Knowlton

8 hours on the train for a 2 hour meeting. Sounds mental, but days like today are some of the most valuable we have. We were presenting our 2027 plans to Refresco. If you haven't heard of them, you've probably drunk something they've made. They're the world's largest independent bottler. 14 billion litres a year, 70+ production sites across Europe, North America & Australia, making drinks for global brands & supermarkets. We've worked with them for four years. We could easily have done it on Google Meet. But you'd miss so much: 1. Sitting across the table from the people who put their faith in you year after year. It builds a relationship a video call never will. 2. Catching up with brand managers we'd normally only see on a screen. 3. The nuances. How people react, what gets them excited. You pick up so much more in the room. 4. The stuff you can't plan for. A few conversations happened today that just wouldn't have happened on a call. Our team puts so much into doing a great job for these brands. The relationship has to be genuine both ways, & that's much easier to build in person. What percentage of your meetings are in person vs virtual? Which ones are worth the travel?

Fourth year running I'm flying to Ibiza to sit in a room and be told what we're getting wrong. Sounds like an odd thing to do, but it's one of the most valuable things I've done to become a better marketer and grow our agency. Agency Hackers Ibiza isn't like any other event I've been to. Yes it's fun. Yes it's brilliantly organised. But that's not why I keep coming back. It's the conversations at 11pm with founders running massive agencies, who'll happily tell you what they got wrong so you don't have to. It's being told "you're overthinking it, just get on the plane" about a decision we'd been sat on for weeks. (We got on the plane. They were right.) It's coming home with a page of notes and two or three people I'll still be ringing in five years. If there's one thing I'd say to any marketer, agency or in-house: find your version of this room. The people who'll tell you the truth are worth more than any course. Anyway, I'm off to be told what we're getting wrong. 😂 Where's your room?

Most people only ever see a campaign once it’s been polished, approved and put out into the world. They don’t see the slightly ridiculous idea that started it. The pitch that nearly didn’t happen. Or the conversations behind the scenes that turned it into something a huge brand was actually willing to put money behind. Yesterday I was in London recording a podcast with Olivia P. from StrategiQ, and this was probably my favourite part of the conversation. We got into the reality behind a load of the campaigns we’ve worked on over the years. The ideas that worked. The ones that sounded completely mental on paper. The things that went wrong. And, importantly, the thinking behind why we recommended them in the first place. Because one thing I’ve learned from working with bigger brands is that the “crazy creative idea” is rarely the difficult bit. The difficult bit is being able to explain why it should work. How it ladders back to the strategy. How it will actually get attention from the right people. And how you’re going to turn that attention into something commercially useful. We’ve been lucky enough to do that now for brands across 13 countries and 5 continents, but there are still plenty of ideas we pitch where I think: “Surely they’re not going to let us do this…” Sometimes they do 😂 Really enjoyed getting into all of that on this podcast! I’ll share the episode when it’s out!

One of the things I still haven’t got used to after 10 years is client feedback: Even when everything seems to have gone well and we’ve had really positive feedback throughout the project… There’s still a little voice in my head convinced the final call is about to start with: “So… we’ve got a few concerns.” Maybe it’s imposter syndrome, maybe I’m just a worrier, maybe it’s because I’ve attached my entire self worth to what clients say about working with us…😂 Who knows, but recently we wrapped up a major project for one of Europe’s leading premium health & wellness brands. But the feedback couldn’t have been more positive. One of my favourite bits of feedback was shared almost instantly in our internal #impact Slack channel. “Nothing to feedback on, on my side. Well, obviously apart from it being really good” The campaign is the bit everyone sees. The work that earns feedback like this is everything that happens before it goes live. Months of planning. Aligning stakeholders. Balancing feedback from different teams and markets. Refining creative. Solving last-minute challenges. Making hundreds of tiny decisions that nobody outside the project will ever notice. When all of that comes together, the campaign has the best chance of succeeding. And when the client notices too, that’s a pretty good feeling. Massively proud of the team on this one! P.S. I wouldn’t reccomend being this wrapped up in work, when things do inevitably go wrong sometimes, your world comes crashing down. But hey, I guess it’s good for our clients, just not my mental health. 😂

How have we got to September already!? This year has absolutely flown by. I was thinking yesterday about how I want to spend September. What I want to focus on. What I want to do more of (and probably less of). And one word kept coming back to me… Balance. My default setting has always been work. Work more. Push harder. Say yes. Get the next thing done. There have definitely been positives to that. A lot of the things I’m proud of wouldn’t have happened without periods of being completely obsessed with work. But there are negatives too. Because work is only one part of life. And I don’t want to be brilliant at that one part while neglecting everything else that matters. So this month I’m going to make a conscious effort to find a better balance between work, family, friends, health, having fun… and occasionally doing absolutely nothing without feeling guilty about it 😂 So, if you’re someone who feels like you’ve found a decent balance between the different parts of your life, what’s genuinely helped you? I’d love to steal some ideas!

Get in!! Cameo Apples have just confirmed they want to work with us in 2027! Our ninth year together. They must be getting sick of us by now 😂 Lloyd, Ethan & I recently went up to meet the board in person and present our 2026 performance. A record-breaking year, hitting 195% of our stretch goals. Which made presenting the results even more enjoyable. But getting the nod for another year means just as much to me. When we first started working with Cameo, most of our clients were local businesses around Thanet. Since then, we’ve supported brands in 13 countries across 5 continents. Seeing where our team’s work ends up still blows my mind. And Cameo have been with us through almost all of that journey. Huge thank you to the Cameo team for continuing to trust us. And the Knowlton team for 8 years of innovation in our approach to get here! Now we just have the small task of beating a record-breaking year. Game on!