you didn't get 80 percent. That means something went off along the way. So can you tell me the lessons that you learned from these failures so that next time you go in, hopefully you hit 100 percent.
[15:20] All right. So I think one of the first things that I see, it's a lesson that keeps coming back to bite, which is if you focus too much on your competitors, especially in digital marketing, you are probably not going to get the results you expect.
[15:39] Because you can't one, unlike TV and radio, where you can probably see where your competitors' ads are being placed. And with a fair amount of setting to guess the strategy they are doing, and simply just outspend them in most cases, it's much more difficult to do on digital media because it's a closed world guidance.
[16:03] Yes. You can't see where I place my ad, unless I tell you. Exactly. Which makes it 100 percent purely about strategy and getting the best results for your company.
[16:16] So that's one end. So any time a strategy comes in and the briefing is blah, blah, blah, respond to competitor, blah, blah, blah, that already puts the strategy on the shaky ground.
[16:29] And then the second biggest lesson, right, is any company in the front that had too many assets tended not to work well, especially considering that we have downstream budgets.
[16:42] I know it sounds counterintuitive, but when you have too many, it's a problem. When you don't have enough, that's also a problem. Why is it a problem?
[16:53] Because I know assets are assets. We all know assets. The more we get assets, the more especially the creatives, and then they can manipulate that campaign.
[17:04] So why is it that when you get more assets, it becomes a problem? So this is media. This is deep media stuff. So if you have four, think about it, you have four, say, cars in your garage.
[17:21] Let me use that as an example. You have four cars in your garage. It happens to be one of the big men that keeps getting into it. You have four cars in your garage.
[17:29] But you only drive cars, like, twice a week, right? That means everybody in your area has less of a chance to see each of your cars. If you take, like, say, four months before they see each of your cars, either that or fewer people would see each car, thereby creating a specific impression.
[17:53] So let's say you are trying to create the impression that you're a big man, and then you have your old career that you really love. Unfortunately, that's the one that people saw a lot.
[18:03] They didn't see you until you were gone. That also happens. You are really good with analogies, but you continue. However, if the impression you do want to create, because this is a campaign, of course, the impression you want to create is that you have money, you have money, you do hold and cuss at.
[18:25] You drive your G-Wagon and then maybe your Ferrari, and that's all you drive. On each of those two days, that's all you drive. And make sure that the route that you used to take, the G-Wagon.
[18:36] There's a lot of people on it. Exactly. And that is why it is important to build reach. What a lot of people do when you have a lot of assets.
[18:48] We had so many ideas for Eteria Calanda, for instance. Let's put all these 20 posts in one month. Come on. How often are people online? How much of your audience are you even going to get?
[18:59] Your audience is supposed to be 100,000 people. If you have 24 pieces of content, that means it's 100,000 people divided by 24, not exact mass, but basically that's what happens.
[19:11] True, true, yeah. 50,000 people. So it means what? Make a stronger impression with fewer content. However, if you use just the G-Wagon, maybe you make a stronger impression.
[19:24] So you still need the right amount of content. And it's always about finding that balance. I think a very good rule of thumb is, if you take this piece of content out, if you take this asset out, will it affect the story that is being told?
[19:39] If you need another piece of content for an objective, or a spot to see your funnel, then that's fine. Sometimes you have two audiences, you need to split the audience.
[19:50] Keep in mind that the smaller your audience, if you have, say, 18 to 20-year-old men, and then 18 to 20-year-old women, that just shrank your audience down.
[20:02] Maybe, it might be wiser to just push your ads to 18 to 20-year-olds, period. But it's got more child like that in the first place. So that's also a factor.
[20:14] The assumption has always been that, when we say content is king, you're going to produce good content, because there's only one king on the chessboard.
[20:25] But there's more than one king. Wow. You are teaching me chess again. Interesting. Let's go. But then, let's go for a quick cover-shelf break while we come back.
[20:39] We'll talk more about chess, but then we'll start with an article that you wrote on your website. We are coming to the analogy side of you. All right.
[20:54] Okay, welcome back. Today, I have with me PK Wood, and we are talking about art creation. PK. Now, let's go back to your article. In your article, Peacocks versus Eagles, a trackable goes in an era of vanity.
[21:11] You made a valid argument on the essence of setting trackable goals for your campaigns. Pika, would you care repeating yourself here for our listeners out there?
[21:21] Why that article in the first place? Okay, so, this is very funny. I think you have to start with the analogy, the Peacock versus Eagle. I love the way how you compared that to, you know, running an art campaign.
[21:37] Right. So, I think that's the analogy. A lot of people have in their mind that eagles are beautiful to look at. They're actually very boring.
[21:50] Yeah. Out of all of the raptors, they are very boring. Oh, yeah. But I think the bald eagles are the most interesting amongst the eagles to look at.
[22:00] Every other eagle they have. Maybe the golden eagles are cool. But they are usually very straightforward, one color. It's like other than when they are soaring.
[22:12] Right. That's the elegance in them. Exactly. But other than that, they are quite boring to look at. They are not as colorful as the peacock. Peacock will stretch around all majestic, like make a lot of noise.
[22:28] But that's about it. As someone said, peacock is where they created chicken. So it came from this whole buzzword that has been around for the longest time since Silicon Valley 2.0 King, which is vanity metrics.
[22:46] So like peacocks walk around all puffed up and proud. Silicon Valley loves to do the same way. They talk about the amount of funding they've raised.
[22:55] And they go and check the company. And the company, literally every amount of money that they've raised has been spent on marketing or growth or something.
[23:02] So they have negative metrics, negative revenue, negative everything. But they are worth a billion because they've raised enough money to be worth a billion.
[23:13] So it's vanity metrics. It's not really moving the business bottom line. We have a lot of that in digital. And my personal, I have a love-hate relationship with engagement metrics.
[23:24] That's my number one vanity metric, followed by follow accounts. With me, I will put follow accounts on top of engagement. But yeah, I think what you're saying too, yeah, it's valid.
[23:43] For me, the reason why follow accounts follows engagement is people obsess with engagement and they obsess with the wrong engagement metrics.
[23:53] The one engagement metric, which I think should be priority if you are doing a lot of organic marketing, is your share rates. And of course, the quality of your shares.
[24:04] If you have a lot of reviews, then you should look at the quality of your video views. Is it three-second reviews? Are people watching a lot of your videos?
[24:13] Those are some of the things you should care about. Beyond that, likes, comments, it doesn't really add anything. Sometimes people are using on Twitter, especially sometimes people are trying to use your tweets to get more reach for themselves.
[24:28] So it's not necessarily a mention of how to respond to your brand. Interesting, interesting. Shares are powerful because, again, history. Twitter and a lot of the earlier platforms, which placed an emphasis on identity or creating online personas, people were very careful and still are of just randomly sharing stuff from brands.
[24:53] Even the most annoying personas online still make sure they share things that fit within their image. So you see a lot of people liking tweets by not sharing.
[25:05] But they're not retweeting it. True. Exactly. True. So for a brand, a retweet means that the person liked it enough that they were okay with it showing to their audience, which is great because word of mouth is a powerful tool, whether intentional or not.
[25:20] Or secondly, they actually loved what you put out and they wanted other people to know about it, especially on Facebook. Share on Facebook. One very interesting metric on Facebook, I don't know if it's changed, but on average, Ghanaians, I have to cross-check this, but on average, Ghanaians do like two shares a month when you average out Ghanaians on Facebook.
[25:40] So like, ingredient metrics are single digits. None of them rise above five. So likes comment shares on average, on brand pages, it's like less than five for each of those numbers.
[25:51] And shares are almost always the lowest for every demographic, like slice and dice. For one particular demographic, it was one share month on average.
[26:01] It was so funny. Yeah. And follow accounts, you and I know. No. Your follow is not equal to your reach. Right. I think I missed the question.
[26:11] I didn't answer one. Right. Trackable goals. Yes. So for me, what kinds of trackable goals is great. You have a goal, but it's digital. Literally numbers in the first part of the way digits and track it.
[26:27] You can give me a goal. So this is in an agency context. Actually, what's that article? Yeah. You know, I was going to tell the story. I wanted to upgrade it.
[26:38] So there was a post, I think made by one sales tell guru like that, talking about how when he posts, he gets lots of engagement, runs to interact with him and blah, blah, blah, blah.
[26:53] And he tells me argument and it kind of egg me because there were a couple of people who were like binding to plain and sinker. So I did like, I think a five six post thread about it.
[27:03] And I was like, you know, let me turn it into an article and expand on. That's it. The nation. Yes. Because I realized that it was very vulnerable for people.
[27:12] Yeah. Yeah. There were things that I kind of took as like, oh, this should be like the foundation. So it's on like, it's so correct me if I'm wrong.
[27:21] This particular article expressed it in the context of start with what you want your business to achieve. Figure out how you can measure it in the, in terms of numbers.
[27:33] And it may not, this comes back to the question of endpoints. Okay. So I want to increase my revenue. I mean, not necessarily be that I can actually hook my appointments online because I haven't set up Facebook that way.
[27:48] Or maybe because people prefer to pay cash or whatever. Yeah. But what I do realize is that after looking at my whole business, what I do realize is that every time a customer recommends someone, I get more business.
[28:01] Anybody that I recommend it to comes to me, that means my goal now. Is to get more recommended. Exactly. So now I start to track that. I put all my efforts into that.
[28:12] Into that. If you, if you give discount to referrer, the referrer and the referee, you'll have to go in. Exactly. So for every business is slightly different, but it should be trackable.
[28:26] So maybe for one, it's number of referrals. Or if I get each person to be able to refer an average to people, I'm fine. For another, it might be a rate.
[28:37] If my referral rate is like, say 10% my business is fine. That might be low for another business. But you need to understand what works for your business.
[28:48] And it's not always the same. So something like this, in that case, sure you may be running ads, but that's just to let people know. By your main focus, a lot of your efforts...
[28:57] Is to get more referrals. Exactly. And then you track that. It might be a simple Excel sheet. Sometimes it's as simple as, oh hey, and during this period, anybody who buys and refers during say Mother's Day, gets the 10% discount.
[29:16] Discount. Or come with your mum. And you get it. And if you fail, you get an extra discount on your next purchase, or you get a free X or Y, something that may not necessarily hit your small business.
[29:28] Yeah, yeah. Those are the trackables. For some businesses, they are lucky. They know that once they hit X target, because... So for a lot of alcohol brands and fast-moving consumers, because their distribution network is so good, there's a detritus of big companies.
[29:46] Because they have new distribution. So that's, I'm talking the cooks, the financers saying, the EMBAs, the dehydrators, those companies, because they have new distribution and pricing, they just need to make sure that their awareness levels are above a certain percentage of their target audience.
[30:04] And they will deal with it. As long as there's money in the pockets of their person. They will get sealed. It's a basic phenomenon of human beings.
[30:14] We have top-of-mind awareness issues. So like, the last thing or the most, the highest floating thing in our mind, essentially, the thing that we trust the most, that kind of, it's not a street-cut thing, but the thing that we trust the most, that kind of comes to our mind first, is what we go for.
[30:32] There's a reason why Pepsudent includes up, enjoys so much. So, yeah, yeah. With all the McLean's and all that, those are top-of-mind. So literally, without even thinking, that's literally what brings you to the toothpaste app.
[30:46] But I can see CROSAP. Or I can see Pepsudent. Okay, so toothpaste. Then you grab that. It's literally how market sense. I'm sure, like, very deep markets and people might challenge me on some technical.
[30:59] But that's literally what it is to the layman. We have a lot of things, I think, and one other thing, one of the reasons why I wrote the article in simple and religious effect, quite frankly, the average human being has so many things to worry about.
[31:18] You can't really expect them to remember all these technical details. No. It's really simple. You have a goal. What is the best way you can measure that goal?
[31:28] Is it a percentage? Is it a number? Which of those two make sense? And then you track that. Then you can improve on it. That's something else.
[31:38] Exactly. Later we discovered that there's another measure of measurements that it can also track in addition. And you find ways to make that number increase.
[31:45] So you find a number that, when it increases, you make more money. And then you make sure that that number grows up. It's very simple. It's very simple.
[31:57] I think that's the second reason. Back to your earlier question about something that agencies get caught up in. They get caught up in either too much thinking or too little thinking.
[32:06] So the too much thinking is all these fantasy strategies and stuff, and then they miss the very obvious things. I would have shared a story, but unfortunately it's still coming by confidentiality.
[32:18] Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. Well, that happens a lot. We miss the forest for the trees, so the trees for the forest, whichever way you want to look at it.
[32:29] Yeah, yeah. I think, I don't know if you've already answered it, but I want to know, if you've already answered, Jess said it was this, but then I want to know if you see PicoStar as running in Ghana.
[32:43] Do you see any of them running? Have you seen, don't mention any company? I don't know if it's a measurement brand. I can't afford the number of brands I work with or I work with.
[32:54] I can't afford a measurement brand. But there are a lot. There are a lot. But if you have a lot of money to spend, you can kind of get our way with running PicoX style ads.
[33:11] So for instance, if like one of their formation FMCG brands decides to run an ad because they want to grow their finance, they are building in reach.
[33:22] As long as they are getting a lot of attention, they have a lot of money to spend. It still contributes back to their sales. What will happen is they may incorrectly attribute the fund growth to the sales.
[33:37] So from what you are saying, what I can get from this is that if you're a small business, just look at your own in-house, how you got your fair sale and you build on that.
[33:51] Don't just be looking at these big corporations and big businesses because they have a lot of money to spend. So they don't care, right? Exactly.
[34:05] Exactly. So one of the other things I do, and this is funny for me because that's literally the second reason why I wrote that article. Right.
[34:14] So you see a lot of brands. Right. Shout out to Facebook. So Facebook in 2013 started making a pivot from engagement. Some people do not have been old enough to consciously remember this.
[34:30] But at a point in time, Facebook pages were literally fan pages, which was like a ripoff of MySpace's pages. To say it wasn't a ripoff, but it was.
[34:40] And then the whole emphasis also on engagement. Engage with your fans. In that land, people were just posting funny stuff, just to get the comments going.
[34:52] Exactly. And then Facebook kind of thought that they had this is conjecture, but generally you can tell some of these things from the hiring parts on Facebook.
[35:03] Somewhere between 2013 and 2015, I believe Facebook started making the shift towards being a media company. They started to hire lots more media and advertising people.
[35:18] Initially they thought they could disrupt the agency and work without advertising agencies. And then they literally invented a platform that's within an existing industry.
[35:31] You can try reinventing, but if you created something that is like other things, you basically need people who understand the thing. So they hired a lot of agency people and made the full pivot to media, which became more important.
[35:44] All of those metrics, because the platform was growing. It had cost billions. They needed to make it worthwhile for advertisers. So all of a sudden people saw engagement no longer making sense.
[35:57] So now you can't, when you're buying for engagement, it's literally a reach. Anyone on Facebook will see it. Twinkly you see, you can still buy for engagement.
[36:10] But now you can't. And unfortunately that mindset is still stuck in other people's minds. You know that thing where you play catch up to a platform and wait, a lot of the people see still stuck in like the old language and stuff.
[36:26] So like a lot of people still have that engagement mindset. And a lot of the bigger companies still think like that. Facebook has spent a lot of money telling people that, yeah, we were wrong.
[36:38] Of course, without saying, yeah, we were wrong. Yeah, we're wrong. The engagement isn't as important as reach and connecting with the right people, which anybody who was with and sold to media knew all along, connect to the right people, the right.
[36:53] You get your goals. Unfortunately, what a lot of people do, and this is where the story gets interesting. A lot of people do is to put this in context.
[37:03] I want to create an e-commerce store because I've seen that a lot of mummies need mummy products and go ahead. But then I go and look at what Amazon is doing on their store and copy everything.
[37:16] Amazon got there because of their own unique story, their own unique customer, profiles and a whole lot of things. And all that. Exactly. Don't copy everything Amazon does.
[37:28] Copy some things. I mean, steal it right if you can. If it's legal, steal it with pride. If it's not, don't even go near it. But also be aware that you are not Amazon.
[37:40] You are not Coke. You are not that brand. And do things the right way. You don't have to make the same mistakes they made. And that's what a lot of us do.
[37:50] You are not the big commercial brand. Do what works for you. Start with your own customers. Engage with them. I think that's something Steve, the big company spends so much money on research, just so they can get that same connection with their customer base as a small company enjoys.
[38:07] Some of them will literally go like, you know what, you're not going to be developing new products in this category. You're just going to buy somebody who already has their product and grow it with Amazon because it's too much work.
[38:16] Yeah, yeah. So when you have your own business, look at the business. Like you rightly said, how you got your first few sales, your first five, 10 sales, talk to those customers, find out what they loved all the products, keep talking to them, going back to them, understanding, like looking at your numbers.
[38:34] And you have an advantage when you're a small business. You can quickly change your direction. Big companies don't have that advantage. No, no.
[38:42] And for me, small businesses in Ghana is kind of like a little passion I have. Of course, Charlie, we'll be here now and then we've been colonized digitally and we've been relaxed.
[38:52] Okay, thank you, thank you. Listening to your last point, I just got this very important question. I want you to tell us your inspiration, especially when it comes to running us.
[39:07] Where, you know, the point is when it comes to creative, where do you get your ideas from? Is it, you know, the environment? Me, for instance, I usually learn from folks in the States because I try as much as possible not to learn from brands in Ghana, but I don't know about you.
[39:26] Maybe if you learn from the brands in Ghana so that I'll just follow your lead. So tell me your inspirations. So for me, I'm very agnostic, right?
[39:37] And one of the things, so to take it back a bit, I think I should probably answer a question that we kind of glossed over in the beginning. Oh, okay.
[39:46] So my background, my journey kind of starts in design. I mean, I did do a little bit of coding and software development way back before it became a thing.
[39:59] Way back. Yes. Then I entered into creative full head on. So like, so this was in the days of macro media flash when C sharp had just become a thing.
[40:12] It's like very long ago. And then I switched fully into creative. So that's like editing videos, shooting videos, graphic design, that kind of thing.
[40:21] And of course, as an extension of the marketing name, a lot of the design that I was interested in was more to do with like user interfaces, product design, like how people interact with things, spaces and stuff like that.
[40:37] And of course, brand design and marketing. And a key driving force in that had always been the psychology of people. Why do people do things?
[40:47] What makes people tick? So it's like, I was always trying to, in a way, look for the laziest way out. I can't miss my time doing a shiny design only for it not to work.
[40:58] So how quickly can I turn out a design that has exactly what's needed on it to do exactly what's needed. And that's like fancy. Yeah. Yes. I mean, it's the design still did look shiny and all that by saying, do I have the basic names necessary?
[41:16] So I would say design by the numbers, but not really. It still had soul and passion in it. But it's like, if it doesn't have the call to action, if it's a poster and it doesn't have the date in a certain size, that's easy to read from X distance.
[41:28] You know, those basics. It's like, how will people interact with the thing? That's along the journey. I quickly stumbled upon human-centered design.
[41:37] And I was like, oh, so this is the kind of philosophy I've been using all along. It's in the people at the center, right? So that's why I said, I'm kind of agnostic.
[41:47] I'm not necessarily looking at, oh, it's from the west. It's from the east. And one thing I always do again, because human-centered design and first principles, I always quickly check cultural difference, any kind of data information I'm presented with, I have to remove the bias from the data real quick.
[42:07] Who's to benefit from the data? So every single, and yes, I know I'll be crucified from this, but every single report that comes from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or whoever, I always take it with a grain of salt because it's your platform.
[42:22] Of course you give me growing statistics. Yeah, of course. I get a report from the west. I have to take out the cultural implications of the westerners, the political landscape.
[42:34] If I look at the data and see that there were a lot of younger people involved, then I have to balance it in my mind that, okay, maybe the younger people in America behave a different way from the older generation.
[42:45] If it's coming from the east, they may be a little bit more conservative, a little bit closer to what our culture is like, you know? And I think one interesting thing is that there are a lot of cultural similarities between Latin America and certain parts of Southeast Asia and Africa.
[43:03] Yeah. And then the Indies and the Americas. Yes. So a lot of times, so now I'm looking for culturally moving campaigns. That's where you look at.
[43:14] Exactly. Because those are more culturally similar. Even then, with a grain of salt, it's always like, will the person who is intended for respond to it, or will this get me an award?
[43:32] Yeah, yeah. I think it's so cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting. So it's human-centered, first principles, and then always kind of like removing the bias for data.
[43:45] Culture. Yes, bias, cultural bias, data bias. And I try not to let data control me too much. But I always like to start with the data, because with all this data available, it's very, very similar to go purely of guesses.
[44:03] And sometimes you look at the data, and you've got to tell you that the data is being interpreted wrongly by everyone else. And that's one of the things that I'm known for.
[44:13] But the data is a shame. But the graph doesn't look complete. There's a meeting that I was in once, and this is a very funny story. Of course, I can mention the company.
[44:22] Yes, that's fine. I'm looking at the graph where, while I'm like, this graph that I'm being presented looks off. For people who know data and statistics, it's way more than I do.
[44:37] When you see certain kind of graphs, you realize that when you're looking at part of the graph, it looks like part of a bell cave. Because the left side of the graph was not touching the axis.
[44:51] So it was part of a graph, and the data was being represented in logarithmic scale. Yeah, I see that. It looked like a beautiful constant growth cave.
[45:01] I was like, I see what they did over there. Exactly. So for anyone who really knows the data, they just made it really beautiful. Of course. When I saw the actual data, I was so scared.
[45:20] Because if I had one purely off the graph, oh my gosh. That happens sometimes. Yeah, that's the beauty of our job. That's the beauty of our job.
[45:31] Pick it one more thing, and I always ask my guests this question. What do you like about our job? Yeah, I'd say... And that's actually the last question.
[45:41] So you're just taking your time. Yeah. So for me, I think generally I love like cutting edge stuff, like cutting edge stuff, in terms of like automation and things that I think one of the biggest driving forces for me.
[46:03] One of the reasons why I still stick around in the marketing space, even though it can be one of the most annoying spaces out there, there's a lot of ego flying around.
[46:14] Oh, yeah. Everybody's an expert, man. I've decided not to call myself an expert. That's purely for the reason that, one, it's very difficult to be an expert in a field that has so many subfields.
[46:31] I once asked somebody at Facebook a question about the algorithm and they couldn't answer concretely. They said, yeah, only sure about this match.
[46:38] I was like, okay, cool. So yeah, I think one of the things that keeps me going in this, like in the general space, I mean, I'm thinking of changing my direction a bit, but it's understanding.
[46:50] Like I said, it's about understanding what motivates people, what drives people. One of the things that I'd really be interested to see, I mean, the prospects are scary at the same time, very intriguing.
[47:01] Their ability to shift perceptions on such a large scale, like the psychology of people in such a large scale. A lot of people would argue that advertising doesn't affect them, but then just be honest, a lot of our childhood perceptions are driven by the advertising and watchers as kids.
[47:19] True. We didn't even realise. Yeah. I mean, I picked up a pack of Ribena, was it? And I remember having such a warm feeling towards it. And I'm like, wait, why?
[47:31] Is it because they watch cartoons or something related to it? And I said, no, it has nothing to do with cartoons. But the fact that the first Ribena ads I saw were portrayed as cartoons.
[47:41] And as a kid, I thought that was the coolest thing. And I'm an adult. The adult to me was like, oh my God, you didn't really fall for that. Because like, I know what it was.
[47:52] Sure, granted, some of the things they said about it were true and all that. But at the same time, the emotive feelings and connections I had were communication.
[48:01] And I think fundamentally, as eloquent as I might appear on this podcast, one of the things that I think I struggle with, and a lot of people do struggle with, is effectively communicating what we intend and what we want from others.
[48:18] And the fact that advertising basically forces you to go over and over again. Exactly. So you kind of get that. Exactly. So you can get that intent to communicate it.
[48:31] That thing you want people to do. Like the best adverts move people to do great things. Some of the best adverts is in campaigns or the best campaigns, communication campaigns, actually.
[48:46] We're not really for big brands. I mean, something like the ice bucket challenge. It's a Josh thing. Yeah. Josh fights. All the money was being donated to a children's hospital and the kid won.
[49:07] It was like make a wish foundation of terrorists. The kid won. It's a beneficiary of that exact thing. So I'm like, wait, was the whole thing staged just to drive charity for this?
[49:18] You know? And it's fundamentally, I think I've written an article on this. Advertising and communication provides the tools and enables great good.
[49:29] By the same time, it enables great evil. And for me, it's how much good can we extract out of this? And what are the best ways of doing it in the most ethical ways possible?
[49:39] That's what drives me in this field. It's like the best tools, bringing experiences that people have never experienced before, pushing humanity.
[49:47] I know it sounds very lofty, but it's possible. It is. It is. It just needs the right hands, the right hands and the right minds behind it. And I really just want to see how far I can go.
[50:01] So that's what drives me behind this. All right. I mean, our industry is one of the ever changing industries in the world with tools. We are using tools that we have no control of, but yeah, it's one of the coolest industry also.
[50:16] Thank you so much for coming on this episode. Thank you too for having me. This has been a very great experience. Again, I just want to thank PK Wood for coming on this episode.
[50:32] And I also want to thank you for listening through to the end of the episode. If you love what you hate, share it with your network. If you haven't subscribed yet, hit the subscribe button, the follow button or whatever button on your podcast app, which helps you to get more episodes of your favorite podcasts.
[50:50] And you'll never regret it. My name is Enoch, RobotBoy Appell Jr. And this has been an episode of Colleagues of Social Media Podcast. See you again same time next week.