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by Bradley Elliott (@BradElliottSA) Digital transformation is challenging and changing marketing departments like never before. In this sea-change era, I’m examining what it is to be a chief marketing officer (CMO). We talk to Heidi Brauer, Hollard Insurance chief marketing officer, in this third Only Connect podcast episode.

Full podcast transcript

Bradley Elliott: Welcome to Episode 3 of Only Connect, a MarkLives.com podcast. I’m Bradley Elliott, your host, founder of Platinum Seed and Continuon. This month I have the privilege of interviewing Heidi Brauer, CMO at Hollard Insurance. She has some great thinking around agencies, the agency process, around pitching, digital segmentation, how we derive insights and how marketers become more commercially minded, if commercially minded at all. So, strap in for this episode, and enjoy.

Firstly, thanks so much for taking the time to chat to me. Maybe I should give you some context on who I am since we’ve never spoken before and then I fit into the picture. I started a digital agency about 10 years ago, and I’ve been involved in two or three other tech startups along that journey. As part of all the digital transformation, how digital has shifted the role of marketing outside of just social media and Google and websites and apps, we thought it’d be good to speak to CMOs around how they see the role of technology and digital impacting their marketing strategies. And, more importantly, if their agencies — which tend to be, in honesty, quite Jurassic in their approach — are able to keep up with rapid rate of change, because obviously, we believe that data, technology, and all these things have given greater insight into understanding our customers, and therefore have shifted customer centricity and the role of marketing quite a bit. And, yeah, it’s just really about understanding where CMOs’ heads are at, what they expect from their agencies and kind of how the role of marketing has changed over the past couple of years.
Heidi Brauer: OK, that we can do.

BE: I’ve obviously looked at a bit of your background, and you’ve moved through quite a few different industries, from Comair, you were at Ipsos back in the earlier days, and I just want to understand how you landed up at Hollard?
HB: So, if you really want to go far back, I have a BSc in nursing. And there’s a story, a long story for another day. I can safely say that I learned what pivot means before pivot was invented in the language of business and iterative improvement today. So, my journey has been one from healthcare, healthcare research and pharmaceutical, broad research and brand research. Looking after a brand that was Kulula, actually multiple [brands], British Airways and Slow, and then I left and I actually did a freelancing and Hollard was one of my clients and I started to do some work with them on employee engagement stuff and here I am, six years later, married. So, I suppose my journey’s been all the time in the space of understanding customers and employees and brands and what makes them connect with one another or not.

BE: And what have you seen? What are your insights and what does make them connect — if there are any sort of key golden ones, or golden rules?
HB: I think that there are some conventional wisdoms that are probably safe to overturn now, and new ones that are being bandied about that are going to need overturning soon again. So, for years and years, everybody thought that people made decisions, and consumers or anybody really that [were] customers were making decisions based on price and that price was the be-all and end-all, and [in] my years of doing digital statistical correlations to understand experiences and how experiences affected engagement and loyalty, I never ever once saw in any industry, B2B or B2C, a single example where price was ever the generator or the precursor to engagement with a brand. Not once ever, ever, ever. And no matter how much you tell people price and you have to have it as a ticket to the game, slowly, slowly people are starting to realise actually that it’s not a differentiator and brands that are premised on that are realising that they need more. So, that’s one thing that’s starting to be turned on its head. And I think that the other thing that might be is assuming that a consumer is one thing. Especially in this country, we have so much depth and breadth in terms of what a South African is, and so much diversity, that, if we try to segment, we are going to end up stuck. Come unstuck. Be stuck. Both of them. It’s weird, I’m hearing less and less about segmentation; I wrote an article once saying segmentation is a four-letter word, which it is, but I think somewhere between thinking we can segment into nice little units that are easy to understand, and thinking everybody is the same, is the right place, and data can either enable that or disable that, depending on how we use it.

BE: I think you’ve touched on some really, really important points there. The first for me: your research or your correlation is amazing. You know, that experiences [are] really one of the key drivers or truths. And we often talk about customer experience (CX) and all of the things, but to hear that it actually trumps price or that it’s actually the sort of entry point is amazing. And I’ll touch on that a bit more just now. But to your second point around segmentation. I’ve got exactly the same views on segmentation, particularly when it comes down to using sort of demographic and should I call it dry data to segment. I think what is where segmentation may go — and it’d be interesting to hear your thoughts — is based more on behavior. So behavioral segmentation, in terms of [having] a person from a different background, different culture, different income group [whp] behaves in very much the same way as someone from a totally different class, race, income group, whatever it may be. And rather to segment on a behavioral attribute than other attributes, if that makes sense?
HB: Yeah, and I think that’s exactly it. Look, I’m no expert any more, and I haven’t spent time on segmentation in a long time, in terms of looking at the academics on it, but I think that behavior is one dimension[al], but we are multidimensional, we have values, we have lifestyles, we have aspirations, we have all of those things that make us such fascinating creatures, and trying to take one of those layers out because it serves us in terms of buying media or choosing a channel of communication is just diminishing everything. It makes it much more difficult but it means you have to just have some sort of like gut or instinct or insight or personaes, I think, were a way that we described it, but can you describe: Who’s this person? What do they look like? What do they feel like? And how do they live? What are their values? What do they want? Much more than what’s their income and often you talk [about] having an income conversation and you say, guys, what are we talking about, household income or personal income, and everybody’s thinking about different things. So, I mean, segmentation is so flawed and the risk with this new world of data is that common understanding isn’t there. And we end up doing ourselves an injustice and our customers and consumers an injustice, too. We’re so much more, which makes it so much harder and so much more enriching.

BE: That’s a great point. And, as you said, being insight-driven and finding those nuggets of insight by actually engaging with people, as opposed to just looking at raw data, is also important. Touching on your past at Kulula, where customer experience, especially in that industry, is everything: what does good experience or good customer experience look like to you?
HB: So, I’m not going to say delighting people because I don’t know what delighting means any more. It was such a word — I must delight people — but I suppose you have to understand that there are ticket-to-the-game things, basics, the fundamentals that you have to get right and you can’t assume that you’re getting those right and that everybody’s getting them right in the organisation. And then you have to look to deliberately design — “deliberately” I suppose is the word — experiences that build on that so I suppose maybe my go-to example always is a little outside of Kulula, but it’s the Slow Lounges and when we conceived the Slow Lounges, with Grid, at the time, and Tonic (which always sounds like I’m asking for a gin and tonic). We were in this position where, globally, British Airways was redoing their airport lounges. We needed to do the same with the sub-Saharan African lounges, which was prohibitively expensive. We said, “What if we didn’t follow your gallery spec?” and they said, “You have to.” We said, “What if we didn’t?” And then they said, “You can’t call it a British Airways lounge.” So, we said, “Okay, that’s a [inaudible] We’ll call it something else.” Or maybe it needs to be something else. And we really did ladder right down to saying what happens when people travel, what do they want? What do they need? What don’t they even know that they want and I think that’s the thing that gave us the great gift of Slow Lounges, which still make people’s hearts warm today, is that it’s beyond just saying the food must be good, the toilets must be clean, it must be open at the times I want and so on. It’s what gets layered in between all of those things that people can’t tell you they want. But when you give it to them, lay it all together, it just is like [sighs] “Oh, I only want this.” For me, it’s an analoguey of chocolate cake: I say one slice of multilayered chocolate cake sometimes is much more delicious than another. And you can’t always say what it is, because you don’t take it apart and go, oh, it’s the richness of the cocoa, oh, it’s the Irish butter cream; it’s all of those things and you can’t take them apart and go, “I know specifically what it is,” but when you have a bite of that really, really amazing cake, or that really, really amazing lounge or that really, really amazing… snail bar, or whatever it is, altogether, it’s something special. And I think the trick is understanding that it’s not one big thing; it’s lots of little things all together. And the other thing is knowing that you cannot ask consumers what they want. Because, believe me, before power steering was invented, you couldn’t say to somebody, “what do you want?” and expect anybody to say power steering. They would have been able to tell you that it’s helluva hard to park a car, and to turn into a parking is difficult and all of those things they could tell you what their problems are, but they [couldn’t] solve it for you. So, solving customer experience is about understanding that it’s multifaceted and that you can’t ask people to tell you what they want, paradoxically.

BE: Yeah, and I think you said something really important right in the beginning: it’s taking the decision as a business to be customer-centric and really interrogating that customer experience and taking a conscious decision to purposely build that customer experience.
HB: In some way, in the layers of that cake might be one teeny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little thing that suddenly just makes that cake unreplicable and just something that’s everybody’s favorite, and that’s what they want. And you’ve got to take the time.

BE: Yeah. 100%. Going back to sort of insurance and insurance industry and innovation and customer experience in that industry, fintech technologies, really, if you look at a lot of industries, financial services is one of the ones that have really become tech-enabled faster than some of the other industries. And if you look at fintech and specifically, like insuretech, like Lemonade out of the US and those type of things, I know Hollard has got Naked as well, that they’ve launched or invested in. What is your sort of play on how technology as a catalyst helps that customer experience and/or the business in becoming better serving for their customers?
HB: I think that the benefit was, if you’re in fintech insuretech and you can start from scratch without the legacy, your ability to streamline and to enable wonderful customer experiences is just enhanced enormously and I see that with the Naked offering. I think I was, it was three years ago this time, I was at Google in San Francisco and seeing the driverless cars for the first time and we all thought they’d be here like next month, and all the cars would be driving around the world driverless by now and insurance wouldn’t be necessary because cars would be driverless, and they’d be perfect. In reality, [it] takes time for things to change and for consumers to trust and change behavior and, unfortunately, it’s the fault of insurers also that knowledge and understanding and insight level about insurance, because of the complexity of it, is quite low. Which means people’s ability to change to something high in technology and low in human is not as easy as one thinks.

BE: Especially in an industry or sector that has low trust from consumers?
HB: Absolutely. Absolutely. And that have had price shoved down consumers throats for so many years, where they don’t understand what other value is important beyond price, it becomes very difficult. So, barriers to switching are actually low and consumers’ understanding of value is also low. And it’s also a low frequency of touch industry, right? Because typically you buy your insurance. Sometimes you pay a premium annually, and you don’t touch anybody, please God, for a long time, if ever, right? So, saying, Oh, you won’t have to speak to a call center is very difficult, because I haven’t, actually. I think it’s paradoxical. So the value it can bring is amazing. Persuading consumers to switch and stay because of that is the challenge. And adoption isa different kind of curve to what I think we’d like to imagine it will be.

BE: And with all the increase in sort of channels and platforms over the years — you’ve got a huge amount of experience and you’ve been around maybe before the days of, let’s call it digital, or these all these new platforms and channels — how have you seen the role of the marketing department change, if at all, in any of the organisations that you’ve been involved in, given the sort of influx of channels and platforms and new technologies that allow us to connect with people?
HB: I always describe it like this: that human beings are whole things and they are exposed to multiple things and they don’t separate them into boxes like we would like to imagine that they do. So, attribution, I suppose. Just imagine the world before anything digital. Marketers would sit down and go, “I wonder why they bought our product? Did they see our TV ad? Or did they see a billboard, right?” And attribution is pretty much impossible because when you ask a consumer, “Where did you see our ad?”, they say TV, even if you never had a TV ad. Now with digital, because it’s measurable, the assumption of attribution in it can be dangerous, right? You can think it’s that. The truth is a consumer is a whole human being who is exposed to messages everywhere. Just think of your day. Minority Report just sprung to mind. But that’s what it is, right? The example: you’re standing in Dis-Chem trying to choose a body lotion; you pick one off the shelf and put it in the basket. Actually, in your mind, you’ve made a million micro choices, based on a whole bunch of things. And I think the assumption that you can separate how consumers consume into neat little boxes is one of the dangers of this digital vs analogue, if I can do that, communication world because you can’t. Long, long, long time ago, working with Gidon Novick at Kulula, he once said to me, just because I gave him a big bill of billboard holdings rentals to sign off, “Hey, remind me why we do this billboard thing?” And, and it was funny because it was his billboards before I was even there. So, he was cleverer than I. But [with] full prices within five rand of each other, I want them to choose my brand because something resonates with them and they may not be aware of what it is. And passing the billboard on the way to work is one of them. Scrolling past an ad when they’re looking at their Facebook feed in the bath at night is another one of them. So [it] wasn’t so long ago that I wrote an article that talked about new media, and it said when will new media not be called new media any more. And guess what? It’s not. And it’s not; it’s another channel, right? We have to remember that, for consumers, it’s just another channel. It’s not the be-all-and-end-all. We have to, as marketers, understand it. We have to not throw everything at it just because it’s lovely and shiny and new and measurable. And because actually the agencies that do it are sexier. Usually. It’s a whole, right?

BE: Right, 100%. I think let’s move on to some of the juicier stuff around marketing departments, clients and agencies because I see that you are also involved in your own communications agency, Halo, if I’m not mistaken?
HB: I was actively involved when I was on my little journey of consulting and freelancing and [am] now a very quiet partner. But, you know, in my 12 years at Markinor — to all intents and purposes an agency, right — I’m selling ideas and selling solutions. So I appreciate what it’s like to try to position yourself in a morass of sameness and to try to differentiate and keep your fans loving only you. Yes, I get it.

BE: What is important for you, then, because we see around the world that — at least, in my opinion and feel free to challenge me —the agency model is a broken model. Billable-hour models work for certain types of professions, like lawyers and accountants. But when you, as you said, are solving problems coming up with ideas, it’s very difficult to put a value on that and do sort of value-based pricing. But what do you look for in your agencies and are agencies keeping up with, with the sort of trends and changes that are happening? Because your level of thinking might be quite far apart from what my perception or at least experience has been with a lot of agencies and agency bosses who tend to retrofit an insight to an idea, rather than use the insight to drive the idea.
HB: It’s actually quite interesting because, back in the days of Markinor, which was even before we sold to Ipsos, I remember we were approached by a group who wanted to put a whole bunch of complementary agency services together. This was before digital, PR, media, advertising, research, all together under one umbrella. I think the premise back then even was the agency model is broken. I suppose want to say, “Is it more broken now because of digital or not?” This is an ideas industry or a thinking industry, premised on human beings and people do business with people, not companies. For me, when I’m looking for an agency, the ticket-to-the-game stuff is the technical competency that I need. The next thing is the human beings and can I connect with them? Will my team connect with them? Do we connect with each other? Do we think we can have an adult-adult relationship? I go back to that old psychological model of parent/adult/child. So much of the time, the relationship between an agency and a client is a parent-child relationship, where the client is the parent and the agency’s the child. Just think about a pitch — a pitch actually, is, honestly the most-revolting environment for anybody —

BE: I couldn’t add — I’m very glad to hear you say that. It’s just not a respectful way to do business.
HB: It’s not respectful, it just diminishes, and everybody bloody hates it. So, then, don’t do it, right? Check that you have the competencies, have a chemistry session, get a vibe, do all the due diligence that you need to and so on. But there’s different ways of doing it and what we need, more than ever, because resources are tighter than ever, is we need adult-adult relationships. And either you can have that and you ‘vibe’ with people and you can bring that or you can’t. Because, when times are tough and strategies are changing, and focus is changing and you’re scrambling to get every last inch out of your cent, and you’re annoying each other, God, you better have an adult-adult relationship otherwise you’re in trouble. So, for me, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a digital agency or a traditional agency — and let’s talk about that in a second as well, because I have some thoughts on that — is it’s about the humans. Yeah. And we forget that.

BE: It’s about relationships, and as it is, starting off a relationship, dating, where you don’t — well, I hope most of us wouldn’t put three potential partners in front of us and ask them to pitch to us as to why we should date them. We may do it behind the scenes, but I don’t think in a room.
HB: You know the truth is, what I’ve done before, as I’ve said, here’s what I need. I need this kind of competency. I need this kind of experience, I need somebody that’s, like, we’re the right [indistinct] fit for each other. I have — and it’s on record — said I want an ECD over 40 because I need people who’ve done stuff, not only have thought of stuff. And then we’ve said, okay, here’s an obviously non-competing business, and we’ve made a list of who that might be and then we’d have coffee dates with them individually, obviously, just to get a vibe first. And if we’ve got a vibe and the competencies are all there, then we can go to the next level.

BE: You mentioned a word that also triggered a thought on my side. There’s a great book I read called “Win without pitching”, obviously very skewed towards agency bosses and the author basically says the only job of an agency, or between agency and a client, is not to sell yourself but to actually find whether you guys fit or not. And that’s really what it boils down to.
HB: And that’s it. Because, especially in the world of creative — look there’s two things, so let’s talk about creativity and now the world of digital, which in itself needs a definition, because nobody knows what it means. In the world of creativity and digital, there are people who don’t speak those languages, right? And the minute that things get tough and we don’t know what each other’s saying, if we don’t have a relationship and a connection, we’re screwed.

BE: Back to digital vs traditional.
HB: Let’s talk about this broken model. And now we can add consultancies into the mix, given all what’s going on everywhere. It used to be that there was a thing — if I could talk with my hands and you could see my hands, I’m drawing a continuum — on the one end is a full-service agency. Yeah, that’s what they used to be right? Yeah. Or they were specialist agencies. No, we’re not full-service. We only do PR or we only do media or whatever. Then along came on the other end: digital, we’re digital, specialist digital. Forgive me if I’m not getting this perfect but you’re getting the vibe. The next thing is the full-service agency goes, “Oh, we also do digital,” so they’re nudging along the continuum toward the other end. The digital agencies are going, “Hold on a second, we’re missing some of the pie, so let’s say we’re a full-service digital agency.” I don’t know what even those things are anymore, right? So we’ve got full service — I’m being very polite —

BE: No, be rude, please. I want you to be as honest as possible — that’s the whole point — because I’m very opinionated as well, so don’t worry.
HB: I don’t even know what a full-service digital agency is. Does it mean you’re full service in terms of your digital offerings? Or does it mean you also do TV ads as well?

BE: Technically [it] should mean you’re meant to do but let’s just assume that digital as a word we all know what that means. Let’s just assume that for a second, but it assumes that you do all the digital stuff. You don’t touch TV ads and billboards.
HB: So, nobody understands, right? That’s the problem. And then everybody, because they don’t want to lose any revenue, says they can do things and we believe them and then we all believe each other and then we end up in trouble. Now the consultancies are saying we can do all of it, and we can think better than anybody. The bottom line is: any company is only as good as the talented human beings that it has. And in one of the questions you asked, “What advice do you have for ad agency bosses?” — no. 17, I did read it. For me, talent management is my advice because one of the biggest, people do business with people — I said it before — not companies. Your ability to provide the skills and understand the business of my business as if it were your own is dependent on the human beings that you have. And these days, because everybody’s allowed to be a slasher and jump-hop every two years and whatever, young people, you know, acceptability of all of those things, it means lack of continuity and stability for brands. If I had any advice, I’d say, “You know what? I don’t actually care what you call yourself, really —full service, through-the-line, above-the-line, in-the-line, digital, analogue, I don’t care — just be clear on what you can do and what you can’t do and then try to do whatever you need to do to have some stability in your talent for what’s a reasonable amount of time, so that we can all be in service of the brand.

BE: Yeah. And I think that’s really, really a great piece of advice. And it almost talks to another point or another question that I had further up, that is: do you think we have the talent, and if assuming we don’t, how do how do we nurture that talent? And retain it? I don’t want to get into the millennial discussion. because technically, I would be classified —
HB: I didn’t say a millennial, you said millennial —

BE: I know, that’s why I said, I don’t want to use the word —
HB: I’ve given birth to two!

BE: That’s why I don’t want to use the word — but the discussion around, let’s say, job hopping, the acceptance around that and moving careers more frequently than any generation in the past. Let’s put it that way.
HB: Yeah.

BE: How do we have the talent and how do we nurture that talent really?
HB: I talked about in service of the brand, so I say that it takes a village to raise a brand and what I mean by that is that you have to know your brand like a child; it is your child, you’ve got a responsibility to raise it, nurture it, know what it’s good at and all of those things. I think the more you allow everybody to be fully read into that and to be a full adult participant in that, rather than keeping them on the sidelines because they’re only junior copywriter or whatever it is, the less chance you have of nurturing that brand to its full potential and of having people so love doing the work that they want to stay because I feel enriched and they don’t feel like they’re diminished or undervalued or whatever. Because young people — and I’m on purpose, not using the m-word —now more and more than ever want to feel the purpose and the meaning of their work. Well, sometimes to earn the money, you also have to sell Smarties. Right? It can’t all be the deep stuff. But you can still get purpose and meaning and reward out of doing a great job at selling the Smarties. And you can do that if you are allowed to be fully engaged as an adult and not treated like a child who must deliver the line and leave the room. Yeah, so I think that that’s got a lot to do with how clients engage with agencies and where they allow them in, and how they allow them to participate in the raising of that brand, as much as it does have to do with the agencies and how they handle their people.

BE: Yeah. And I think that’s a very good point and some great advice. Two points that I just wanted to touch on and then we can start wrapping up, otherwise I’m going to have to keep you the whole evening, is do you think agencies — you were talking a lot around squeezing every cent out earlier on, or getting the most for every cent that you spend, do you think that agencies are commercially minded enough? [That’s] no. 1, and no. 2, going back to your point on pitching and having these relationships/with getting the most out of your agency— I’m using the word relationship on purpose, adult-adult related conversations and relationships — why do so many businesses, especially big corporate South Africa, still insist on going and using pitch-based models? If they know that’s not the best way to get the best, the most value, out of their partner agencies.
HB: I’m scared to tar everybody with the same brush. So, maybe the fair way to do this is to say, “Do I think marketers are commercially minded?” How’s that for diplomatic? I’m going into politics next.

BE: That’s very diplomatic.
HB: I have to keep reminding the marketers that I work with all the time that business objectives lead marketing objectives, and it sounds so obvious, right, but it’s so easy to say, “Oh, the ad was brilliant or the event was fantastic.” Why? Because it was beautifully, creatively pleasing or the food was fantastic at the event or whatever. My question always is: the event was great, and I expect that because that’s the quality of work we deliver, but what were our business objectives? Were we trying to get this much more revenue from these clients? Or this many new clients or whatever the business objectives might be? Then we have to go back and say, did we deliver that? And it sounds so obvious, but it isn’t. So, if that’s how marketers are positioning what they do and what success looks like, then agencies are going to be doing the same thing, right? What is success? Meeting the deadline for getting an ad flighted, or filling the content calendar —

BE: Getting 1000 likes —
HB: Getting 1000 likes, right? Let’s talk about that. For my penance for something or other, every now and then I judge awards. Actually, the truth is it’s a privilege and — that was another diplomatic one — it really gives me insights and keeps me on my toes and I love to have a good argument with my peers. But, let me tell you, the digital submissions particularly can attempt to bamboozle everybody with data to the point that you don’t even know — and talk about retrofitting! — what the objectives were in the first place.

BE: I agree with you 100%. That’s why I mentioned it.
HB: Now, a million impressions in a country with 500 bajillion… consumers is a different story to a million impressions in… you know. We have to go back to what are the business objectives and then how do we measure them? That’s what commercial mindedness is, right? And, all the time, what are the business objectives? I think we’re all at fault, honestly. And then you had another part of the question and now I’m —

BE: I loved your point so much about not pitching that I decided to bring it up again: if the best way to work with any partner —i’m not talking specifically agencies, but generally any strategic supplier or a strategic partner — is to have an adult-to-adult relationship, why do so many companies, especially in big corporate South Africa, still follow a pitching process?
HB: I think that cost-driven procurement departments are a big part of that. I think there’s a big issue with maybe lack of confidence and lack of experience from the client side, and I believe that that’s the way it goes. And if you don’t have experience and people don’t want to trust their guts — they don’t understand that gut comes from experience and intuition comes from experience but not everybody has enough experience.

BE: Maybe they don’t wanna be held accountable either?
HB: Yeah. And it’s much easier to say I’ve got a panel and I put it through this, and it’s a power thing, too, let’s be honest, honestly. When you put yourself in that position, you’re actually dismissing accountability, rather than what you should be doing. I think it’s horrible. At the last pitch I sat in, the last best ‘traditional’ pitch I sat in (it wasn’t my pitch and I was consulting to this company) and it was pitch three or four or five or whatever. The lady was sitting next to me, the person from the agency, and she was checking her email while her team was pitching. She didn’t want to be there as much as we didn’t want to be there. The next thing that happens is everybody’s, like, — ah it’s just a power thing, it’s horrible.

BE: It is horrible. And finally, to end off, a question that I always ask everyone at the end is your favorite resources or any great books, podcasts you listen to?
HB: Lately, I have been reading fiction, not nonfiction, and my greatest resources are my sons, who are in their 20s.

BE:Great answer.
HB: It’s the truth, too.

BE:Give you a lot of insight?
HB: Yeah.

BE: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for time and have a great evening.
HB: You too. Thanks.

BE: Thanks for listening. This has been Only Connect, a MarkLives.com podcast. If you have any questions, or if you’d like to be featured on the show, please feel free to email me at Bradley at platinumseed dot com. Until next month, keep connecting!

Transcribed using otter.ai and then edited lightly.

The founder of Continuon and Platinum Seed, Bradley Elliott (@BradElliottSA) has created a number of businesses in the digital and technology sectors. He believes that marketing needs to be reinvented so that it becomes more useful to humans and brands. He’s also a collector of fine whisky. Bradley contributes “Only Connect”, exclusively to MarkLives.com. In this podcast, he chats to custodians of the world’s top brands about what matters most to them.

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