What we learnt from Annie

Our CEO Annie Kearney spoke with students from her alma mater, Manchester Metropolitan University about marketing and how every generation has something to democratise communication. 

In her talk, Annie explained that we are responsible for how we consume communication, from the printing press to radio to social media and now AI, it’s what we believe and how we leverage it that makes it effective. 

Then she told us a little about her favourite C words (SFW, we promise).

“Customer. Content. Commerce.

These used to be my favourite C words. It was my guiding mantra and simple framework.

Customer - who are the people we are talking to or want to talk to?

Content - what are we telling them, why and from who?

Commerce - what do we want them to buy and where from?

It made something complex and intellectual manageable. It faced my team of brilliant and different people in the same direction.

Over the last few years I added in another two ; CONTEXT and COMMUNITY. It wasn’t intentional for everything to begin with a C but there you have it. They start to pair off quite easily too.

Customer & Content.

Context & Community.

Context - what is going on in the world we are in, what are people doing? Where are they spending their time and why? Which channel are we talking in, how much attention do we expect to get and does the content actually work in that context? Do we have the cash to make this stand out or is it credible and creative enough to fly on its own? (Three more C’s to add?)

Community - whose community are we in? Who is our community? Are we adding anything? Are we lifting other peoples voices? What is the community interested in and do we have any legitimacy in it?”

Read more about her musings on her LinkedIn here.