Kevin Styles on brand trust and social media

Welcome to Trailblazers Kevin. Thank you Jasper, good morning. Delighted to be here. Inaugural trip to India, 48 hours in. How's it going? Amazing. I mean I've never been to India. I've traveled the world over but this has been a real eye-opener. It's like a melting pot of many different cultures and experiences and it's been fascinating to see. Are you feeling the energy, are you feeling the youth, are you feeling the future? I'm feeling the positivity actually. I mean it's really stark in contrast versus an economy like the UK for instance at the moment. We're not quite in a recession but nearly. Or but. And then you look at this economy and it's booming.

And I think it's phenomenally exciting to see the growth and the positivity and the optimism that's coming through. Well and it's interesting isn't it of course because we can't consider the future without considering the context. So UK, so-called mature, bit older, zero growth. India, so-called immature, incredibly young, growing at a rate of knots. OK. So there's the context. Kevin, you're at the helm of a business, the centerpiece of which is media. You know, it dominates your P&L. Jamie Oliver, most watch chef on earth, most red chef on earth, all of that. But in terms of the future of media, it's changing fast. Tell us what you're seeing.

I mean, I think it's certainly for us as a business media is multifaceted and you can think about traditional media, TV, commissioning, production, airing, etc. But also social media, you know, digital marketing, those sorts of things. The combination is what's key. I'm not I don't subscribe to the view that it's all about social media, traditional media is dead. I think you need a combination. And here's why. So for us particularly, it's about using media for the purpose of driving reach, reputation, awareness, revenue. It's about leveraging different social media platforms to be really relevant and show up with the right content for the right opportunity and the right customer audience. And blending those two things together. It's about e-commerce.

It's about using the right technological capabilities to market in the right way, to sell in the right way, to be relevant to customers in the right way. So I think it's a real combination of things that actually work. And Kevin, on a practical level, because you're at the you know, you're at the content creation end of media. Shagata will will come to you and talk to comms in a minute. You're maybe more at the distribution end of it. How do you work with your partners and the broader media community, Kevin, to sort of forecast the future? How do you keep a weather eye on where all of this is going?

I think that's just about being aware and close to consumers, to market trends, to being open to innovation, to thinking about what's what the possibilities are and testing for them. I'm a big believer in fail fast. And what I mean by that, I mean, if you have an amazing idea, if you have a perspective on what's coming, just test it. Because you don't know the future. Because you don't know. You just don't know. And I think consumers throughout my whole career, listen, I started in marketing a long, long time ago, 30 plus years ago. And the one thing I've learned is either they don't know what they want or they can't forecast what they want and neither can you.

And actually, no amount of research is actually going to tell you accurately what the future is going to do. And I think, therefore, you have to have a real kind of perspective on testing stuff and keeping on testing stuff and thinking about, oh, how could that be useful? How can I show up here? What might the customer do with that? How are they going to react? Testing is the best way of doing that. Well, it's interesting, isn't it? So there's a kind of handsome is as handsome does trumps the future. The future is not known. And the customer almost needs to be told the future on a kind of build and they will come principle. They often don't know. They don't know.

But I think if you think about early adopters, they're a great group to test the future with. So people who are always ready, open to something new, something different, different way of doing something, using that group to test for the future is always quite interesting because you're going to get a bunch of customers who are much more conservative or reticent to do things or don't change very quickly. But the early adopters, I think, are always interesting because they are a litmus test of what will be in demand in the future. That's a very interesting way of looking at it. It's sort of linked to what Neelama says about inclusivity is about openness and those open people who are open to the future.

But let's stay on these consumers, Kevin, because you can't help but feel we're drowning in a world of information, data, etc. How do you think about cutting through that to appeal to me, Jasper, this consumer, not some other consumer? I think it's a really good point because I think over the last five, ten years, most consumers, because of mobile phones, really, have been bombarded with messages, with marketing, with just constant waves of communication and promotion by businesses. And I actually think the biggest trend over the next ten years is going to be this thing around data and personalization. So make it relevant to me. Stop firing all this stuff at me that may not be relevant to me.

And act in a way that's much more responsible, much more relevant, much more personalized by using data to understand Jasper and to understand what's right for you, what products, what services, how do we show up and be relevant for you and be useful for you. That requires data, it requires technology. Technology doesn't date, technology that updates constantly. And insight to understand what it is about you and what you like that makes what we do useful and relevant to you. And this thing, we often talk about this on the show, it's kind of a holy grail of marketing. Are you confident it's going to happen, Kevin? In a sense a lot of people talk about it, but I still don't feel Jasper-ish. I can see it happening. I mean, I'll give you a for instance.

Even two years ago maybe on Instagram, I wouldn't have bought anything as a consumer. Now I'm being fed much more relevant products, services, whatever it might be, content. And I quite often buy things off Instagram. Instagram is a launch pad for brands now. That wasn't the case a few years ago. So there's something there in the data and in the content and in the personalization of that content, which makes it useful to me as a consumer. It's a shortcut, right? I can literally just look at the content, click it, buy it, done. And I think in that sense it cuts through. It's happening. Okay, we're in the final furlong of our future race. I want to pick up where I left off with Neelama, which is around sustainability and giving back, right?

You know, the Jamie Oliver brand is very famous for campaigning. But we all know that you can ask governments, people to do this and that. But what are you doing as a brand to make that real, right? How do you eat what you cook in that sense? So we've always been a purpose-led business, which what does that mean? I mean, we are trying to create a happier, healthier world through the joy of food. One of the routes that we do that through is our Ministry of Food Foundation. So when you think about, particularly in developed markets, and children in particular, they're not being educated in the right way as to what to eat, what to put in their bodies, the impact that has on the planet.

And if you don't actually catch that issue at a young age, it's been proven that there is an economic impact, but also a health impact for sure, on those children as they grow up and on those teenagers, adults that they become, of not educating them properly on food. Now, we've spent a lot of time over the last 24 plus years as a group trying to lobby government and to campaign and to get the changes that are required to make food and the food system healthier, fairer, more accessible. But we got to a point where we just decided that we needed to do something ourselves that wasn't going to get changed by another government coming in and to take the responsibility ourselves to drive for a more sustainable. sustainable outcome.

So we've created a circular economy effectively in the business. And we've basically said, look, through our media business, our product business, our restaurant business, we will take 5% of those profits every year and plow them back into the Ministry of Food Foundation so that we can educate children at school on the benefits of food and how they cook and how they think about food and how they think about the environment. I think that's absolutely terrific. An inspiration, a great place to finish off, Kevin. And actually the message there is the children, right? The future is now. Yeah, I think so. And, you know, I have three teenage girls and the way in which they think about brands and they think about what brands they buy from, engage with,

they are utterly damning of any business that does not have sustainability at its core, authenticity at its core, and trying to do the right thing at its core. So I think it's a big wake-up call for many brands and businesses. And when I was growing up, that wasn't the case. The Kelloggs of the world, whoever it might be, it's just, you know, it's a different thing altogether in terms of marketing and products and services. That's changed. So these are our future customers. Kevin, will you promise us one thing? When you go back, tell your girls about India and bring them back here, please. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you very much, Jasper.