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Demand-Geniuses is the podcast for revenue-focused B2B Marketers. We bring you the latest insights and expert tips, interviewing geniuses of the B2B Marketing world to bring you actionable advice that you can implement to accelerate growth and progress you career. The role of Marketing in B2B go-to-market strategy has changed drastically. It's more important to revenue generation than ever as buyer engagement becomes more digital. We equip you with the information you need to thrive in this new, revenue-critical role.
Tom Rudnai (00:02.054)
Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of Demand Geniuses. I'm Tom Rudnigh and I'm gonna get straight into it and introduce this week's guest, which is Esther Dawson. Well, first, Esther, hello. Thank you for joining us. I guess before I get into peppering you with questions about brand and about content, do you wanna give us maybe a little bit of a background on you? Who is Esther?
Esther Dawson (00:12.994)
Hot.
Esther Dawson (00:21.069)
Hmm.
Esther Dawson (00:24.942)
Yeah, sure. Well, I come from New Zealand. I moved over to the UK just over a year ago, which was when I also got my current role, which is global brand and content lead for a construction tech company called Breadcrumb. I can talk a little bit about that. One of the things I love about marketing this brand is that it's really easy to explain. Essentially, we digitize health and safety documentation on construction sites. And so we're taking industry paperless with a lot of efficiencies in the process.
I joined the company because I had worked for a video production agency before and had a massive love for storytelling and brand and particularly telling brand stories with humor, which is something that this company was really keen to do. And then a bit about me, I love going outside, I love singing, and I'm, yeah, really enjoying my time in London. It's a big difference to Auckland, which is a city of like 1.5 million people.
Tom Rudnai (01:24.455)
How many have we got in London? Oh okay, yeah quite a big difference then. If you're from Auckland, because I've spent some time in New Zealand as one of my favourite places in the world, but Auckland is the most Londonish, right?
Esther Dawson (01:26.54)
I think nine, nine million? yeah.
Esther Dawson (01:35.765)
it's beautiful. For sure, it's the biggest city, yeah.
Tom Rudnai (01:41.071)
And how have you found it, the process of adapting? I guess from a marketing perspective, it been a very big, like, is there a big difference working in marketing in England versus marketing in New Zealand?
Esther Dawson (01:52.524)
Hmm. Do you know not as much as I would have thought I think the bigger difference has been the industry switch that I've done I've always been in B2B, but I switched from like a creative agency into now a software company for construction So the industry switch has been much bigger than the regional switch, but I also would say it's different in terms of You know a much bigger space to target and then my roles recently moved into a global position, which has had its own Like that is so much
more challenging in some ways, I think, than doing one region because you're having to split your time and focus into lots of different areas. So that's been, you know, like a new exciting challenge for me.
Tom Rudnai (02:32.837)
Yeah, well I've got lots of questions about that and I'm always interested in some of the stuff that you said about kind of storytelling and making brand and content fun, which I think particularly in...
Esther Dawson (02:41.313)
Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (02:42.075)
let's just say more traditional industries can often be quite a hard thing to do. So I want to dig a little bit. I guess just to take a step back and talk about kind of your background and the context a little bit more. One thing I'm always interested to understand, like when you go back through your own career today, is there a step in that career that you would say has been the most formative in terms of like your own thinking and development? And what was that?
Esther Dawson (03:06.059)
Yeah, I mean honestly it was my position just before this one when I...
took on a role at my family business. So I was their first employee and they poached me from the agency I was working with. And at the time I really wasn't sure if I wanted to make the switch because I was pursuing a career in public relations and they were essentially asking me to be their marketing director and that was a really different role. And I worried that I'd never be able to get back to PR if I moved to marketing. And to be honest, I've not gone back to PR and I don't think I'm mad about it. I learnt so much about communication.
in that role and that has really helped me in marketing, especially the internal communication side of it. But moving to the family business was formative because we ended up, me, two of my brothers and my dad, we ended up running this business and hiring people and growing the company and taking it to Australia and all of that, mean, that's a massive opportunity to learn and try new things and I was fresh and naive in parts.
But yeah, huge amounts of learning, yeah.
Tom Rudnai (04:14.373)
nice, poached into the family business. That's one that you can't really plan for as a leader of a company trying to avoid getting your employees poached and it's happening on Christmas Day. There's nothing you can do about that.
Esther Dawson (04:16.206)
No.
No.
Esther Dawson (04:26.894)
The funniest story which I always tell is I was pulled into a meeting by my manager for a promotion and it was at the same time that I was telling her that I was going to leave and it was such a, I mean I was really grateful to her and she handled it brilliantly but I felt so awkward. was like that is so nice and also I'm going. That's how that conversation went. Yeah probably.
Tom Rudnai (04:45.287)
You
And she's never promoted anyone since. It was an interesting background. They let that transition from PR to marketing, I think, must have set you up quite nicely. I've spoken to a couple of people on the podcast who come from that background. think it's a skill set that's getting more more useful for marketing as more of it. As we all talk about dark social and all the conversations that happen. A lot more marketing is about influencing conversations and decisions indirectly now, right? Is it something?
Esther Dawson (04:59.63)
Mmm.
Esther Dawson (05:04.512)
Yeah.
Esther Dawson (05:13.929)
Mm-hmm, exactly. I, oh no, I was gonna say as well, like with the rise of LLMs, having the skillset to pitch your business to media and getting backlinks and like those high quality pieces is really important as well, if you have that skill.
Tom Rudnai (05:31.471)
Yeah, so is that something that you make, is that a big focus for you guys strategically now? And is that with a specific goal of AI optimisation?
Esther Dawson (05:40.013)
I mean, it's one part of it. And I would say that we're only just dabbling now. I mean, when you get these stories, you've got to have a good story to tell. And so you've got to choose your moments. think having worked in public relations, I'm extremely sensitive around whether a story is good or not, because I've had enough moments being on the phone to a journalist who's like, that story sucks. We're not going to run it. And so now I can kind of tell if something's going to be good or not. But yeah, I mean, that's one small aspect of optimizing for LLMs.
Tom Rudnai (06:08.773)
Yeah, okay, well, and I'm going go completely off script here already because I'm quite interested in that. PR is something I know very little about or that kind of process of drumming up third party coverage of your product. I guess if I'm a marketer listening to this, what makes a story something that is appealing to a journalist? When do know something is a good fit that you should be looking to do that?
Esther Dawson (06:30.306)
Yeah, mean, lots of different things. One of them is the time bound nature of it. So if something has happened, mean, an easy one is like if you've gone through a raise or if you've had a new founder join, that kind of aspect is always interesting. think choosing your publication is as important as the story. So don't try to pitch a story that has maybe like a really small regional focus to a national news publication. If you're from a smaller city and you've done something that
impacts the local community, pitch it to the local community paper, and if it's got a global angle, maybe it'll get picked up elsewhere. I think also just, it's really, think about the stuff that you would read and why you would find something interesting. It kind of follows the same layout as any news article. It's like the newness of it, the drama of it, the interest for the readers, know, what are you trying to say? So if you come from the angle of I want to promote my business, I mean that's, like if they,
have a really strong nose for advertorial content so if you're trying to pitch something just to kind of get exposure yeah you've got to have much more than that.
Tom Rudnai (07:39.579)
difficult because we do content attribution that's never interesting. We're never getting any coverage if they're the criteria.
Esther Dawson (07:47.227)
know, I should also say stats are really, people love stats, publications love stats. If you have like a report, that's a great time to pitch a story.
Tom Rudnai (07:57.957)
Yeah, okay, well that was going to be my question actually, whether you've ever had any success beyond like, because I guess it sounds like there's two categories, right? News, and I think most businesses do a decent job when there's a major announcement of going and getting some coverage for that, and then getting your thought leadership and your kind of your original research into these publications, which I think is what is probably a bit more of an untapped opportunity.
Esther Dawson (08:20.63)
Yes, exactly, and I think too, you've gotta remember that journalists are busy people, and so that has its downsides but also has an upside. If you can become like a really useful thought leader for them, they will probably just pull on you time and time again. They've kind of just got these contact lists of, I need a quote about animals, I go to this vet. If I need a quote about business expansion, I go to this thought leader. So if you can become that person for a journalist, super useful.
Tom Rudnai (08:46.791)
Nice, yeah, I never thought of it like that. But once you're in their roller decks, you're in their roller decks and they're just going to keep coming back and moaning you. So it's a time investment that probably a bit of upfront investment pays off very much over the long term because it's a repeatable thing. Nice. Well, we're recording this at quarter past three on a Friday afternoon and you've now given me something to do over the weekend, which is annoying because we're just producing this big benchmark report at the moment. We've done a whole load of original research. I'm like, fuck, we've not done any of it.
Esther Dawson (08:50.946)
Mmm. Mm-hmm.
Esther Dawson (09:01.13)
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Esther Dawson (09:12.014)
Yes. Exactly.
Tom Rudnai (09:16.359)
That's the good and bad thing about recording a podcast, it gives you homework.
I want to take a step back a little bit because you kind of skipped ahead. I think it's always useful to understand a bit more about the context of where you are at the moment, because I imagine a lot of the stuff we're going to talk about. I'm always conscious that I don't want to be one of those podcasters like shooting off quick takes that completely remove all the nuance and all of the context from what you guys are doing. So tell us a little bit more about one breadcrumb and I guess a little bit less so from the incentive of what you guys are doing, which I you introduced very well at the start, but like the go to market or
Esther Dawson (09:44.398)
Mm.
Tom Rudnai (09:53.289)
organization there and what's unique or challenging about marketing at Breadcrumb.
Esther Dawson (09:58.691)
Hmm. Yeah, that's a great question. I mean
The challenge I think is reaching the right people. Construction sites are really busy. We're appealing to like the health and safety crews, but also site teams who end up using our product a lot. so LinkedIn surprisingly is a great channel for us because a lot of the kind of digital transformation people or head of tech or safety leaders go there to kind of stay connected in the industry. But we're also realizing we've got to do more in-person.
strategies as well. we were just up in Manchester this week for a digital construction event and that was super super useful because we have the chance to show our personality. We always have really interesting merch that we take with us. We have a pretty, we're rebranding next week and we have really like beautiful bold colors that we're bringing in so that helps us stand out and then we try to have a lot of connection with the site as well which I suppose goes into our strategy for customer retention and that
kind of thing but we like to spend time with them and show them that we care. one kind of example of that I suppose is next week when we're launching this rebrand we're going to take breakfast to a bunch of construction sites and serve it out to the workers who are there and we are branding the burger buns with our logo which is just like a nice little touch. So I guess yeah the challenge is reaching the right people and we need to do a mix of in-person and on-
line and then maybe the uniqueness is we're pretty like it's very niche what we do. Contact is the term which I didn't know about before I joined and so I suppose in some ways it's an advantage to that because it's not too hard to stand out as long as you're willing to do things differently and take some risks which sort of leads us into that humor conversation I suppose.
Tom Rudnai (11:57.178)
Yeah. Well, before we get into that, was one thing you said. sounds like one thing you have to do is be quite creative, maybe more so than most SaaS marketers who are listening to this in terms of how you blend in person and online, right? Not everything can be done from a distance, but then you're managing a global brand and content team out of the UK across US, UK and I think APAC. Is that right? how, how you do that?
Esther Dawson (12:10.063)
Mm.
Esther Dawson (12:13.731)
Yeah.
Esther Dawson (12:17.431)
Yeah, yeah, that's right, Australia. yeah, we're still figuring it out. I think, you know, we're still early in the stages of building this like global team. So.
We've got like a really awesome demand gen person who's in Australia and awesome events and partnerships person who's in Australia. He organizes events globally, which I think is really impressive. And then myself and another content manager here. so, I mean, we just have to rely on people on the ground, right? So we catch up regularly with people in the States and with people in Australia and we're getting them to send us opportunities. think marketing is best when it's really integrated within a business.
so we don't operate in a silo at all. We really rely on, actually a lot of the customer success team send us opportunities and stories and ideas and I think that's credit to the fact that we're really vocal about the marketing we do and the impact that it has internally, which helps them understand the value that creating these co-marketing opportunities has.
Tom Rudnai (13:26.103)
Yeah, do you find that there's a lot of difference in terms of what works in each of these regions?
Esther Dawson (13:33.552)
I don't know, it might still be too early to tell because we only launched in the US earlier this year and we're still just testing a lot of things. I would say undoubtedly in all regions what works well is when we show ourselves on construction sites talking to real people. We're really conscious of not being this like tech first company. We actually want to show our audience that we're a construction company, like we have built this product specifically for their industry, don't serve anyone else. We know their challenges because we go to site often.
And so yeah, content, if we talk about that specifically, that's built in collaboration with clients, it just always works. We've had really great success from case studies that we film on a phone. Like you don't always have to spend heaps of money to have impact.
Tom Rudnai (14:23.621)
Yeah, okay. And then...
I'm trying to think of what the next question to go to is. like, cause I want to get a bit more into like the nuts and bolts then of how you go about building a content strategy that works for that specific audience. guess let's come back to like maybe first principles a little bit. Like in terms of what makes a brand effective at the moment, cause you said you're doing a bit of a rebrand at the moment. So this must be something you've done a little bit of thinking about like in today, in 2025, what does a great brand look like? What do you think are the foundations that you have to have?
Esther Dawson (14:38.98)
Mm. Yeah, that's fair.
Esther Dawson (14:46.746)
Mm.
Esther Dawson (14:57.788)
This is such a great question for a Friday afternoon, Tom.
I mean, you know, like I often think of these things really, it's the basic building blocks you have to get right. A great brand, I mean a great brand is one that is memorable to the right people for the right reasons. And so I think in the past I've really undervalued things like colors, like iconic colors and having consistency across every touch point, which includes as well, like your staff who posting on LinkedIn and pieces like that.
So consistency, some iconic visual elements are really important. Having a personality, I think a brand needs a personality. people have been playing with this so much in recent years, like B2B companies, right? You see like changes on LinkedIn. I'm thinking about like HubSpot and the types of tone that they play with now, Monzo. But a personality that's recognizable and again, consistent is really important. Yeah, and then I think also just really grounded.
and what your customers need. If you're building a brand that you like, that feels impressive, it's not as important as building a brand that resonates with the people who are actually gonna use your product. And I think that's something that is the greatest challenge for marketers is not always to build something that we would like, it's to build something that's right for the people we're talking to.
Tom Rudnai (16:25.031)
And how did you go about defining that then? And for context, that's it's interesting for me. We've been doing a rebrand ourselves at Demand Genius. And one thing I found is I started off to being really collaborative and I was taking loads of people's input. And what I realized was that all of that input was rationalizing it down to every fucking SaaS website ever. Because anything that's vaguely bold or interesting, someone doesn't like. And so actually, eventually, you know what? I'm just going to do this. And it's going to be a bit bold, a bit more interesting. Some people probably hate it, but some will like it.
Esther Dawson (16:27.427)
Mm.
Esther Dawson (16:32.952)
Yeah.
Esther Dawson (16:43.265)
Yeah.
Esther Dawson (16:47.676)
my goodness.
Esther Dawson (16:53.335)
Yeah, yeah.
Tom Rudnai (16:55.005)
you approach that.
Esther Dawson (16:56.303)
Yeah, I mean, that's really that's such a point, Tom. It's like not trying to please everyone, right? With the decisions you make. I actually think that having a small, tight committee of decision makers for rebrands is really important. We really only had five of us, I think, and it was at the end of the day, kind of down to one, one or two people who then talked to the senior leadership team and ran it past them. We worked with an agency and I've actually not worked with a branding agency before on rebrands. I've often just pulled creatives in and managed them myself.
which has its pros, but the agency did a really good job of researching and laying some groundwork first. So they talked to staff and customers and kind of got a mix of sentiment around like what's strong currently, what do we want to change, and then presented us with multiple options that we then sort of, there was actually always just a clear winner for us and we chose it and then did a really useful exercise to make sure we were on the same page when it came to positioning.
But I agree with you that it is funny how you can go on this path and then get to the end and be like, do we just look like everyone else now? Because that's what we've been socialized to think is the pinnacle of sass brands at the moment. It is hard to break out of that.
Tom Rudnai (18:14.949)
I think it's something that's come up for me a few times in conversation recently in both like visual and in positioning, a lot of people are focusing a lot more on differentiating themselves. And I think it's to me, there's kind of two purposes to a brand increasingly. One is to influence humans and the other is to influence LNMs. I think going forward is going to be a part of it. it's certainly the, well, both of them really, but it's only the latter I think requires a lot of specificity in terms of who you're for.
Esther Dawson (18:26.318)
Yeah.
Esther Dawson (18:36.131)
Yeah.
Esther Dawson (18:43.661)
Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (18:44.883)
Whereas historically every SES brand is like, we're the all-in-one solution for everyone. Now increasingly I think people are realizing that's not what is gonna win for you and you have to be a lot more specific and that creates a lot more opportunity to be more visually unique as well, right? Because if you're not for everyone, you don't have to try.
Esther Dawson (18:49.839)
Mm.
Esther Dawson (19:01.973)
Yeah, exactly. And I think it's quite easy when you're rebranding also to get quite caught up in what your competitors look like and have done. And it's almost like, you know that phenomenon when you're looking at the thing you're trying to steer clear of and you end up going towards the thing that you're trying to avoid? Yeah. So there's that, which we definitely found happening and just had to be really aware of that at points.
Yeah, but I think you've said a great thing about being niche and
On the topic of LLMs, one of the massive changes we've had is the way that we've written our pages has really changed. We've got FAQ sections on every single page almost. We've got just way more content than we used to have. So, Rebran is also such a great chance to just look at everything you're doing and think, does it need to change the processes and the content, not just the visuals and the presentation?
Tom Rudnai (20:00.846)
Yeah, well, that's one thing. mean, it's a huge part of our kind of value proper demand. Jesus, you had it like, I think you used, it used to be that all of your new content mattered. Now your entire content library of for most brands, a thousand pieces of content that you've built up over two decades, three pivots, four acquisitions is all influencing who the
LLMs as a whole perceive you to be and therefore how they sell you and when they sell you. I think it's a big challenge for everyone is there's two things right there's how do you create the consistency going forward but also how do you retrospectively go back and throughout your entire corpus try and create that consistency which it sounds like is a process that you've had to go through.
Esther Dawson (20:34.17)
Mm.
Mmm.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure. And I think the other thing too is like we don't know the scientific process that goes into how LLMs are extracting content. Like we have a lot of ideas about what may or may not work. And so that's also an interesting time because we're still trying to figure it out. And every conversation I have with marketers now is on this topic. Every single newsletter I get is themed around this. We're all just trying to figure it out.
And we definitely, like even conversations we have in the US, a lot of our audience definitely go to places like ChatGPT to compare. So, you know, it's important. It's not just like a nice to have. So we're, you know, trying to figure that out much like everyone else.
Tom Rudnai (21:21.063)
Yeah, well, I think there are certain things that we have a pretty strong sense of what that is having an impact, but also I'm very aware those goalposts are going to move pretty regularly. There things that you have done which you have been able to kind of clearly see there is a demonstrable impact that is positive. And what are they?
Esther Dawson (21:32.355)
Yeah.
Esther Dawson (21:41.569)
Are you talking specifically LLMs or just in general? LLMs. think like, ask me that in two months and I'll have a good answer for you. Because we're redoing content right now, like a lot of our strategy we're only just putting into play, into place. yeah, talk to me later and I'll have some answers, I hope.
Tom Rudnai (21:44.301)
Sorry, LLM optimization, yeah.
Tom Rudnai (22:02.233)
Okay, nice. It's a little teaser of a podcast that we'll have to do in a couple of months. And another thing that you mentioned that I wanted to come back to is you talked a bit about consistency and so there's consistency retrospectively but going forward like...
Esther Dawson (22:05.742)
Hmm
Tom Rudnai (22:18.629)
I guess two questions. One, I'm interested in the processes that you've put in place to ensure that, but also like just in principle, how do you balance the need for like in a global team across three markets, consistency mixed with kind of localization and adapting your, like what stays consistent and what changes in each of those markets?
Esther Dawson (22:36.302)
Mmm.
Esther Dawson (22:41.516)
Yeah, well there's some obvious things in terms of what changes like that our product is slightly different so
we have to like talk about that differently. We've really focused on making sure that we're razor sharp on regionalization in terms of language use and spelling and all of that. But even just within the same industry, the way people talk about things can be different. I would say especially in the US, the US is almost its own entity. They talk about things differently. They approach things differently. There's a lot of similarity between APAC and UK. So yeah, language is important.
trying to keep our tone consistent globally because I think that's something that's really important to us is having a personality that people can recognize but we are grappling with that sense of when you have quite a bold personality especially if you're leaning on humor, humor is different in different regions you know what makes people in the States laugh is very different to the UK so like an example of that UK is quite self-effacing you know we make fun of ourselves make fun of like our jobs sometimes we can be
Tom Rudnai (23:36.028)
me
Esther Dawson (23:48.387)
a bit sarcastic, that's really similar interestingly to Australia and New Zealand as well. In the States, humor is much less self-effacing, right? Sometimes it can be more obvious, but also sometimes it can be bolder. And so we're trying to find a nice balance with that. And I suppose the places we can do that is things like newsletter content, which is specific to an audience, versus social media, which is, we have like a global social channel, we don't regionalize.
So, you know, it's definitely a challenge that we're navigating.
Tom Rudnai (24:23.439)
I can imagine and you're bringing me back in my sales days. had some horrible, know, enterprise sales, that's basically your job is you pitch up, you do the first two minutes of the call, you let everyone else do the work for an hour. But in that two minutes, have to create so much awkwardness by being way too sarcastic and then just hearing terrible weed as the Americans do not get it. It's horrible as well. There's one specific call that stands out in my mind that I'm getting flushed.
Esther Dawson (24:28.206)
Ha!
Esther Dawson (24:34.562)
Yes.
Esther Dawson (24:39.248)
Esther Dawson (24:42.838)
Not, yeah, they're not keen. They're not keen.
I want to hear about it now.
Tom Rudnai (24:52.903)
Yeah, anyway, let's get back on track because this is horrible. Let's talk about humour a little bit because I it's a really hard thing to bring into B2B and some people try, some people do it horribly. I guess talk about how do you consistently bring humour to what is typically more professional, dry topics? Are there frameworks or ways of...?
Culturally creating like the freedom to yeah, I don't quite know what my question is, but talk about humor
Esther Dawson (25:21.488)
Mmm.
Well, all right. I think there's a lot of facets to it because what you touch on right at the end there is yes, you have to create a culture of it. And that culture also starts with the humans, right? And so like the humans within the business. So if you're a group of people who are like have a laugh or humor is a part of your work culture, it makes sense sometimes to bring that into your brand as well because it can feel quite natural. And if you're bringing say staff into videos and content, then they can also exist.
and that in a nice natural way. So yeah, having the appetite to experiment is really important with humor because yes, sometimes you do try and you miss or you fail and that's not a reason to not keep doing it, you just have to try again. Also, having content partners that you work with who really get it is important. My tiny little interesting tidbit is that I was actually hired by this company from my family business because they were a client.
the video production agency, which is my family business, we'd made videos for this company and then when I moved over they were like, great, we'll get her. Which was very flattering but the sense there is they already had this appetite for humor and they'd created some content with this agency and so I kind of just came in and continued that on and we were lucky because our creative partners, the people who directing the videos just had like a really good innate sense of how humor flows and they've done it heaps of times.
I think you can learn from the people around you, people who can already do it well. That's probably the two aspects of it, I think, is finding people who know how to do it well and working with them and then making sure you create an appetite or culture within the company that allows for it. Otherwise you end up just like creating content that's quite cringe or quite like trend focused or just like meme based and it doesn't work. You know what I mean. We've all seen it.
Tom Rudnai (27:18.597)
I know exactly, I wrote down into the talk, how do you avoid it being cringe? And I think there's so many times that that's what I see being the result of people trying to be funny on LinkedIn.
Esther Dawson (27:28.322)
Yeah, well maybe.
I think one of the aspects is like the person creating the content has to have a sense of humor themselves. Like you can't hire someone and just be like, be funny, you know, like they've got to have, yeah, they've got to have like some innate sense of that themselves. I think an example of this, which, you know, like almost overused, but Surreal, the serial brand, like they do really, really funny content on LinkedIn. And that's because they have a really funny copywriter, John Thornton, who basically I think has brought a lot of himself to
Tom Rudnai (27:38.587)
We'll try that.
Tom Rudnai (27:58.311)
Yeah.
Esther Dawson (28:01.551)
role and I know there's risks in that you know when you hire someone and then if they leave the company do they take that humor with them and maybe so but that's where the best natural humor comes from I think you hire people who have that within themselves
Tom Rudnai (28:18.087)
Well, and if you're giving them creative, like if someone if what someone enjoys is being funny, you're giving them creative freedom to be funny, then they're probably going to stay because they're doing that, right? So through the culture, that that's a retention mechanism.
Esther Dawson (28:26.833)
Totally.
Exactly and then also it's really important to not push humor where it doesn't fit Like I talk a lot about us being like humor led, but to be honest, you know We're also dealing with a pretty serious topic safety on construction sites and we don't push the humor where it doesn't need to be like You know if we're talking about the product or the product features like we keep that pretty grounded and pretty direct and factual You know if we're talking about a serious topic, we're not gonna try and lighten the mood. It's just that
Humor works really well when it's relatable, relatable to your industry. And the reason we've chosen to do it is construction sites are full of humor. You go on a construction site, people are laughing and joking all the time. And so we want them to see themselves in the brand and feel seen. And there's that sense of relatability, which I think is perhaps the best way to, like that's the best place to couch your humor from that position of relatability.
Tom Rudnai (29:29.287)
Yeah, it's funny. makes me think of, remember talking to someone and I forget the name now, but they were talking about a great campaign that they ran in cyber security where cyber security is like the archetype of boring, dry, everything is dark blue and gray and then the cyber security and everything is serious. It's all incredibly important. And what they realized they did some kind of research into the humans that actually work in that role of CISO, Chief Information Security Officer. I'm really, it's incredible like gallows humor that they build up.
Esther Dawson (29:43.632)
yeah.
Esther Dawson (29:54.961)
Mm.
Tom Rudnai (29:59.194)
between themselves to talk about the constant panic and anxiety that is their jobs and they ran a campaign which was basically I think it was like talking about the old f*** moment when someone messes up and opens an email they shouldn't have which I actually did once so I can resonate very strongly with that. They said it was their best campaign which yeah
Esther Dawson (30:11.61)
Yeah.
Esther Dawson (30:15.601)
I was saying. Yes. But it's emotion based too though isn't it? I think that's the thing with humour is that humour makes you laugh and so then you've got this kind of emotional connection with the piece of content you've just consumed. And New Zealand is really known for this with our Air New Zealand ads. Have you seen those, like the safety campaigns on flights?
Tom Rudnai (30:40.039)
I think so, it really can help.
Esther Dawson (30:41.777)
I like to think it's globally known, but maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, we lean hard into that and I think that's maybe also what I've been influenced by is humor can be really memorable and strategically that's just a really good move.
Tom Rudnai (30:59.067)
Yeah. Are there particular areas of your content or your brand that you found you can quite naturally fit the humour in? Like you said, you don't try and force it in everywhere. Are there trends to where it works and where it doesn't other people can maybe learn from?
Esther Dawson (31:15.449)
Yeah, I think humor works really well at the brand awareness level. So like the first impression moment when people come across you for the first time, partly because it ties into that sense of being memorable. But we use a lot of humor in like brand videos, the ones that are slightly more, well, they're more highly produced, higher quality because we want to tell a story. So we usually lead it with characters. It's usually very relatable and quite funny for the industry.
Tom Rudnai (31:19.281)
Yeah.
Esther Dawson (31:44.068)
Yeah, we deliberately create moments for laughter or they're like, my goodness, me too. I've felt that. And so I think, yeah, that brand stage is a really good place for it to happen. then the other places we weave it in is when we're talking about pain points. you know, just I've just finished reviewing all of our website copy and the places where human most naturally fits is that moment where like, you know, you've formed an unhealthy relationship with the printer because you're standing there all the time printing docs.
you know and so it's just like small subtle pieces yeah does that answer the question?
Tom Rudnai (32:20.391)
Yeah, it does. it's because the pain point one is a really good point because it's relatable and empathetic and I always struggle. mean, I'm by no means a copywriter, but even when you're kind of that like sales thing or the marketing when I want to have like, I'm on the pain point, but you feel like a dick. It feels really annoying sometimes when when I have people talking to me about my pain points and they're really going in, it's very
Esther Dawson (32:25.403)
Yeah.
Esther Dawson (32:41.409)
compete.
And patronizing, I think it's pretty easy to lean into the patronizing side and you've gotta be careful about that. So I think humor is a helpful way to just keep it bit lighter. But also the like, we know what it's like. mean, ultimately you'll talk about pain points because you want them to know that you know what it's like and there's a reason that you exist. There's a solution you have. So yeah, I agree with you. It's like when you have pain points hammered down your throat and you're the person being sold to, it's not always a nice experience.
Tom Rudnai (32:44.305)
Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (33:12.135)
Yeah. And I remember a called Pete Crosby when my first sales job, he was kind of teaching like the art of how you build a presentation. It's like there's seven steps. And the idea is you take people on a bit of a roller coaster of why there is this problem. But a very important step in that is to explain that the problem isn't their fault. It's not them that's creating the problem. They are like, it's ubiquitous. Everyone in that position has this problem. You understand it. And there's no better way to integrate that empathy and understanding than
Esther Dawson (33:18.479)
Mmm.
Esther Dawson (33:31.984)
Mm.
Esther Dawson (33:39.608)
Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (33:42.162)
A little joke will speak more than a thousand words and platitudes on that front, right? The other thing, go back to the cultural thing a little bit more, because I think that's, and I imagine there's marketers listening to this thinking that sounds like great fun, I'd love to work for a like that, I'd love to implement that here, but you have to go and create that buy-in. So did you come in with that mandate, and if not, how did you go about kind of...
Esther Dawson (33:46.959)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Esther Dawson (33:57.272)
Yeah.
Esther Dawson (34:03.429)
Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (34:08.593)
building the buy-in above you within the organization that meant that when probably you missed the mark a couple of times that the buy-in was still there and you were okay with this.
Esther Dawson (34:17.647)
Mmm.
Well...
I am lucky and I wish I didn't have to say I'm lucky but I think not many companies already have this attitude towards openness towards creativity but when I joined it was very much a conversation with the leadership team who were like yes we want this, we already, they'd already made some videos that were human led so they had an appetite for it already. And I guess if I'm being frank I don't think I would have joined a company who weren't open to it from the start. I think it's really hard.
Tom Rudnai (34:50.801)
Yeah.
Esther Dawson (34:51.281)
hard work to come into a company and build a culture of openness around humor if there's resistance to it in the first place. And honestly, I might not have bothered. I just think that's kind of already got to exist from the top because it's pretty hard to change people's minds if they've got a perspective about like the personality of the brand in terms of like it's this and it's never gonna be anything different. So yeah, there was a good attitude that already existed here. And then now what I try to do is as we get
bigger it's much it's harder to be humorous when you get bigger because you you get concerned about being unprofessional like there's definitely this perspective that humor doesn't equal professional I disagree with that but there are ways in which you like you have to be careful about it but as you're trying to appeal to bigger clients and people you know boards and like bigger decision makers yeah the risk appetite can diminish and so now my job
is like how do we keep the confidence there? And you have to keep the confidence by proving that it's working, right? So every time people are mentioning like I noticed you because of the humor or the personality or I see you everywhere and it makes me laugh. Like those are nuggets that I collect and can use when I talk to other people. Yeah, but I just have to say like the leadership team and the whole group of decision makers at Brick Cromer really up for it to try new things and take risks with.
how we communicate the brand, which I love. It's great.
Tom Rudnai (36:23.863)
Do you put, so as you try to scale that, do you try to define your humor at all or constrain it? Because I guess you have to build some. It has to be a little bit more Michael McIntyre than Jimmy Carr, doesn't it? I guess that's...
Esther Dawson (36:33.403)
Yeah.
Esther Dawson (36:37.434)
Yeah, totally. Yeah, that's a really great question. Yes, so going through this rebrand, one of the ways that we've done that is...
We've got some clarity around that we want to lean into more kind of witty humor as opposed to jokester humor. So I guess that means timing it well and not just inserting humor wherever you want. It's less about making puns and cracking a joke and more about wordplay or I suppose puns are wordplay, they? The clever listeners will point that out. But you know what I mean. So it sits more on that witty side as opposed to the kind of slapstick.
the joking side. So that's the differentiation we've recently made and I think you're so right that that's really important because otherwise one person's version of funny is totally different to another person's version of funny.
Tom Rudnai (37:28.519)
Have you played around at all and if so have you had any success with AI generated humor?
Esther Dawson (37:37.107)
Not personally, mean, I really don't like relying on AI from the creative standpoint. But you know, like everyone.
we use it in a small capacity for copywriting. So yes, you can feed in your brand personality and if you've got really good guidelines to start with, that can help. I read a really fascinating article from a content manager that I follow who does a really great job with her brand personality and she was saying that they inputted their tone of voice guidelines into ChatGBT, I think, and used that to write up their case studies and she said it required a lot of work to train it to a point that she felt confident that when it started spitting
back lines that really felt like they had written it. That's when she knew that they kind of got to a good place. So yeah, I think we'll play with that more as we go, but not heaps of stories about it yet.
Tom Rudnai (38:34.961)
Yeah, okay, no, I was curious because the way you said you could define like there is to an extent a science to what is funny, right? So it seems one day and I could in theory do but I don't think I like that idea. How do you find it?
Esther Dawson (38:42.285)
yeah.
Esther Dawson (38:47.442)
Yeah, neither.
Tom Rudnai (38:52.111)
One thing I find quite intimidating actually about having a brand identity like that is I think on a good date I'd find that very easy, I'd be having fun. How do you find it on a bad day when you know you have to produce this blog or this post but you're not feeling very funny that day? Are there ways that you get around that?
Esther Dawson (38:56.859)
Hmm.
Esther Dawson (39:00.402)
Hmm.
Esther Dawson (39:10.034)
Well, we should ask this question of my content manager, who's the one who's actually doing a lot more of the writing these days than I am. I mean, if you can sit on it, that helps. I think always with content creation, it's much better if you're not doing it last minute so you don't have a chance to sleep on it and come back to it because perspective really helps with humor. Because sometimes when you feel in a rut, it's not actually that the work you're producing is bad, it's just that your attitude about it
it's just off, you know, you'll write something and it'll be like, ugh, that sucks. Then you get back to the next day and you're like, actually it didn't suck, but I've had a moment to think about it and now I'm happy with it. So giving yourself space is probably the most helpful thing.
Tom Rudnai (39:40.443)
and then.
Tom Rudnai (39:53.064)
Nice, that's a good, yeah, that's a good advice. Are there moments when this culture that you've built has been kind of tested? I'd imagine there are times when you've put something out, I guess it can go one of two ways, right? Either trying too hard to be funny and was, you know, may have crossed a line or just really close to being bad. And I guess how did you react when it was tested like that?
Esther Dawson (40:10.514)
Hmm.
Esther Dawson (40:17.618)
I have a great example of this, which actually I can't really take the credit for it. The concept was my colleague in Australia, but I don't know if you've heard of the brand Budgie Smuggler, but they basically create swimwear under underpants, I guess, for men. And that's the brand name. But they also create a whole bunch of other swimwear and they were doing a competition where you could win like a billboard slot if you took the most creative photo with their branded swimwear. And so my colleague got a bunch of the team to a beach
Tom Rudnai (40:43.035)
Thank
Esther Dawson (40:47.572)
with a photographer and they were all wearing swimwear and posing and I It's really it's like still our most engaged with post and so this is a really interesting thing Massive risk some people within the team were like that's just not I'm not into it. I don't want to do it Like that's not my vibe other people obviously up for it and were like I'll post in the photo and so I mean, I don't even quite know where I'm going with this. I guess it's like Definitely didn't please everyone, but it was really engaging would we do it again? Maybe not
but I think the thing with humor is that you definitely will never get uniform kind of like approval and enthusiasm from people and so you kind of you just have to shoot your shot anyway and give it a go but I do think when you're creating something that you feel like is this is this right getting a few other people in the room to validate it and check it is always a good idea
Tom Rudnai (41:41.64)
So in that example where you said maybe some people didn't like it, did you outside of a few LinkedIn comments at the time or wherever it was of people saying, I don't like this, did you actually have any negative consequences from it? think some noise is instantly loud, but nothing actually bad happens.
Esther Dawson (41:55.455)
no.
No, and I mean, we actually didn't even have any negative LinkedIn con. And it was a conversation starter more than anything. I also just think like...
We're not the kind of company that would put something polarizing out there that's not our style. And we think carefully about how we're gonna communicate our message. Yeah, there's a lot of like good strategic thought within the company and everyone has like a pretty good sense of what's gonna work and what's not. I also think having come from public relations, I did a lot of like crisis management. I think I have a good nose for the things that are, you know, we should steer away from versus like lean into. Yeah.
Tom Rudnai (42:36.326)
Yeah.
Esther Dawson (42:37.4)
something that should be back in the back of your mind when you create content, just thinking through the consequences of stuff but not allowing that to stifle your creativity.
Tom Rudnai (42:46.855)
Yeah, well, I think it's just difficult in this world. I'm always conscious of too many cooks have a very bad impact on creativity, but you need some level of oversight, I guess, particularly as the stakes get higher.
Esther Dawson (42:50.098)
Yeah.
Esther Dawson (42:58.244)
Yeah, yeah, you've got to have, yeah, you've got to have the decision maker, the one who will cop the blame, I guess, if it goes wrong, but having some trusted voices is really useful.
Tom Rudnai (43:08.347)
Yeah, okay. I've loved this. Let's get into before before I let you go get into some of our quick fires. Yes. So first one, what's an AI use case or an AI tool or something like that that you absolutely love that blew your mind a little bit?
Esther Dawson (43:14.623)
love it.
Esther Dawson (43:23.12)
Yeah, I mean, I've tried to go like quite simple with this because I think AI is at its best when it's practically useful and also saves you like extra cost or repetitive time. And so the one, and this is really taking me back to my video production days, but like I think it's called screen fill or screen extender to me that blew my mind. So for example, if you're shooting a video for YouTube, but you also need a vertical ratio, extremely hard to frame that up correctly.
because you end up either having a lot of like blank space or stuff that gets cut and so screen fill has been amazing where it just like automatically generates like the top and bottom based upon the frame that you have like it's actually mind-blowing it's so good you can do that yeah after the fact yeah it's it's incredible you can have you can build like cityscapes in it I'm pretty sure Canva has the tool but yeah it's that's quite mind-blowing to me
Tom Rudnai (44:08.571)
And it does that off the mat.
Tom Rudnai (44:21.211)
Nice, yeah, I can see that. I don't do enough kind of on-site content creation, or in fact any, but I can see that if you do that, that's super helpful. And then for you personally, so in your career kind of so far, is there like a skill or a trait that you have that you would say has been the biggest needle mover for you?
Esther Dawson (44:22.083)
useful.
Esther Dawson (44:38.343)
Yeah, I think openness and curiosity. I wouldn't have had half the opportunities I had if I hadn't been like open to a conversation at one point in time. So that's really useful from the side of like things coming your way, but also within marketing, having an open or curious mindset is super important.
Tom Rudnai (45:03.015)
completely agree. And if I were to, this is quite a fun one, if I were to approve your Plan A budget request right now, I always think of this as the one that your CEO would never be stupid enough to approve, what would you do?
Esther Dawson (45:09.299)
you
Mm-hmm.
Esther Dawson (45:19.339)
I really wanted to spend more time on this question because I want to have a great answer. I was thinking about, I would definitely do something in the States because that's a massive market. It's really expensive to try and hit all the right people at the same time. I'd probably be doing like a massive video campaign that's been filmed on multiple sites. I'd have like billboards in multiple cities that we could measure the impact of. Also in person, like delivering bacon baps to like
100 sites so that we've got this kind of online in-person thing going on. That's about as far as I went. At one point a celebrity sort of flitted through my mind, but yeah haven't landed on that one yet.
Tom Rudnai (46:02.513)
But basically it's going to be big and it's going to involve bacon.
Esther Dawson (46:05.937)
Yeah, surely. And maybe a celebrity just for fun.
Tom Rudnai (46:10.215)
Okay, Kevin, but Kevin Bacon maybe. That was terrible. I'm sorry, everyone. And then last one of these. So the flip side, I always think everyone's gonna listen to this. I think it could be quite intimidating sometimes you think, oh God, all these people on this podcast are incredibly clever. I want to show that you're not all the time. What's the biggest fuck up in your?
Esther Dawson (46:12.37)
my god, obviously.
Esther Dawson (46:32.403)
Yeah.
yeah, mean, you know, I just like even a moment of honesty here, I find podcasts kind of a funny thing because I'm obviously like trying to sound my best and reflect a certain perspective, which is, know, obviously all true, but I have so many moments of doubt all the time. And it's really overwhelming working in this career and it's really hard to stay on top of everything and know that you're doing everything right. And so I've not done everything right. I think one of the big
biggest fuck ups in my career was in our family business. We were pretty naive, you know, like we'd never grown a business this big before. We had 15 employees at one point and we were just probably overconfident. And when the recession hit New Zealand post COVID, we did not take enough precautions early enough in terms of saving costs, like cost cutting. And we ended up having to lay off some of our staff, which was truly heartbreaking and like the worst moment of my career.
so far and I think we probably could have done it we definitely could have done a better job of it I'm kind to my past self because we sort of had never been in that situation before and we did the best that we could with what we had but yeah I don't consider that a success story so I guess you could consider that a fuck up
Tom Rudnai (47:52.488)
Yeah, well, it's a very, very kind of honest, sincere reflection as well, because I think it is a cool thing about the heavily marketed world that we live in is that understandably, everyone is trying to portray a persona a little bit and not in a self-serving way. Like I'm trying to be my best self on this podcast because I want it to be good content. want people to enjoy listening to it. But then you end up hearing everyone else's best self only.
Esther Dawson (47:57.832)
Mm.
Esther Dawson (48:08.765)
No, you just...
Yeah. Yeah.
Esther Dawson (48:17.713)
Yeah, and you feel awful about your self-doubt because people don't talk about that and that's something I like to talk about on places like LinkedIn because, you know, impressive job titles and all of that. Like you actually want to know that maybe you could also get to a place like that too, even though you struggle with certain things or worry that you're not good enough. Yeah, I feel really passionate about that.
Tom Rudnai (48:41.701)
Nice, yeah, I love that. Cool, well, let's leave it there because I think that's a better tone to wrap up on than we'll manage otherwise. Just before I let you go, the last question I always like to ask for the listeners is one recommendation that you have, whether it's like a book or a podcast or a thought leader.
Esther Dawson (48:58.183)
Yeah, I have two quick answers to this. The first one is there's a person called Emily Kramer who I follow and love. She's a SaaS marketer, has really great frameworks, so she calls them Craneworks. And yeah, she's just got a great newsletter. But the other thing is create more than you consume. I don't think we need more things to read. We actually as marketers are always bombarded with that, so just create a bit more.
Tom Rudnai (49:26.119)
Yeah, I follow Emily Cramer's newsletter myself. She's great. It's funny. Yeah, we don't, definitely don't need more content. I thought that when I was starting the podcast and I was telling people we're starting a marketing podcast because you know, well, it just doesn't have enough. Cool. And then anything you're doing at the moment or you're doing as a business that you want to just take a quick chance to plug.
Esther Dawson (49:29.427)
She's great, Yeah.
Esther Dawson (49:36.915)
It's fun to have enough.
Esther Dawson (49:49.523)
I mean, we are doing a really fun launch of our rebrand and I'm really excited for all of the content we're doing. I almost spilt the beans, I almost talked about some of the plans. Anyway, you'll see it and I think that's just fun, like catch us on LinkedIn, we're always doing like really interesting and fun things. I'm always happy to talk to people about ideas they have or questions they have, so yeah.
Tom Rudnai (50:12.475)
was so close, we almost got an exclusive. I've never had an exclusive. This podcast doesn't have that effect on people.
Esther Dawson (50:15.219)
Yeah, I know. Wow. I felt like I was on Jimmy Fallon and I dropped like a bombshell. It's not that traumatic. Yeah, you really get me. I talked about my fuck ups and now I'm willing to like spill all the beans.
Tom Rudnai (50:30.627)
I've loved this, thank you for coming and joining on a jury Friday afternoon and for being so open. yeah, it's been a lovely conversation and thank you everyone who's listened if you're still with us. Bye bye.
Esther Dawson (50:42.846)
Thanks, Tom. Bye.