Why Independent Agencies Are Making Waves in the Advertising World with Nigel Roberts

00:00 - Nigel (Guest)
Strategy is king. I would rather do a straightforward execution expression of a good strategic thought than a wildly creative expression of the wrong, of a not so good strategic thought, because you get the strategy right and you're more than halfway there.

00:18 - Mike (Host)
My name's Mike Lander and you're listening to Higgle, the B2B sales club podcast, where we bring you actionable insights about sales, rfps, negotiations and difficult procurement discussions from sales leaders, brand leaders and procurement leaders. Please subscribe to get updates when new episodes are released. Nigel, thanks ever so much for joining me on Higgle, the B2B Sales Club podcast. I'm really, really delighted to have you. It's a pleasure.

00:47 - Nigel (Guest)
Mike Happy to join.

00:48 - Mike (Host)
So I'm looking forward to this enormously because it's a slightly different take on the whole agency-client commercial agenda around creativity. So, first of all, just like, tell the audience that's listening who are you, what do you do? And, rather than something unusual about yourself, this time, talk about a campaign that you worked on, that you led, that really stood out in your mind, and why.

01:09 - Nigel (Guest)
Okay, my name is Nigel Roberts. I've been in the industry as a creative for many, many years now. I started way back when Sarchies as a junior copywriter and I've moved on to a number of the big major network agencies, including Ogilvy and TBWA and AMV and the like, and as well quite a few smaller, more independent companies, most notably which Lagos Delaney. I did two stints at Lagos Delaney. So, yes, quite a few years at quite a few agencies, and it's a difficult question which, what campaign that I worked on, stands out the most or whatever, because obviously over those years you work on a lot of different things, and that's kind of the big appeal to me of the job, really, you're always working on something completely different and so it's very varied, and then some of those things will be more satisfying than others, obviously. But I think the sort of campaign that I'm probably most proud of would be the Protect Philippe campaign. It was a pitch that I did at Lagos Delaney a long time ago, nearly 30 years ago now, and I think that, while it's never won any creative awards or anything else, it's the strength of the strategic thought behind it that I think is really satisfying, because it did position the brand in a very different place to all of the other brands. They all do wonderful and incredible engineering, micro engineering, and they're all pretty much in the same sort of territory at the top end brands, but none of them are really saying anything of any real value. To be honest. They were associating themselves with celebrities and they were talking about the various things, but nothing really sort of cut through.

02:55
And whereas the campaign that we did for the pitch, which then was the campaign that they produced and have continued to produce for nearly 30 years now, it was based on the fact that a lot of men particularly are short of legacies that they can hand on to their children and whatever. A watch is as personal a thing as you can have, really the thing that you wear pretty much every day and it's been with you in different things. So that value of the watch being something that you will hand on to your offspring, yeah, it really resonated with the brand and it has done with its audience and it's continued ever since. I can remember, when we were working on the pitch, saying to my art director at the time my excuse for spending more than I needed to on a watch was that it was something to pass on to my son and that was basically. That was it, that was the campaign. So, yeah, it's lovely to still see it out there.

03:54 - Mike (Host)
It stands today, and every time I see the advert, I didn't even know you were behind that, which is interesting. Every time I see it, it makes me smile.

04:02 - Nigel (Guest)
Yeah, it's lovely. I mean it's based on a human truth and that's what I think. I think the best advertising is it's based on something that is real. It gives you a reason to care about the product. I'm not a fan of work that just sort of tries to dance its way into your attention or whatever else. The best advertising for me is rooted in something which rooted in a good insight or truth that absolutely I can appreciate it.

04:30
For when you're just trying to find something to sort of dress things up and just make it more interesting for the sake of advertising, they tend to be short-lived. So the greatest campaigns Guinness fabulous campaign, great, great sort of twist of a problem of having to wait for it and turning that into a benefit, into its biggest sort of asset it was fantastic. The Economist, everything about that was just a beautifully intelligent campaign. That, just again, that ran for I think it was over 25 years. I remember we did an anniversary for the Economist of 25 years of wonderful executions of the campaign and it carried on for a couple of years after that and then somebody in their limited wisdom decided it was time to move on.

05:21 - Mike (Host)
So interesting, nigel, and we hadn't prepared this part of the kind of the theme for the podcast. But when I think of advertising, the kind of the first thing I think is sales. I think, well, you advertise to sell more product, but obviously that's a naive assumption is that advertising can be, and often is, as its brand, about long-lasting messaging in the consumer's mind that stays with you forever. I think it's an interesting balance.

05:49 - Nigel (Guest)
It still is absolutely about selling. The agencies I've admired and enjoyed working at the most have been the ones that do have genuine integrity to their client's business. They know that they're there for a reason. They've always been agencies that are so awards-driven and everything else, and sometimes that can sort of you can slip into being a little bit self-indulgent about how clever the ad is rather than how effective it's going to be, and I think my basic formula for advertising has always been it's got to engage and persuade.

06:22
It's a simple thing. It's not easy to do those things, but it's simple. It has to do both of those things and I think a lot of marketing for a lot of brands at best does one of them, but it doesn't do both. And I think unless you do both you're either not going to get, you're not going to earn your audience's attention in the first place, so it doesn't matter what you've got to say, or you've got their attention and then you haven't sort of made the most of it. You haven't converted their intention into any sort of propensity to actually involve themselves with what you've got to offer. So I think the arrival of the funnel that everybody sticks to quite rigidly these days did sort of affect that really and I struggled with that.

07:02 - Mike (Host)
The audience. By the way, when Nigel said funnel, his eyebrows shot up into the air with some element of disdain.

07:11 - Nigel (Guest)
Well it just threw me because I sort of thought well, hang on, you've got an opportunity to engage the consumer, you've got a period of time or a space or a media space somewhere. Why would you not do the persuasion bit? Why would you do the awareness bit and then step away? Yes, and sort of no, no, no, the persuasion bit that comes later.

07:33
That comes later. Yeah, we'll do a call to action. So you know, the persuasion bit is tell somebody to go and buy it now. Does that make you more likely to want to buy it? Just being told whatever, send off for this or whatever. I didn't really understand that, I think. You know I kind of liked when the sort of the challenge was to do it all in one go. So I think you know, obviously media plans and everything else is quite fragmented and everything else. So I do understand that it's simpler to work that way and you know it's a process that there's no doubt been tried and tested and there's lots of people who would swear by it. But I think there are times when if you can persuade, if you can engage and persuade and do everything in one go, why wouldn't you?

08:14 - Mike (Host)
I mean it's an interesting thought Nigel about and again, I am not a dyed-in-the-wool marketer at all, so I talk about brand and performance as being different types of marketing investment. But in reality, as one of my clients says, they're a big B2B agency in the US. Their CEO says they're both. Brand can perform in the short term. They're just different mechanisms, mechanics, ways of engaging. Yes, Again.

08:43 - Nigel (Guest)
I mean that is simplest. I've always sort of thought that our job is to just help people choose. That's all. Everybody, whatever you're looking at, whatever the product or service or anything is, everyone's got no shortage of options, exactly. And so what we do, when we do it right, is help them decide which product, which brand and everything they're going to go for. And sometimes that can be quite subliminal. Sometimes it can be, if you're trundling through the supermarket, whatever else, you reach out and grab the one that you want without giving it that much thought. But you've planted somewhere. The marketing in the past has planted something in your head that makes you choose.

09:21
I always find it funny when people say I'm not affected by advertising. Why are you driving an Audi and wearing Levi's and smoking Marlboros and whatever else and all those things Exactly? It's all? Yeah, it's of course it works. When it's done well, it works brilliantly. It's a fantastic tool for businesses.

09:42
But I think it's a shame really that I think the industry's lost its way. It's lost its focus on doing the kind of work that's clearly of benefit to clients, and I think a lot of brands have. Just they've lost the respect for it really, so they've lost the sense that it is potentially enormously valuable, and so obviously a lot of brands started bringing their resource in-house and everything else, and some of those brands have done. Specsavers is the obvious example. They've done some great work, but some are limited. It all depends, I think. Again, going back to the point of the appeal to me as a creative, which you're always working on something different, so there aren't that many brands that I'd want to be sort of wedded to and that's all I ever work on. You know, obviously some brands have lots of fantastic products and you know, if you're working for Nike or Apple or something like that, then fine, you've still got a fairly broad portfolio.

10:40 - Mike (Host)
P&G, Unilever. You've got a very broad portfolio, Absolutely.

10:49 - Nigel (Guest)
But I think, because that shift away from the sort of confidence and respect for what agencies do again becomes self-perpetuating, because then there's less and less work that you can really put on a pedestal and you can clearly see is really affecting the client's business in positive ways, it's sort of moves things towards kind of just being there, just awareness. I remember many, many years ago at DMB&B that doesn't exist anymore and I think it was Mars at the time and they were doing some posters as a poster brief and I think it was, the group head said no, no, no, no, no. They just want brand saliency. And I thought, okay, but why would you just want to show that you exist? Surely you can do more than that. I mean, just stick a big logo up, fine, exactly.

11:35
And then you get into the trap of well, where are you adding value? Because the client can do that themselves. I'd loved it. As a junior creative, I thought the chance to have an audience of millions, whether it's for a 48-sheet poster campaign or a TV ad or whatever else, you've got a huge audience that gets to see your idea, what you've done, and hopefully respond to it in a positive way. So why wouldn't you try and make the absolute best of that opportunity to do it so sticking up a logo surely you can do more than that.

12:11 - Mike (Host)
So we have got some questions, nigel, which I'll come back to in a second, but you're taking me down a rabbit hole which I'm actually quite enjoying.

12:17
No, no, no, not at all. No, because you've taken my mind somewhere, which is it's a genuine question. I don't know the answer. When you're creating an advert for a client or a campaign for a client and you've done a brilliant piece of strategy work that leads into the creative output, what's the impact of words versus imagery? Because I think words. Do I really read the words? Maybe not. I see the image, and does it depend on the consumer, or is there some science behind it, or what's the thought?

12:48 - Nigel (Guest)
As a copywriter. Well, I didn't. Interestingly enough, I didn't start off planning to be a copywriter. I went to, as most advertising creatives did. I went to art school Not a very good one. I won't name names, no, don't. They didn't actually do advertising, I was doing design and I decided that I was a bit crap at it, so I needed to do something else. And my brother actually I have an older brother who started doing advertising and I thought that's much more interesting, so I'm just going to copy him. So I did, and so I did the D&AD workshops.

13:23
So you come down to an agency, they would give you a brief, you go away and work on it and then you go back a week later and they'd tear it to pieces. And it was a good, hard learning path. That way. You saw some great people in some of the best agencies and you really went away. Even if they rubbished what you did which more often than not they did for good reason you learned a lot from it.

13:46
And so when I finished art school and wanted to get a job, I thought, well, I've been to art school, I thought I'll be an art director, but I couldn't find a copywriter that I particularly liked their work or admired it or whatever else. And it was Greg Delaney who told me well, you've been doing your own writing so far, so why don't you carry on doing that? Because there's lots more art directors around. There's loads of them. Find yourself an art director and then get your first job Once you're in. Then it'll be much easier to change. Once you're in and you've got the job settled, then you say, oh, I want to be an art director now and you can swap over. But once I'd started doing it I actually preferred doing the words side of it because, yeah, it was more. You could get more into the sort of psychology of it and everything else. And I think you make that connection. Don't get me wrong. I think art direction, there are some brilliant art directors, there's some great visual work around the place. The visual element of any piece of communication is crucial and it's massively overlooked. And I've got to say I've got a big up Uncommon these days.

14:49
I think they've done a brilliant job of bringing the craft back into a lot of advertising. I see their price campaign, for British Airways just tells you that it's 49 quid to go to Verona, and I think it actually is 49 quid to go to Verona, because I noticed it and it told me everything it needs to. But they did it in such a beautiful way the very well-thumbed little guidebook to Verona with the boarding pass or whatever it is poking out of it. It's a deadly, deadly simple concept, but so much care has gone into it that it deserved my attention and I think that's great that they've done that and I think there should be more of it. And at OPC, which is the agency I'm with now, I'm a creative partner of a small new independent agency, trying to sort of remember all the good things about what we used to do, and craft is something that we're really trying to get back in.

15:44
But you're up against time and budgets all the time. I get why craft disappeared Because suddenly you don't have three weeks to beautify a concept before it needs to go to production. You've got about half a day. So how much craft can you inject into it? So the visual side of it. Sorry, I'm rambling again, aren't I?

16:06 - Mike (Host)
I wouldn't call it rambling no More like a tour de force really, nigel.

16:11 - Nigel (Guest)
No, the visual side of it I massively like, and there are times when especially when it's time for a sort of foreign shoot or something when I envied the art directors again. But I like being involved in what's the message. You mentioned this once the strategy is done and everything else. And again, strategy is king. I would rather do a straightforward execution expression of a good strategic thought than a wildly creative expression of the wrong, of a not so good strategic thought, because you get the strategy right and you're more than halfway there.

16:46 - Mike (Host)
So let's just kind of draw on. Given your vast industry experience and, very clearly, advertising credentials, do you fear that the advertising industry is shifting from a creative-driven to a more process-driven mindset, obviously potentially devaluing the craft as we just talked about and the impact of great advertising? Yes, I do.

17:10 - Nigel (Guest)
Yeah, it has, sadly. And again, I understand it. It's a business, it's not a, you know it's. I used to think it's not art and it's not poetry, but it can be, but it's a business at the end of the day. And therefore the process. Obviously you've got to validate fees, fees, and therefore the more work that you do, the more you can justify a higher fee and everything else.

17:39
The idea it's very contradictory, isn't it? The I struggled with the idea that you would put your work into focus groups, which are, it's like a pack of wolves, and embrace the learning of what they felt you'd done wrong, whether they were correct in what they're thinking or not, and go again and then do the same thing again and go again. How an industry could kind of embrace the opportunity for somebody to tell you that you hadn't done it very well because it perpetuated the process. I didn't really understand that. And I remember the whole focus groups thing. Patrick Collister didn't really understand that.

18:13
And I remember there was a whole focus groups thing Patrick Collister did when we were at Ogilvy, did a simple little exercise with us and when we were sort of having a moan about the things that had come out of the focus groups, which we disagreed with ferociously. But he took a pad and did 10 very simple little arithmetic sums on them, just little. You know 2 plus 3 equals 5, and 7 minus 4 equals 3, and this, that and the other. And then he held them up and said what do you think? And you looked at it and you went that one's wrong. Christ's sake, nine of them are right and all you've got to say is one of them is wrong.

18:46
And that's how everybody in focus groups who opt for it. They feel that they're obliged to find the problem. So you create problems. You feel like you haven't earned your egg and crust sandwich or bottle of Bex or something unless you've spotted an error of the agency. So much good work is destroyed that way. So I think you combine the fact that you need a certain process to justify the fee level or supposedly, supposedly because you can't. How do you quantify how good an idea is, especially before it's actually run and anybody's had a chance to see whether it's effective or not? How do you put a price on that? So we've become, you know the meter's running. We're sort of we're paid like by the time that's spent on things, which is ridiculous.

19:33 - Mike (Host)
And Nigel, as you know, one of my kind of favorite campaigns for many, many years ago on TV was the gorilla with the drum kit and the chocolate and I think when that was I think I was talking to David Meikle about it when that was first run and put in front of the board and put in front of the consumers, it didn't go down well. Now, had we listened to all of that feedback, that campaign would never have aired. Absolutely Thank.

19:55 - Nigel (Guest)
God for the tenacity of the agency and everyone involved in it of hanging on in there and sort of keeping pushing until they wore the client down and they did it, and then, of course, for the next 10, 15, 20 years after that. All, every brief, yes, every brief, every brief, including we want a Cadbury's Gorilla. Yeah well, you know, of course you do, but can you buy one? It's the nature of anything that's genuinely fresh, thinking and original, or whatever else, is going to fall foul of focus groups because they're not used to it You're looking for.

20:31 - Mike (Host)
Well, we only know what we know. Yeah, focus groups, because they're not used to it. You're looking for Well we only know what we know. We don't know or understand often what we don't know, and that was part of the beauty of what Apple did. The customer wasn't screaming out for the latest iPod, iphone, whatever device it was, but they created that an amazing market.

20:49 - Nigel (Guest)
Yeah, yes, and it sort of. It comes back to the. There's been a lot of talk recently, I know, on social media, on LinkedIn and everything. There was a lot of debate about clients being brave and I always thought is there a wrong way around the brave thing? It always scares me when you're in a meeting and somebody talks about this one being the brave idea. If you're feeling brave, nobody wants to have to feel brave.

21:10 - Mike (Host)
if you're feeling brave, nobody wants to have to feel brave surely, as an ex-procurement director, if someone says to me do you feel brave? All I do is go. You mean, do I want to take lots and lots of risk with an unquantified downside and get fired? Actually, if you don't mind, I don't think I'll bother.

21:33 - Nigel (Guest)
I don't want to be expected to be brave about things. I'd rather somebody tells me that actually it's quite the opposite. This is the stronger idea. The stronger campaign, or whatever else, is the best bet, because that's the most likely to get noticed and have an effect. The bravery comes in doing something that's ultimately fairly invisible and a bit of a waste of time.

21:54 - Mike (Host)
What were you saying before? It has to do two things. What was the two things that you had? I forgot what they were Engage and persuade, engage and persuade. So the best investment is the one that's going to get the highest engagement rate and the highest response rate.

22:10 - Nigel (Guest)
Yeah, yes, of course, but there's so many brands just want to sort of look like the others in the sector and everything. As long as they look like they fit in, then that's enough. Well, it might be. If people think you don't fit in and everyone else is better than you, then fine, elevating it to parity is one thing, but by rights you should be able to find something that actually makes a difference, makes a difference exactly. Back to your sorry, I'm rambling a lot, aren't I? Your initial question of process taking over. I think you combine the whole, the way the agency model, remuneration model, has shifted from that whole thing of it being a proportion of the media spend and everything else, which worked beautifully, it was great to it just being a time base, and then everybody has to do timesheets and the client pays for the amount of time that people spend on things.

23:03 - Mike (Host)
So, nigel, just talk about that remuneration model and how that's impacted the kind of creativity Well, it's put everything on the.

23:11 - Nigel (Guest)
Yeah, the client is paying for the amount of time that people spend on things and how many people are working on it, and therefore it's in the agency's interest to have as many people on it as possible. And, for God's sake, don't rush. You know why would you want to get it right the first time or anything else. You're paying for the process. And you combine that with the way that the media landscape has changed so much with the arrival of digital social media and everything don't like shit, but it's, it's, it's inevitable that a lot of people were kind of forced to sort of fill space, and I think that's that's where it falls apart, really, if you're just if you've got so many different media spaces to fill. And there was an agency again I won't name names, but where I was asked to do some work on something. I was freelancing there and they informed me that no, no, no, I had to fill it out on a spreadsheet. So what?

24:25 - Mike (Host)
the hell.

24:28 - Nigel (Guest)
So all the different shapes and sizes and little nuances of changes of messaging and this, that and the other but where's the oh, my God. But where's the hang on? Hang on. What's the thought at the heart of it? All those little changes or whatever, and it was all about how many characters you're allowed for the top bit of a social post, and that seemed to be the only thing that mattered. Yeah, Not whether it was any good, or not?

24:52 - Mike (Host)
So is this the golden age, a new golden age for independent creative agencies that believe in craft.

25:00 - Nigel (Guest)
Definitely. I mean, I joined OPC just over two years ago on a permanent basis. I'd been helping them out on one or two things before that point, but you know I am, as I said, I've been doing this for a long time now and I want to continue doing it for a while, but only if I'm enjoying it, and I think there's a lot of. I had a weird I won't get into now, it's far too long a story but I found myself in need of a job. I basically I resigned from an agency and the one that I went to told me on the Wednesday before I was due to start on the Monday that they'd lost a couple of accounts so they were making me redundant. So I was made redundant four or five days before I started. So I found myself in need of a new job and there was this horrible realization that there wasn't anywhere really that I wanted to work. Oh Christ, what's happened?

25:54
You know, there's so many great agencies around the place and everything and it was wonderful and some of the again, some of the big, it's not about size. Omnicom was a great sort of parent company. Their agencies, abbott Mead and the like, whatever had all the right agendas and did great work because of it. But I do think that the pressure that they are under now survival and merging and densizing and whatever and pulling together it's all very it's a mixed thing and it feels like it is a golden age for independence, I think, and for craft to come back.

26:29
Yeah, exactly, I mean, as I said before, uncommon has done a wonderful job, I think, for the industry in bringing back not just the craft but the intention to sort of stand out and simplicity of purity of idea and everything else. They're introducing a lot of new benchmarks for things, reintroducing those benchmarks as of you know, neverland and Pablo and these companies and you know there's some great independent agencies now and it is inspiring and I think the only problem is it's very easy to start an agency, obviously.

27:06 - Mike (Host)
Aries to entry of Virtue.

27:07 - Nigel (Guest)
Zero. Yeah, it's you know, for years. Suddenly everybody's started their own business and whatever, and the truth is that's great, but some people aren't ready to start their own business, and I think there are. Simon and myself are on the OPC. We've both got decades of experience on massive global brands and big agency thinking and everything else, and so our thing that we like to offer is the experience of all of that, but now in a much more smaller, more cost-efficient, time-efficient way and everything else. And because it's a simpler process, because you work with us and we build themes and everything else it's a more concentrated process.

27:55 - Mike (Host)
And it's highly personalized. Nigel, this isn't another, so the listeners are clear. This isn't a sponsored podcast. I get guests on from all sorts of agencies, but what I love is with a lot of the well not a lot with the few independent agencies that are coming through that are highly creative, with very senior people. It's very personalized People that know you, nigel, get to work with you.

28:19 - Nigel (Guest)
Yes.

28:19 - Mike (Host)
Whereas in the bigger agencies some of those highly creative leaders maybe are less involved directly in client work now and more involved with managing a very large agency which they have to be and there are massive pressures involved in that and there are some.

28:35 - Nigel (Guest)
I've worked with some people in some agencies and I really didn't envy them their job because the pressure's in the wrong direction. When I was at AMV, peter Sousa said he would be the outward-facing part of the leadership of the creative department, which was great. So he would look after the clients and pitches and this, that and the other, and our job was to look after the creative department's output, the craft, the quality standards, the people in the department and the work that they were doing and whatever else we set it up. He nods it in the goal and that was great. So it freed us of those pressures, the business pressures. All we had to concentrate on was how can we get the best people in the creative department and when we've got them, how can we make sure that they're doing the best work, and then we can nurture and protect that work until, hopefully, it sees the light of day.

29:29 - Mike (Host)
Exactly.

29:30 - Nigel (Guest)
It was a much simpler process, which works. But you get to do that again in a small, independent agency. But again, I don't want to diss all of the big agencies. There are some big agencies. I've still got a massive fondness for AMV. It was a lovely place to be. Leo Burnett is just knocking it out of the park, winning business left, right and center and doing some great work. But I think the real opportunity is for the independents now.

29:56 - Mike (Host)
If you look at the numbers from the big agencies, from the networks, they're really performing. Some of them are really, really performing.

30:02 - Nigel (Guest)
Yeah, of course.

30:02 - Mike (Host)
So let's not as you say. They have their space and they're doing exceptionally well. But there is a space now for indie agencies.

30:09 - Nigel (Guest)
Yes, and there are brands that can only operate with those bigger network agencies, the complexities of what they have to deal with and everything else. Smaller agencies couldn't possibly manage that and I get that. But yeah, it's horses for courses.

30:25 - Mike (Host)
So, nigel, it's been really fascinating. I did have a final question, but actually, is the creative industry doomed or is there hope for us all? Well, again, it's a bit of a naive question, really. Of course there's hope.

30:35 - Nigel (Guest)
Yeah, I think the latter. I think there is hope. I will confess I was getting quite depressed about the way the industry was going and whether there was still a sort of place for me in it really. But then I sort of thought, well, it's kind of doing good work. Now should be like shooting fish in a barrel. It should.

30:54
Good work really stands out now in the way that there are some. There's some work that people are celebrating that 20 years ago that's just yeah, okay, it's good enough, it's doing its job. It's not fun, it's not wonderful. I nearly swore then it's just good. But because I think the general standard is a bit lower now, then good is deemed to be great. So fine, let's do more good. And every now and again there's some great.

31:22
So I think, and, as I say, the work that some of the agencies are doing now, because it is people are saying it really stands out and yeah, there's some new benchmarks and people are beginning to see the value of that again and I think, yeah, I think we could be moving towards a very good period for the creative side of it, the money. People will still struggle to make it all work and everything else, but I hope they manage. Again, the opportunities for strategy as well as creative are enormous. I think we work with some great planners, some great strategists and everything else, and it's lovely when you get to that point of the core thing, what it's all about, that truth, that organizing thought at the heart of it, that then I get to try and find a way of expressing for the actual advertising, when you know that it's right and it defines a brand and everything, then that's when it gets exciting.

32:17 - Mike (Host)
Exactly, and the good thing is, nigel, although I'm a massive advocate of AI, we haven't talked about AI at all on the entire podcast, and let's keep it that way for this one, absolutely.

32:30 - Nigel (Guest)
I'm not, yeah, just.

32:34 - Mike (Host)
We're not going to talk about it exactly. Nigel, where can people find out more about you and your agency?

32:39 - Nigel (Guest)
We have a website. It's called Orange Panther Collective, which we abbreviate to OPC, because people think why the hell is it called that? And that's not my job to explain that. Simon started the agency a few years ago and that was the name that they chose. And, as I say, some people think that's a great name. It's really quirky and some people think it's a bit odd, isn't it? So, you know, OPC is sort of safer, but, yeah, Orange Panther Collective or OPC, we are on there. You can find me on LinkedIn and contact us that way, yeah.

33:12 - Mike (Host)
Very good, nigel. It's been a real pleasure and something very refreshing and different, and it's reminding me of the power of craft.

33:20 - Nigel (Guest)
Thanks, Mike. It's been lovely to join you. And yeah, sorry if I rambled on.

33:24 - Mike (Host)
Not in the slightest. We had a bit of a tour de force around some core topics. So thank you for joining me. Pleasure Thanks, mike. Thanks for listening to Higgle the B2B Sales Club podcast series with your host, mike Lander. Please subscribe so that you'll catch all the next episodes.