Chris Norton:
Ahem.
Chris Simmance:
Thanks, VoiceOverGuy. And I’m very lucky to have another Chris on the podcast today. Chris Norton from Prohibition PR. How are you doing?
Chris Norton:
I’m good thanks Chris, how are you?
Chris Simmance:
Not too bad. Not too bad at all. It’s, uh, I was just saying to you before we started 125 recordings. I still haven’t gotten bored of that VoiceOverGuy.
Chris Norton:
Yeah, well, he sounds very Channel 4, doesn’t he? Did you get him before that show? Before Come Down With
Chris Simmance:
I
Chris Norton:
Mia?
Chris Simmance:
don’t know, but I mean, I got him. Um, he’s a brilliant guy. I can’t remember his username on Fiverr, but he was a, he’s a brilliant Fiverr purchase, should we say you go through a few duds on Fiverr and
Chris Norton:
Yeah.
Chris Simmance:
you find some gold once in a while, but he’s, he’s brilliant. So Chris, that’s not what we’re here to talk about. We’re here to talk about you running the agency, running Prohibition PR. So for those who don’t know who you are, Chris, give us an intro and tell us all about the agency.
Chris Norton:
Okay, so my name is Chris Norton and I am the founder of Prohibition PR. We are a leads-based PR and social media agency based in the north of the UK for those from people outside of the UK. I don’t know if you’ve got USA listeners, but we’re
Chris Simmance:
few actually,
Chris Norton:
based in,
Chris Simmance:
yeah.
Chris Norton:
yeah, I can imagine. When we’re looking at our podcast where people are listening, Peru’s quite popular for hours. Anyway, so we’re based in the north of the UK, which means we offer, we’re not cheaper, we offer better value. But we’d like to offer like London style thinking in PR and digital campaigns that can help clients get success and achieve standout. That’s basically what we are. I think we’re either the first or second biggest PR agency in Yorkshire now, which we’re quite proud of.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, wow.
Chris Norton:
I’d like to say it’s down to my brilliance, but it’s not. It’s down to the team I’ve got. There’s 30 people here now. Although we’re PR, we focus on PR and social. PR on social obviously includes social since I started back in the day when it was the Facebook and MySpace and all that. The social media was very much words, wasn’t it? Which is why PR people managed to take ownership. Sorry to all you digital guys out there, but predominantly it was the PR people because we were the guardians of the written word.
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Chris Norton:
Today though, no, not so much. Now it’s great graphics that you guys do or maybe it’s amazing video. So… We’ve got an in-house creative team as well. So we’ve got video and creative as well as, yeah, lots of people who are either trained in journalism or public relations. So yeah, that’s what, that’s who we are.
Chris Simmance:
And 30 people in the in the last few years, obviously, we’ve gone through pandemics and all sorts of things like that. How have you found the last few years with the people aspect of things? Are you fully remote? Is there like a hybrid thing? Is everyone in the office?
Chris Norton:
Great
Chris Simmance:
And
Chris Norton:
question.
Chris Simmance:
how’s it how’s that worked?
Chris Norton:
Well, first thing, I mean, I would say that the pandemic, anyone who’s a leader out there, who runs a business, you ran it through the pandemic, congratulations, well done for getting through it because it was, can I swear on this? It was bad.
Chris Simmance:
We’ll see what happens.
Chris Norton:
No,
Chris Simmance:
I don’t
Chris Norton:
I
Chris Simmance:
think
Chris Norton:
won’t
Chris Simmance:
I’ve
Chris Norton:
swear.
Chris Simmance:
ever had an email from Spotify, so we’re good.
Chris Norton:
It was pretty bad. So anyone that got through that mainly because if you’re a service business, you’ve got clients who wanted to be serviced. Half of the people had to be furloughed because most people, anybody that were in retail had to be closed, but then we had some clients that had to stay open, which meant that half the agency was furloughed and half wasn’t. Anyway, we got through that and it did change the model. I mean, I remember when we said, what the hell is… That day, Boris sent everybody home and he said, luckily everybody here had laptops. I remember
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Chris Norton:
we was all getting home and going, we all use Skype regularly personally, but we didn’t use Teams and nobody had a bloody clue what it was. So what that changed was, yeah, we went to, obviously everybody was mobile, but now we do a sort of three days in, two days out. So you can work
Chris Simmance:
Hmm.
Chris Norton:
three days in the office and two days at home. It used to be that managers and directors. all could always be like that, but now execs as well. There’s a certain element of trust with that, but
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Chris Norton:
it’s worked fine. We’re very flexible on how people work. We also allow people to come in at any time from 7.30 till, I can’t remember what the time is, but as long as you do your hours, you can come and go as you please
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Chris Norton:
basically. You’ve got to trust your staff in what we do. So that’s how we run it. I’ve seen that some of the, even Zoom has now said, demanded that its staff go back to the office. I was like, Isn’t that
Chris Simmance:
That
Chris Norton:
counterproductive?
Chris Simmance:
feels like a counteractive PR campaign somewhere along the lines there.
Chris Norton:
Yeah, it feels like someone’s going to get hold of that headline and just crucify it, but I mean, Zoom
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Chris Norton:
is, they’re struggling, they’re struggling now, aren’t they, Zoom? Well, their growth has stunted obviously, because it was a phenomenal growth period for them.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Chris Norton:
But, but any, like I say, any, any founder, owner of a bit of a business or an agency out there who’s made it through the pandemic well played, because that was those, those three, four week period where things were just changing, opening, closing, opening, closing, and then it carried on for months. So fair play to you. Well done to everyone. And, and I don’t think. people that are business owners get enough praise for that, because that’s bloody difficult. Everybody
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Chris Norton:
who’s get, some people were sat at home drinking, great, have a great time, for the rest of us trying to figure
Chris Simmance:
You could,
Chris Norton:
it
Chris Simmance:
there
Chris Norton:
out.
Chris Simmance:
were some people who were doing both and not so well.
Chris Norton:
Well, yeah, there was that as well. Then there was the sheer boredom and I’m a big sport. I know you’re into your skiing and your board sports, aren’t you? But I’m a massive sports fan and that period there was no sport. What the f…
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Chris Norton:
I was like, what, what do I watch
Chris Simmance:
What do
Chris Norton:
now?
Chris Simmance:
I do?
Chris Norton:
What do I…
Chris Simmance:
Ha!
Chris Norton:
I’ve completed Netflix.
Chris Simmance:
you give him a compliment and he jumps back in. It’s a bit rude. You were midway through talking about Netflix, but that’s not what we’re here for.
Chris Norton:
No, no, we’re not talking about Netflix.
Chris Simmance:
And Chris, how long has the agency been running?
Chris Norton:
We’ve been going well. I mean, I set up on my own about 12, 30 years ago, but actually we’ve been limited for, it was our 10th birthday last year, so 11 years we’ve been a limited company.
Chris Simmance:
Wow,
Chris Norton:
Yeah.
Chris Simmance:
that’s amazing. And what do you think has been like one of the most, apart from surviving a pandemic and completing Netflix, one of the biggest successes that you’ve seen since you started that agency?
Chris Norton:
God, that’s a good question. Like the big successes, you’ve got the financial things, which people, you know, if you’re starting out or you’re running an agency, you wanna do one million, then you wanna do two
Chris Simmance:
Mm-hmm.
Chris Norton:
million. But actually you don’t, once you hit that, you’re like, okay, I mean, you’ve got to have financial targets. But successes, I would think, it’s like, you know, when we were like six or seven people and we won, we won outstanding PR agency of the year.
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Chris Norton:
And then we’ve won it, we’ve won that probably six times in 10 years. So,
Chris Simmance:
Jeez.
Chris Norton:
And I know there’s other, you know, oh, good awards, but actually these are from our official Chartered Institute of Public Relations or the PRCA. We’ve won proper recognised awards in what we do. And we got down to the Grand Prix in the London against big London agencies for a couple of campaigns we’ve done, which are truly like amazing campaigns. And we didn’t win the overall national one, but it’s still to be, to receive accolades. Really we just do, I do awards for one reason and one reason only. It’s for staff. It’s not for… Never have I gone in a pitch and a client’s gone, Hey, I saw you won the best use of social media campaign, but never happens, never ever.
Chris Simmance:
Ahem.
Chris Norton:
Um, so yeah, I do it for the staff because the staff do great campaigns. They work really hard and you know, you need to celebrate the hard work that they’re doing, um, because you know, the numbers are the numbers. It’s like, okay, we’ve done that. Let’s go again. You know,
Chris Simmance:
Yeah,
Chris Norton:
you’ll know
Chris Simmance:
yeah.
Chris Norton:
as, as your agent’s accelerator, that’s what it’s all about, keeping an eye on the numbers, but actually the awards are for the staff. So I’d say that’s a big success because it shows that the work you’re doing is quality not just the
Chris Simmance:
Yeah,
Chris Norton:
numbers.
Chris Simmance:
yeah, absolutely. And there has to be some sort of qualitative measure there. And some agencies have different ways of doing that. Others, awards, whatever works with your team and with your people. Cause it’s an investment anyway, whether or not it’s to win pitches or whether it’s to make teams feel good, it has value if you win. If you go back though, like 10, 11 ish years. Um, you’ve still got all your hair, Chris, so you must’ve done something well. What,
Chris Norton:
Hmm.
Chris Simmance:
what advice might you give to the younger version of yourself though?
Chris Norton:
It’s grayer by the way. I would say, I’m 46, I’ve got a little badge of gray there. What advice would I give myself? Okay, so starting out, there was me and two others. I started out, classic story of starting out in Europe. I actually had a converted garage into an office before office, home office working was
Chris Simmance:
Yeah,
Chris Norton:
a thing.
Chris Simmance:
yeah.
Chris Norton:
And I would say, I thought, right, I read all this stuff online because I’ve been blogging for. since a long time ago, like 20 years probably. And I read all the information about how to set up a business. Networking is, networking is the number one thing. Get out and network. I’m sure you tell your clients that. Network, network, network. So I went out to all these business events and I was going out. So what I did was as soon as I started out, I joined a networking organization that took me around the region. So I got out and I went
Chris Simmance:
Bye-bye.
Chris Norton:
out four times a week, like networking. Two hours a morning, every morning. That was what I’d spent my time on, as well as blogging and doing
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Norton:
other things like social media, because social media strategy is what I was known for at the time, not many people were doing it. But so I would go out and do presentations and stuff on how to use social strategy and business and stuff like that. But networking, fucking waste of time. Absolutely. Like, yeah, because if you’re, it’s great, right? It’s great if you’re networking in the right places. I was networking out there with other businesses that are all starting out. And I did get some work and yes, it paid, it covered itself, but the amount of time I wasted going out to events with 30 people sat in there who let’s face it, they’re all startup businesses and telling them who I am, what I did. First of all, you’ve got to explain what the hell PR is, what marketing is. That’s what most business owners do. You hear that? That’s the fire alarm. Most
Chris Simmance:
No,
Chris Norton:
business
Chris Simmance:
well there
Chris Norton:
owners.
Chris Simmance:
you go. Safe office to be in.
Chris Norton:
Most business owners don’t really even know what bloating marketing is when they start out. So it was meeting lots of people that I couldn’t predominantly sell to, if you know what I mean. So
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Chris Norton:
it was
Chris Simmance:
I,
Chris Norton:
a bit of a waste of time.
Chris Simmance:
one of the things that I’ve learned more in the last, say three years working with agencies than, than I did running my own is, is the absolute requirement to know exactly who you’re selling to and then go to where those people are and networking is, is brilliant. It’s brilliant. If you’re in the right place in front of the right people, there’s no point in going to like the startups. breakfast networking once a week. If you are, you can only work with established legal brands that have got 10 grand a month. You don’t do it. You go to legal con or whatever the conference is and have it and pay five grand to do a talk about social media or whatever else it might well be. Um, you networking is great. If your audience are at that you want to work with that are a fit for your business and are easy to work with and pay the money. If they’re there, go there. If they’re not there, absolutely. So, do you think that if you did go back in time and you kind of said, hey, you know, maybe four days a week at these places isn’t gonna do much more than wash its face, do you think you’d have listened to yourself?
Chris Norton:
Yeah, I think so. I think, I think it’s because what you do is I’m, I’m the reason why I run this. I’m quite driven. I’m in fact, I’m very driven. I think I’d said to you before this call, I get a bit obsessed with things. So I’m obsessed with being busy and that can be, that can transpire when you’re starting out as being a busy fool, because you have to do, you have to wear a lot of hats and you have to set out. And I was just keen to smash the world and show them how good we could be as a, as a company. And obviously it was me and one other. I started out on my own and then I got somebody within the first four or five months. That was the other thing I learned by the way, which is it’s great being freelance and setting up on your own until you realize you can’t now win business, deliver the business and grow. Scalability was one of the lessons. But both these lessons were learned in the first year. I mean, I did marketing at A level and then I’ve done PR all my life at university and then I taught at university. But. Stupidly, for some reason, I didn’t realize that I always thought the big thing was networking, go out and network, meet as many people as you can, and the connections will open the doors to you. And it worked to a certain extent, but you’re right. You go where the fish are. That’s the key.
Chris Simmance:
Yep.
Chris Norton:
And I learned that very, very quickly, but it’s amazing what you just typical cobbler’s shoes. You, you, you do, you don’t practice what you preach. Like I do in PR and in terms of media, in terms of relationships
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Chris Norton:
with journalists, but I It was like trying to craft new relationships with, you know, but now it’s totally different. But back
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Chris Norton:
then I learned that lesson. Within the first six months, I was like, right, I need to change strategy. And I did. And then the business just went boom. And obviously, yeah, it’s just grown and grown and grown. But I believe in controlled growth rather than investment to grow. Not just because some people just grow to get numbers, you know, of like you say, this many people,
Chris Simmance:
Yeah,
Chris Norton:
et cetera.
Chris Simmance:
there’s a vanity in there. And we’re all, we’re all prone to ego and vanity in our own various ways and things like that. But not knowing what success is for yourself often ends up meaning that you might be incredibly driven, but driven where you could, you know, just driving is going to crash into something. You’ve got to have a map and you’ve got to know where you’re going. And so being, having a plan is, is essential. And knowing like where the fish are going exactly where you need to go. You then have the right application of, of investment time, money, resource, et cetera, um, to, to yield a, like I say, controlled growth. Um, there’s no controlled growth could be massively fast. It could be relatively slow. It can be, it can be anything in between, but it’s growth that you know, you’re doing in the right steps. And that’s what it plans for. And the amount of times that, you know, you’re you’re talking to people and they’re working really hard and they’re really, really busy. But you know, if you ever did get to the point where you could have a genuine conversation like, yeah, but why are you doing it? They’d be like, um, well, you know, and then that’s it, you know, once they identify why they’re doing it, then it makes the whole plan a little bit more different, doesn’t it?
Chris Norton:
Chris, the amount of clients that I speak to about that with social media strategy, why are you on this channel? Oh, because the competition are. But why are you doing it? You’re not getting anything out. Why are you spending all your time? And you sort of take a step, when you take a step back and turn the helicopter, exactly what you’re saying, why are you doing that?
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Chris Norton:
But it’s when you’re in it, when you’re in it, when you fight in the battles, when you’re in the trenches, running a bloody company. It’s that it can be hard to see the wood for the tree. So you write a plan
Chris Simmance:
Really? Yeah.
Chris Norton:
and being on top of the numbers.
Chris Simmance:
Absolutely.
Chris Norton:
That’s key. Key thing.
Chris Simmance:
And so little nod to your podcast here. And what’s your podcast called?
Chris Norton:
podcast called socially unacceptable and it’s all about celebrating marketing mistakes
Chris Simmance:
Mm-hmm.
Chris Norton:
and fuck ups if you’re running in Marketing or you enjoy people making mistakes That’s what it’s all about It’s about what people other people have learned and I just the reason why I did that My podcast on that was because I was I’ve been at conferences where everyone just bangs on like we’re doing now talking about
Chris Simmance:
Mm-hmm.
Chris Norton:
what’s gone Well, and actually I don’t want to hear what’s gone. Well, I want to hear what’s fucking gone wrong. What have you gone wrong? What have you done wrong? And how have you learned from that? Because you get so much more from that, which is probably one of your questions. What’s your biggest failure?
Chris Simmance:
Which is a neat segue into,
Chris Norton:
Uff.
Chris Simmance:
is there anything that you kind of regret doing? Like when you’re running the age, when you’ve been running the agency, is there anything you regret that you did that either was a big mistake that’s kind of hurt a little bit or something that kind of set you up for your current level of success?
Chris Norton:
Success is, I would say, I never, as a business owner, never ever look at it as success. I’m constantly looking for the next thing.
Chris Simmance:
me.
Chris Norton:
I’m constantly innovating, constantly looking. I don’t, it’s like those footballers that win trophies and they say they don’t enjoy it. I’m sort of like that. So that’s why the awards thing is key for it. Because I think people should celebrate success. But as the owner and the person looking at the vision all the time, three years ahead, three years ahead, you know, even one year ahead. Um, you have to stay focused, um, which is what I’ve not done on your questions. So let’s get back to it.
Chris Simmance:
Hahaha
Chris Norton:
Um, what do, what do I regret? Um, well, I would say firstly, like I started out and I had a lot of friends and I tried to run it as a, it’s weird when you start out and there’s a few of you, it’s like a cool thing, it’s you, she was against the world siege mentality. And I think that as, as you got to, I’ve heard you talk to a number of other owners saying that 15 is the number when. There’s like different stages of agency development.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, yeah.
Chris Norton:
I’ve heard you on other podcasts talking about it. And you’re right. And I think when I got there, I realized that you can’t run this as everybody’s mate anymore. People are coming, people are going, people are having babies, people are developing their careers and moving on. And instead of taking it personally, as you’ve told me you did with a client or an
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Chris Norton:
employee left, I’ve just learned that it’s just part of life, isn’t it?
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, absolutely.
Chris Norton:
All you can do as an employer and as a business owner is create the best working environment for people to feel that they’re enjoying and being developed and you listen to what they’ve got to say. But you can’t be the best mate every day. Just like I heard Jürgen Klopp talking, I’m a Liverpool fan, sorry, everybody’s switched off now, and he said, you know, I am their friend, but I’m not their best friend.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Chris Norton:
Which is a great way, a great bit of leadership. That’s true, that, because you’ve got to make the hard decisions as well.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah. And being a good leader is making good followers. And you do that with hiring the right people, but you have to, they have to buy into the person that’s in, in charge. And, and that’s, that’s where that friend, but not best friend bit comes in, I, I guess. So, and conversely, then, you know, talked about like, you know, trying to be mates with as many and everyone as possible. What, what did you do kind of? at the start out of the starting gate that was something that’s almost been pervasive throughout and it’s unchanged from day one.
Chris Norton:
All right, well that’s,
Chris Simmance:
Apart from the name.
Chris Norton:
well yeah, the name did change, so
Chris Simmance:
Ha ha
Chris Norton:
that’s awkward. For legal reasons, I gotta talk about that. Yeah, so jokes. So basically what I’ve always believed in from the outset, like that everybody that works for me should be either PR or Social Media qualified, so sorry, PR or Journalism qualified. That has changed, but it has stayed across the board of all the clients, all the… employees that deliver to clients on the PR side. What has changed is what we talked about earlier, where creative and video has come into it. So those guys aren’t actually PR people now. So I’ve got teams that aren’t actually PR and journalism qualified, but everybody that is client facing on the PR side and social side is PR or journalism trained. So it’s not like what I mean by that is… I get a lot of recruitment consultants offering me, oh, I’ve got this great social media manager. I’m like, I’m sorry, I’m not interested. And it’s because I want to be good at what we’re good at. I understand that maybe some social media managers, there’s some very good ones. I know a lot of them, they come to our events and we’ve got a lot of clients like that. But as a PR agency, I wanna make sure that everybody that works here predominantly, except for the creative team. our PR and journalism training because at the end of the day, you want the best advice in this sector. If you want SEO, technical SEO advice, I can give you some, but then I’ll bring you on to a specialist that I know who’s brilliant, miles better than me. I’m not going to bullshit my way through a conversation. I always think that specialist specialisms is great. And I’ve heard you also talked before about agencies that want to do everything. Obviously we do offer lots of different services, but I always say our… our focus is PR and social media. That’s where my heart lies, and that’s where the fun is for me.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah. And, and, uh, there’s a diff, I, I would say that, you know, at 30 people, there’s a difference between, um, offering several services versus five people trying to offer several services, um, and, you know, you can do it a little bit more confidently because you’ve got some backing of other people, systems, processes, things like that. And also it’s a, it’s a, an upsell referral lead gen machine of itself. If you have other services at that scale, but when you’re, when you’re an agency of five people offering SEO PPC. digital PR, link building, social media, etc. And you’re trying to do that for all niches, all businesses, all sizes from 500 pounds a month to 5000 pounds a month, it’s gonna be a problem.
Chris Norton:
Yeah, I mean, you can’t specialize in every sector. But the difference with being in the North of the course in the UK is interesting in our sector. Difference with being in the North is I do find that we are more in more sectors because if you work in London,
Chris Simmance:
Mm.
Chris Norton:
you could be a tech PR agency that just specializes in tech or a healthcare PR. I’ve worked in both of those, by the way, healthcare specialist and a tech specialist or a consumer PR. Whereas we have those specialisms in our teams, but we don’t, we’re not Just that because if you did that in the North, there’s not as much businesses as in London, obviously.
Chris Simmance:
Mm-mm.
Chris Norton:
But with the way the world being virtual now, that has changed quite a lot. And I’m sure you’ve seen that with your clients, haven’t
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Chris Norton:
you?
Chris Simmance:
Huge. There’s a, there’s a big swing with, um, in almost every area of all agencies at the minute, and it’s only going to get a much deeper swing in the next few years, given all of the, uh, changes with the re in and around AI, but also the economy, um, if you’ve built an agency from the bottom up, um, it’s, you’re probably going to need to make some significant changes if you’ve built an agency from the top down and you’ve got really good thinkers and really, really clever specialists. probably going to do all right. Um, the, the bottom up approach is, is good. You’re going to struggle a little bit now, not because the people are bad, but because there’s robots and there’s tools that will do the work. Um, and also if budgets are constrained from a client’s point of view, and they could do some of that stuff at scale, then it’s going to be a, it’s going to be a dicey ground, you’ve got to make the right decisions.
Chris Norton:
But I think that might be a race to the bottom. Like actually AI is great,
Chris Simmance:
Hmm.
Chris Norton:
but it’s not great yet.
Chris Simmance:
No? No, no, agreed, yeah.
Chris Norton:
It’s good to start some of the menial tasks, but if actually creativity and brilliant creative people, there’s a real scope for opportunity here, like
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Chris Norton:
where the greatest creatives are gonna stand out, like the best people at what they do. Because if everybody uses AI, they’ll just be the law of averages on everything.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah, well,
Chris Norton:
It’s
Chris Simmance:
okay. Okay,
Chris Norton:
like when
Chris Simmance:
I’ll
Chris Norton:
you
Chris Simmance:
tell
Chris Norton:
see
Chris Simmance:
you
Chris Norton:
the
Chris Simmance:
this.
Chris Norton:
technical, it’s like when you use one of those technical SEO tools like Surfer, right? And what it does is it scrapes the top 100 rankings on Google and then gives you the average. So then you make your content and you, and lo and behold, your best content appears seventh because you’re the average of the averages. It’s
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Chris Norton:
the same, that same sort of thing. You know what I mean?
Chris Simmance:
24 minutes into the into the episode in a year’s time, when you come back for season two, we’re going to replay this one minute and see what’s changed. And I don’t know. I that’s the, that’s the beauty of predictions. You never really, really do know. And I do think that you’re right in terms of the AI from a delivery, delivery point of view and all that sort of thing. Um, it’s more the case that I suspect that, uh, If a business comes to an agency for specialist support, they would want the strategy and the process of the implementation of deliverables, where quite a lot of other deliverables like at scale can be done in a non-human way. Then lots of those humans that are doing a lot of non-human needed deliverables now should bloody upscale as quickly as possible.
Chris Norton:
don’t get me wrong, we’ve got four or five different AI tools we’re already using because I invest in technology. We’re already using them for our staff. Absolutely, I’ve read surveys that are saying some marketing people just don’t want to use AI and it’s like, well, don’t be stupid. You’ve got to innovate.
Chris Simmance:
Yeah.
Chris Norton:
The industry, the world’s going to change. Otherwise, you’re going to be left behind. But I do think that the human touch is still great for creative.
Chris Simmance:
Absolutely. Chris, someone has come all the way up to your office. You guys are inside because it was only a testifier alarm and they’ve knocked on your door and they said can I speak to Chris? I need to ask him one piece of advice. I’m about to start my own agency. You accept that meeting and they ask you for your advice. What one thing are they going to walk away with that from that meeting?
Chris Norton:
Okay. It’s quite straightforward. Get niche, get big and get out.
Chris Simmance:
Yep.
Chris Norton:
A wise man, I wish I could say that was my quote, but a very, very rich man told me that when I was, before I started out in marketing and he said, he runs, owns like a hundred and he was like the chairman of a marketing organisation. They own a lot of companies, but he shall remain nameless, but he said, get niche, get big and get out. And I was like, That’s actually very good advice!
Chris Simmance:
It
Chris Norton:
It
Chris Simmance:
is.
Chris Norton:
still is!
Chris Simmance:
It does work. Yeah, I’ve talked about this countless times, one to one with agency leaders in this podcast. Being in some form of a niche means that you can be the specialist. Being in some form of a niche means that because you’re a specialist, you can command better rates, you get better referrals, referrals are cheaper than, than doing the marketing. The marketing does itself for yourself if you are the niche in the niche, and then can be the thing in the space and then it’s way more sellable to someone else in the future who wants to be the thing in the space but can’t build it themselves. Yeah, absolutely brilliant advice. Chris, thank you so much for coming onto the episode, it’s been really great to talk to you and in a year-ish or so’s time we’ll be listening to minute 24 of this again and having a good old laugh at who was right and who was wrong.
Chris Norton:
I hate the fact you’ve timestamped that. It’s gonna come back to bite me on the ass, isn’t it?
Chris Simmance:
On Riverside you can press Mark Clip and I have done.
Chris Norton:
All right. Okay. Great. So I’m going to see that all over TikTok. Brilliant.
Chris Simmance:
some point. Yeah.
Chris Norton:
Yeah. Excellent.
Chris Simmance:
Thanks so much for coming on.
Chris Norton:
Yeah. Cheers, Chris. That was good.
Chris Simmance:
And in our next episode, we’ll be speaking with another agency leader to hear their story and the lessons they learned along the way. Thanks very much for listening.