28. The Charity Brand Shift – Laura Brady & Kirsteen Campbell

Ali Findlay: Good morning, afternoon or evening from wherever you are tuning in. I’m Ali Findlay, and this is the Leading Conversations podcast, brought to your ears wherever you are listening in partnership with Lane and the Marketing Society Scotland. Thank you for joining us if you’re a new listener, and welcome back if you’ve tuned in before.

 

In this episode, I’m delighted to welcome my guests, Kirsteen Campbell, Chief Exec of Scottish SPCA, and Laura Brady, Director of Marketing and Fundraising at Worldwide Cancer Research. Today’s episode is all about building a brand for a charity. The balance of brand building with fundraising and all the challenges our organizations have faced in the last few years of Rebuild.

 

Hi, Kirsteen. Hi, Laura. Welcome to the Leading Conversations podcast.

 

Hi, Ali.

 

Hi, there.

 

Ladies, rather than me rattling on, I’d like you to just take us through a really quick snapshot of your CVs life before your current roles and the main focuses of your roles today. Kirsteen, do you want to kick off? Certainly.

 

Kisteen Campbell: Thank you. So, I guess the first half of my career was spent in financial services, so in the private sector. Then I leapt to the public sector “and worked for Scotland’s National Skills Agency, Skills Development Scotland.

 

And I’m currently very proud to be Chief Executive of Scotland’s leading animal welfare charity, the Scottish SPCA.

 

Thank you. And Laura?

 

Laura Brady: And my CV in a sentence is probably quite squiggly. I spent some time in journalism, then moved into PR and then marketing. So my last role was in independent skills marketing, where brands were at the centre of what I did there.

 

And then I moved to Worldwide Cancer Research seven years ago, where I took on fundraising, marketing and brand, which has been a fantastic opportunity at the cancer charity that starts cancer cures all around the world.

 

Ali: Brilliant. Thank you.

 

Today, we’re obviously talking about brand building close to my heart clearly, and I know close to both of yours as well. The first thing that I’d kind of like to explore are the key drivers for a charity to rebrand and invest in their brand positioning. At Lane, we see charities of all different sizes, and actually Scottish organizations of all different sizes.

 

And sometimes it’s a struggle for teams to get the investment that they need. To invest in their brand and to convince boards to invest in the brand in order to build the organization. And I know that you guys have been on this journey with your boards, and I’d really like to explore what those key drivers are, how you’ve managed to convince your organizations to invest in brand.

 

And so if you could take us through a little bit of that, that would be brilliant.

 

Laura: Yeah. So I think we talk about it as doing a dolly. I think for our organization, we’d sort of lost our way a little bit.

 

We’d lost our purpose. Our founder, Colin Thompson, when he started the charity back in 1979, had a really clear vision about conquering cancer. And somewhere along the line, that started to sort of fade a little bit.

 

So when our chief executive, Helen Rippon, came in in 2016, she realized that the organization really needed a reboot. We struggled with fundraising in anything other than direct debit signups and direct mail. She wanted to try and breathe new life into the organization.

 

And I think at that point that I came in in 2017, and the first conversation I had with her was, help us find our thing. And really that was about going back to the core purpose, because struggling with fundraising means that there’s something wrong with your messaging. So we just went right back to the start, did a big deep dive on what is it that  Worldwide Cancer Research is really here to do? What are we here to deliver? And who are we delivering it for? So we’re a very science focused organization, but our beneficiaries are people with cancer, not scientists.

 

They might receive the cash to fund their research, but the ultimate beneficiaries are the people with cancer that benefit from the treatments and diagnosis and a new understanding of cancer. So we sort of, that was what led to our repositioning, was who are we here to service? We’re not here to service researchers, we’re here to service people with cancer.

 

I think for us, it was about digging back into the archives, understanding who we were. We had great fun doing it. We literally did go down into the basement of our office in St. Andrews and dug around the archives, found some hilarious bits of, you know, kind of written content where our founder was talking about funding kinky science. Funnily enough, we didn’t go for that as our key proposition.

 

Ali: Why not?

 

Laura: I wonder. So yeah, I think for us, it was we really struggled to appeal to the mass market the way that we were. And we had to really think about how to be fundraised.

 

And you know, cancer space is really, really busy with other organizations. And people cry out for, why are you not working together more as cancer charities? But I think for us, we fund a really specific part of the research journey, just the stuff at the beginning, the discovery things, the idea, the ideas are going to change the course of cancer research.

 

So we knew that we had a very specific part of the journey that we had to focus on. We just had to bring it to life for people in a way that they could understand. And when it’s science, it can be a bit more difficult. So purpose is probably at the core of all of that for us.

 

Ali: And Kirsteen, I obviously know a little bit about your journey. You do, you do.

 

Thank you so much for all your help with that for the listeners.

 

Laura: It’s quite hard to try and summarize this. So Scottish SPCA this year will be 185 years old.

 

Looking after, we started with Working Horses in Leith actually 185 years ago. And I joined seven years ago. And I thought I knew the Scottish SPCA.

 

I donated to the Scottish SPCA and the RSPC actually for England and Wales. Our best friends – we’re completely separate charities. I’ll come back to that.

 

So I supported the SSPC, but then I realized when I joined, I didn’t really know us at all. There was so much more to the work that we did, and we needed more and more people to be aware of that because there is an animal welfare crisis, there is more needs than ever, and we need people to be aware of us and that kind of brand advocacy, but really know what we do. And we hadn’t been good enough at telling that story.

 

So in working with the teams, we went around the country, we’ve got people in so many different roles, and they hadn’t really got together to talk about it. It was even thinking about what’s our purpose, what are our values, what do we bring, what makes us unique and different, and it was really fascinating and such a great thing to do because actually your business strategy and your brand strategy are just so aligned: you can’t do one without the other. And so what we found was, and obviously working closely with you, Ali, that we are Scotland’s only all animal rescue service, and we want to make Scotland the best place in the world for an animal to call home. So lofty ambitions.

 

We are the only people who are doing that, though, across all species and every community. And that’s our responsibility. If you don’t have a really clear brand proposition, it’s very hard to articulate that story.

 

Because then you’re saying, we do this and we do that, we do this and we do that. Yeah.

 

Ali: And you have a broad range of services.

 

Laura: Very broad range of services. So, you know, it’s about farmed animals, it’s about wildlife, it’s about pets, and they need us in very different ways. We’re also unique because we enforce legislation on behalf of the Scottish government.

 

We don’t get funding for that. So I look on it as we’re a 23-million-pounds-a-year business that is a charity with more purpose than you would ever find. And not enough people knew us in for the true nature of the work we did.

 

Therefore, not enough people supported us. And so we had to be very clear on our brand offer and then present it in a very clear way because we need supporters, volunteers, rehomers, fosterers more than we’ve ever needed. And it really was on us.

 

I don’t think we had been as clear as other brilliant animal welfare charities who’d perhaps invested more in it and they had this clarity of purpose and presentation that we just hadn’t. We’ve been so busy doing our job and operating, we’d almost forgotten to take a step back and go, hang on, we’ve just got to SPCA. We’re absolutely brilliant.

 

We need to really bring that to life for people.

 

Ali: That’s great. Thank you. And I think it is an additional challenge for Scottish SPCA that the services that you offer are so broad and the fact that your services are for all animals and there’s a lack of understanding in Scotland, in particular, around the bird aspect, you know.

 

Laura: Well, yeah, there is. So if you take a lot, I think two in five people think we’re part of the RSPCA and they do a very similar job in England and Wales. And if there is a bird that is injured, then it’s the Scottish SPCA that will go rescue it, take it to our wildlife centre, rehabilitate it, release it to thrive back in the wild.

 

Whereas we would work closely with the RSPB, who do amazing work with habitats, habitat loss. If they get a phone call about an injured bird, they will direct that person to the Scottish SPCA. Now, I think most people would think that was the RSPB, not the Scottish SPCA.

 

And that’s because we have not done a good enough job at talking about that. So we have to promote that more. Because actually, most of the wildlife that we help are birds.

 

One of my friends phoned me the other day saying, I’ve got a bird in my garden. What do I do? Well, I can tell you exactly.

 

And then within two hours, a rescue officer was there and the bird was taken to our Wildlife Centre. And then off you go. So it’s thousands and thousands every year. We’ve still not done a good enough job about that.

 

I know you’re on a path just now and we are. 

 

Ali: Laura, you’ve talked about the clutter in your space as well. So, I mean, similar to Kirsteen, I’m guessing that sometimes donations go to other charities that really should have come to you.

 

Laura: Oh 100%. It’s quite interesting what you’re saying about what’s inside has to match what’s outside. And I think creating your brand around what’s happening within is really important because people see right through that inauthenticity, if it’s not coming from within.

 

And I think starting with, how are we talking about ourselves? How are we talking about this organization? How are we explaining what we do?

 

And we, like people used to say, we’re not CRUK, we’re this. We’re not this. We’re not this organization, we’re that.

 

I was like, we shouldn’t be starting by saying who we’re not. We should be starting by saying who we actually are. And I think for us, our proposition is scientific, so it’s complicated to explain.

 

It uses really verbose language or jargon that people just don’t understand. You know, if we start talking about ‘discovery research’, people are like, what is that? So for us, what we found, and I remember when I started Worldwide Cancer Research, Beverly Hart was the director of MarCom’s at the time, and she knew we had a brilliant story.

 

And we knew if we were in the room with people, we could tell the story brilliantly. What was really difficult was trying to get the cut through when you’re trying to make it sound simple because it was so many facets to it. So I think for us, it was about chipping away the language and finding a way to get across what we do in as simple as terms as possible.

 

Because while the space is cluttered, we all do very similar things. It’s just like different parts of the journey. So for us, honing in on that starting cancer cures piece was massive for us because we are the start of the journey.

 

You can’t get to translational research without us. You can’t get to clinical trial without us. You can’t get to cancer cures without us.

 

You can’t get to treatments. You can’t get to survival. So starting that cancer cure piece was so important for us and finding the language.

 

But it did take quite a long time and we tried different things. We talked about bold ideas and people were like, so it’s ideas then, how does that work? And still we felt like people, whenever we would say something, people would ask a question back.

 

We’re like, right, we’re not there yet. There’s too many questions having to come back. So for us, it was minimizing the questions that came as you tried to explain what you were doing and honing in on the core of what we did, which has made it so much easier to explain.

 

But the awareness thing’s really familiar to me as well, because again, it’s really, our budgets are not particularly big. So trying to get that share of voice and share of audience is really, really challenging. But the simplicity, I think, of message and being really coherent and clear about what it is that you’ve got to communicate and who you’re communicating to is really important.

 

You know, I don’t know if you’re familiar with this NASBQ about making enemies and then finding your fans. I think for us, that was something that we had to kind of do because we’re a global organization to many extents. And we were worried that people were going, well, you’re not having a local impact, you’re only thinking about global. Again, we had to be brave enough to go, well, this is who we are. You know, there’s no point in trying to pretend that we’re UK only because we’re not UK only, we’re global.

 

We fund research anywhere in the world, and any type of cancer. So we just need to be brave enough to say, this is who we are and to own it, which I think was the other aspect of it. We were kind of skirting around things a little bit because we didn’t want to alienate an audience.

 

You just have to be brave enough to go, people who love us will love us and those who don’t will not, and they’ll choose another cancer charity. So the end goal is still going to be achieved to an extent.

 

You just need to accept that, I think, a little bit.

 

Kirsteen: I totally agree, that authenticity is okay, because then who are you? You start making decisions that aren’t right, if you’re not true to yourself, and then people see through “that so quickly. So being bold, 100%.

 

Ali: Yeah, you were talking about enemies, if you like, earlier, Kirsteen, before we started the podcast, and the fact that they’re in your role, you get challenged a lot, especially around legislation and things that you’re working around, and that you have to do the same thing, stay very singularly focused.

 

Kirsteen: Yes. You have to, and that’s also when you’re very clear in your purpose, and your brand purpose, your charity’s purpose. It’s easy to make the right decisions, I think, and I’d always say, can I look myself in the eye and say, I’m doing absolutely the right things, the best things for this charity, and that’s how I have to live my life.

 

And it’s very easy to be distracted and diverted, and there’s so much going on, particularly now, you know: cost of living crisis. We’ve had, in my world, avian flu to contend with, Brexit, you know, there’s so many different things. I know everyone has their own challenges, and for us, we have had to rethink our services. “How do we deliver the services we have, really efficiently and effectively, and how do we deliver our services that are needed for today in the way in which animals and people need us? So, we’re the Scottish SPCA, prevention’s in our name, and we’ve really had to think about what prevention means, get ahead of the problem. Prevention means stop something happening.

 

Previously, we would have been responding and rescuing, and we still do, absolutely. However, the need is so great. What we have to do is prevent – we have to get ahead of problems and do that. So that has led to change in thinking and acting differently. That doesn’t change the fact that we are Scotland’s Animal Welfare Charity, and we are the only all-animal rescue service, because rescue has many forms.

 

We’re rescuing an animal by keeping it in a home with somebody instead of breaking that bond. Yeah. You know, that’s the impact.

 

That was a huge learning I had when I joined the Scottish SPCA. I hadn’t quite appreciated that behind any animal in need is a person and vice versa, and it’s people that we really work with, the people we really help, and now, I can say, well, thousands of people are staying with our animals, which is far better than removing.

 

And our brand perception a few years ago would have been, they’re the people who prosecute, remove and rehome.

 

Yeah.

 

And that’s so far from the truth.

 

Ali: And I think you’ve still got quite a big journey to go on that.

 

Kirsteen: We do.

 

Ali: People understanding that part of your role now is to keep animals with their owners. Long term, that protects your own funds. But it also keeps people and animals together.

 

It’s better and welfare. And so you touched on there the impact of the cost of living crisis, and it would be interesting to just hear how that’s impacted on yourselves, Laura.

 

Laura: Yeah. It’s been quite an interesting journey because the re-brand that we did was also tied into just a whole re-everything of the organization, rejuvenation. We moved from St. Andrews to Edinburgh.

 

We had to recruit a whole new team. We re-structured, brought in a new CRM, did a website. You name it, we did it in that year.

 

We broke ourselves a little bit, but we were teeing up for proper strategy. Go live in 2020 and we know what happened then. So what was really powerful for us was that we just paused our strategy and pivoted and focused on retention and then restarted again in 2020 too.

 

And luckily at first we weren’t feeling the bite of it. Things went pretty well for the first, in the last year was a fantastic year. We’ve started to see that just towards the end of last year and the start of this year is when we started to feel the pain of cost of living.

 

And I think for us that’s because we’re so reliant on individual giving as our main income source. So direct debits have been, that was what kept us going through the pandemic was we had such a strong regular giving base of 50,000 people, but that’s definitely started to see a little bit of attrition towards the end of last year and the start of this. Things have tapered off a little bit recently.

 

That’s definitely where we’ve felt it the most. Luckily, we’ve been fine with cash donations. It’s definitely regular given our main one and our sweeps program, which is good readers digest style direct mail campaign.

 

But that demographic are most likely to be affected by the cost of living crisis. There’s people who are retired, you know, every penny is a prisoner for them. Cash poor, but perhaps asset rich.

 

And for us, that’s been where we’ve seen some of the challenges. And apart from anything else, you care about these people, they’ve given to your organization for a long time, and you want to make sure that you’re supporting them in a way as well. So I think for us, that’s where we felt it the most.

 

And a bit like you were saying earlier in, Kirsteen, when we were speaking outside. Philanthropy, events, these are all new to our organization. That was part of our new strategy, was to diversify our income streams. And they’re all so early in the day for us that things look like they’re going well, but it’s hard for us to really understand what they’re contributing or what they had the potential to, because they’re definitely under strain. So yeah, I think for us, the positive that we are seeing is that there’s more legacies coming through, and that’s because people are giving in the way that they can, or have been given, so our legacy inquiries are up, our pledges are up, because people are going, well, I can’t give cash just now, but I can do something to say, this cause is important to me, and doing what they can to support. So for us, that’s probably the way that things have played out in the last nine months, probably more than previous to that.

 

Ali: That’s great, thank you. Now that you mentioned the sort of shifting demographics, I don’t know if you can tell me whether this is real or not, but there’s this emerging trend among millennials, I guess, that soon to be those with the highest disposable income, that I give what I want, when I want, where I want. Do you believe that your brands are in a good position to embrace these emerging trends, and how can brands building help with that, I guess?

 

Laura: I think it’s a really tricky one, because I think when I was thinking about what I would like to talk about today, one of the things that’s quite challenging for charities is that the purpose-driven space is now much broader than it used to be. Charities were the original purpose-driven organizations, and now commercial brands are definitely taking advantage a bit more of, well, what could we do to help the world? How do we drive purpose through everything that we do, and how do we make a social impact in some way, shape, or form?

 

And I think a lot of the millennial audience do that through brands, more than they do it through charitable giving, as they have done in the past. We did a big piece of market segmentation research earlier this year, and that’s definitely started to come through in the answers, and it came through in the answers of the CAF report too. People are finding different ways to do something good, whether that’s buying products that are sustainable, or whether it’s choosing a specific beer brand because they clean beaches.

 

People are starting to find different ways to do good. So charities actually have a bit of a harder job now.

 

Ali: There’s a substitution going on. Yeah.

 

Laura: I mean, if you look at the CAF report, you will see that charitable giving is down. There are fewer people giving more. So a bit like what you were saying, people have more disposable income, so they will give more of what they have.

 

But there’s fewer people actually doing it. And I think that’s because there’s so many other ways to give now and so many other organizations to give to or to do that through active campaigning or other decisions that you might take. So I think for us, it’s a bit more challenging when you’ve got a really important reliance on fundraising because for us as an organization, our core purpose is just to fund research.

 

We give people money to start new cancer cures. That’s what our purpose is as an organization. If we don’t get the funding, that doesn’t happen and we’ve always been heavily reliant on public fundraising.

 

So I do think that space is getting more crowded. But I think our brand specifically is doing much more now than it ever has done about appealing to a younger audience, being able to respond a bit more to what trends are happening and using content and engagement to try and understand a bit more about these individuals and what they want from an organization like ours. We’re not standard charitable giving anymore.

 

That’s changed and I think as a brand, we’re finding our way in and responding to that more frequently, and market segmentation and the market research that we’ve done has done a huge job for us there because what we’re seeing there is people want more opportunities to give at lower levels. That’s not something we thought about a huge amount previously.

 

We’re focused on, we’re being told that fewer people are giving more, but actually our segmentation is showing that actually people would like more ways to give lower amounts. So how do we service them and not forget about them? And that tends to be the younger audience as well as events and funguses.

 

Ali: So that’s the real focus for you now?

 

Laura: Yeah, 100%.

 

Ali: And the same for you, Kirsteen?

 

Kirsteen: Yeah, so that really, a lot of the things that Laura just said completely mirrored. So we are seeing rising demand for services. So things like call to help line up 10%, 25% more animals arrived in our care last year.

 

At the same time, rising cost, so 16 million pre-pandemic, 20 million now. For so many reasons, investment in our team, vet bills, fuel, you know, you name it. And pressure on income.

 

So we’ve talked about, there’s so many different charities who need help. A lot of people have been talking about their brand and their purpose to try and get that help. Similar to Laura, where money tended to come from legacies and individual giving, very kind people around 50,000 who give us a monthly donation.

 

However, our income could not possibly keep up with our cost base. So we’ve really been doing similar, trying to determine how do we appeal to different audiences? How do we make our story really, really clear?

 

We know similarly that there are perhaps philanthropists, major donors, if you’re able to clearly articulate your story and your ask and they know you and they believe in what you’re trying to do. So in my case, for example, ‘believe in the prevention, try to get ahead of the problem’. There’s some brilliant people who’ll say, yeah, we really want to leave that legacy, test that, try that, and we’ll support you.

 

And that’s just invaluable, I have to say invaluable. And then there are people who want to participate but just don’t have the funds. So for us, things like younger people, they’re really interested in campaigning.

 

So we do a lot of campaigning to change laws to better animal welfare. And younger people are definitely keen to add their voice to that cause or to volunteer or to participate in a different way. And similarly, we’ve seen our individual giving go down because traditional donor base find it really, really hard to continue that commitment.

 

However, one-off donations have gone up because somebody, you know, very kindly, ‘I want to give you something, and this is all I can manage right now’. So, I think brands now and charity brands have to appeal to a broader audience and offer up ways in which to engage that are meaningful to that audience and that also help the charity.

 

“It’s very, very different. When we were a 15, 16 million pounds a year organization, it was okay to have legacy and reliance on individual members because we tended to, you know, raise as much as we spent. That is so not the world we’re in now.

 

We cannot shut off services: if we didn’t have the right funding, then we are not out there rescuing animals and they’ve never needed us more. So that’s not an option for us. Thus the strategy of work smart, be efficient.

 

I mean, there’s, we’re looking at how we deliver every, exactly, all of that, all of that. I’d say it’s a lot more complicated now. However, the simplicity has to be to the fore because it can’t seem complicated if that makes sense.

 

Laura: Yeah, it’s about creating that supporter centric culture, I think. And I think charities of the days gone by, it was like, we need sustainable income. So regular giving, direct debits is the best thing.

 

Kirsteen: So that’s also very expensive to do. And the cost of that is becoming more expensive. So if you were doing a face to face campaign, for example, the cost of buying a donor essentially is a lot more than it used to be.

 

And that’s because of things like the increase in the living wage. So actually that’s becoming an unsustainable channel at the moment, because they’re more likely to leave as well, aren’t they? So you want to find new ways to acquire people in a way that suits them.

 

And I think that diversification of income streams, not just about supporting the charity and making the charities income stronger, is about providing ways that supporters can choose what suits them in a way to give. You know, we can’t just push people down channels because that’s what we want them to do. We need to listen and hear what they want because that’s what people are used to with brands now: people are served. Charities need to start getting on board with that because I think we’ve been a bit slower on the uptake of that, mainly because the budgets aren’t quite the same as what our commercial peers would be. But it’s definitely something that we need to do more of.

 

Ali: You know, you’re not just changing the way that you market your organization, you’re actually changing the whole way an organization behaves. And that’s a much bigger ask when you’re already under strain.

 

Laura and Kirsteen: Yeah.

 

Both of you have talked about purpose quite a bit today, which is great because I wanted to explore that. You’ve talked a little bit about how that’s influenced and the brand evolution for both organizations. And Laura, you also mentioned the increasing number of brands defining their purpose and using that as a positive opportunity for partnership.

 

So I’d be quite keen to just, I know you’re both at the very early stages of that within your organizations, but it’d just be good to hear a little bit about where you started with that and what’s next.

 

Laura: Yeah, so we started with the research side, interestingly, and income generation in a different way, more through like matched funding. So we started doing co-funding partnerships just not long after we were really refining the proposition.

 

And I think being able to be clearer with partners about what part of the journey we focused on, what we did, and we’ve got a fantastic scientific advisory committee, a sector leading process for our research grant funding. And that was a great selling point for us to go out to other organizations who funded research and find out if there was ways for us to focus on specific cancer types or specific locations. So we’ve got partnerships in Australia…

 

One of our first ones was with the Brain Tumor Charity. So we really focused on what specific cancer types could be trying to target and work together with other organizations on, and similarly what other countries. So we really started our partnership work through co-funding.

 

And as the brand started to strengthen, we’ve now turned our attention to how might we do it for income generation in a more fundraising sense. And that’s actually more about brand awareness. So for us, you know, I mentioned earlier, our advertising budgets, our media budgets are much smaller than our, I hate using the word competitor, so I’m trying to, our friends in the industry.

 

So we are now trying to think about, how can we be more clever with the budgets that we have and seek partnerships with other organizations that share our brand values and share the way that we do things? You know, looking at entrepreneurial piece, looking at that risk-taking behavior for big rewards. We’re thinking more Dragon’s Day and less Paddy Power, for example.

 

How do we leverage the kind of organization we are through partnerships and through ambassadors as well? Because we had great success last year with working with Russell Watson on our Legacy Campaign. It was one of the biggest pieces of work that we did last year.

 

And the reason that worked so well is because the way that he talked about cancer and what he wanted to happen there was really in line with our values and our brand. So we’re very, very early on in development of that work. But it really is about looking at us thematically, looking at what we do, but also looking at the kind of organization that we are and who we are at our core and our culture and our people.

 

And how do we find another brand that’s similar to that, that we can work with to try and do great things that will help generate awareness of us with the right audiences? Because I think for us, it’s how do we reach the people that really care about what we do without having to rely just on media budgets and really trying to target really, really tightly. I think actually doing it through content partnerships or through fund raising partnerships is a better way for us to.

 

Ali: I can see that might lead you both into sort of more B2B marketing as well, which is quite a new, maybe under invested space, Kirsteen.

 

Kirsteen: Definitely. So echo all of that. Partnerships are at the core of our strategy.

 

Actually, we can’t do this alone. And I can think of it in a number of ways. Because animal welfare charities are brilliant at working together.

 

So we already partner to campaign to effect change. I lead a task force that’s UK-wide, actually, that many people are part of other charities, plus national and local government, north and south of the border. And that has been great at starting to shift “change into attitudes to how to buy puppy responsibly.

 

The Scottish government then, for the first time ever, put money behind that. And they’ve run three campaigns now. And DEFRA have also run campaigns.

 

That wouldn’t have happened without the pulling together of the partners within the animal welfare space. So there’s a lot of great examples, I would say, when it comes to campaigning, and far fewer when it comes to everything Laura’s just talked about around income generation and brand alignment. And where would it be better to be together?

 

When I joined a few years ago, we formed an amazing partnership with ScotMid. The first time they selected an animal welfare charity, we talked to them very much about education and young people and the relationship and the importance of the human-animal bond. And that was an amazing partnership.

 

They’re all over Scotland. They talk about a family and that was 18, 19. And even during the pandemic, their teams were out driving around our centers, dropping off gifts and sweets because they knew we were working, you know, key workers through the pandemic.

 

They have always said, it would be brilliant for you to get more corporate partners. It’s a very difficult thing to do, particularly now. So how do you identify other organizations that are aligned with your brand?

 

And in my case, there’s the difficulty of that. Oh, but that’s animals, we don’t support animals.

 

Well, you really need to rethink the impact of animals and the human-animal bond in your community. Because imagine if the Scottish SPCA was not there preserving that bond, life would not be nearly as good. So we are thinking about and looking really around how do we build our brand?

 

How do we build awareness and advocacy within different communities? And we hadn’t, as you say, Ali, we hadn’t really taken that out. We’ve been very focused on individual donors and legacies.

 

There’s only so far the other. Resource and spread.

 

Exactly. Also, though, it’s so important for the more people who understand in my world what good animal welfare is. So they’re talking about the puppy trade, they’re talking about how to look after a bird in your garden, So it’s thinking about the difficulties. So the more people we have as, I guess, ambassadors or empowered, community empowerment is a key part of our strategy.

 

The more and more people are aware, the better animal welfare is and the less we have to get involved, which would be absolutely brilliant. So partnerships are key. And the final thing I’d say in partnerships, we’re at the very early stages with new service delivery and getting ahead of the problem.

 

We support food banks, et cetera. We recently formed partnerships with Citizens Advice Scotland, sharing, so they’ve got good animal welfare messaging and we’ll hold information events at their centers. But also we’ve partnered with SAMH, Scotland’s mental health charity, because of the relationship there, and Simon Community Scotland’s homelessness charity.

 

And in the farming space, RSABI, who do brilliant work in supporting farmers with mental health and other areas. So you amplify your service through effective partnerships and broaden your income streams.

 

Laura: Yeah, and it definitely sounds like I think that’s so interesting that we are talking about that, because it leverages different aspects of your brand and “what comes out of the individual giving space, for example. So one of our partnerships, our global aspect seems to be the thing that’s more appealing to people or to potential partners of our brand because we’ve been attracting a lot of corporate partners recently, for example, Ubisoft, a gaming organization, DHL did a big event for us, a fundraising event, and the reason for that is because of the global connection. So it’s starting to tell our story about that without us necessarily going and deliberately trying.

 

It’s great when people come to you. We need to try and leverage that ourselves and think about how we can build on that. But it’s really interesting what you’re saying because most of the stuff’s about starting cancer cures for us in the individual giving space, but actually in the partnership space, the global aspect seems to be coming to life more. Something we’re trying to activate a bit more through our brand activity. So it helps you pull more levers for your organization, I think.

 

Kirsteen: It also shows you why you were out and being bold and sticking with this is our purpose and then the more people know that, “different audiences are saying actually I buy into that, which is great, I’ll support that.

 

Ali: Great, and you’ve both actually touched on in the chat about partnerships, about mentors and other organizations that you’re working with. And have there been any that have been particularly useful in keeping you focused on the brand? Any other charities or partners that you’ve worked with that have really kept your eye on the brand and where you need to go next with the brand?

 

Laura: I think for us that one of the first conversations that our CEO had was with the then CEO of the BrainTurmer charity. And she’d said about really knowing who you were and focusing on that, making sure that you were being true to yourselves as an organization. And that definitely set Helen’s brain ticking, thinking about, well, how do we do that as an organization?

 

And I think for us being able to look at that and really build on it. And the BrainTurmer charity were quite brave, and they started to appeal to a younger audience. So for us, they were doing a lot of the things that we wanted to do. “So they were also a very open and giving organization. That is one of the most wonderful things about the third sector. Everyone’s in it together and we want to do great things to better the world.

 

So everyone shares their great practices. So the BrainTumor charity did a lot for us in the early days and sharing their skills, sharing their insights, helping us on the journey and thinking about the strategic elements that we needed to focus on. So I would say for us, particularly at the start of the journey, that was an organization that really helped us kind of stick our neck out and go for it.

 

Ali: That’s brilliant, isn’t it? And I know, Kirsteen, you’ve had real support from your fellow animal welfare charities, but in particular at RSPCA.

 

Kirsteen: Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, I mean, there are brands that I just love and admire and you’re right, the charity sector’s amazing. I’ve never worked in commercial, public and charity, and you’re just so welcomed with open arms and everyone wants everyone to succeed.

 

It’s just incredible. So, I work really closely with the chief execs of all the other big animal welfare charities, The Dolphin’s Trust, Battersea, et cetera, who have got amazing brands and everyone shares, everyone shares, particularly close relationship with the RSPCA. And we do work together on things like, because collectively we would cover Scotland, Wales and England, then could we form corporate partnerships?

 

That’d be amazing because across the UK, nobody does what we do. Nobody does what we do. We’ve got a brilliant partner in the USPCA in Ireland.

 

And so the RSPCA have recently had a brand refresh, which is absolutely brilliant. And they know the power of the brand. And like us, they had under invested in brand and probably gone direct to fundraising ask without that kind of halo effect of their brand and who they are.

 

So they’re going through that journey just now. They’re very generous in all their learnings and sharing all of that. And we’ll look at how we work together because there’s a real power in raising awareness that animals have never needed us more, and the more that RSPC are able to do that, and we put our brand alongside that because we do the same thing in Scotland, they’re England and Wales. So we’re sisters. In the past, if you go back years and years, I don’t think our brands really talked to one another much. That couldn’t be more different now. We’re hugely aligned. They’ve got a brilliant chief executive and we’re hugely aligned.

 

And we’re looking at how do we make it simple. Say, we’re England and Wales, we’re Scotland. And if we go and work alongside one another, then instead of being separate, let’s be together and talk about that.

 

Messages that are important.

 

How could we be even more brand aligned while retaining our individual identities? So I cannot speak more highly of the sector.

 

Ali: Yeah, I think because you touched on that earlier when you were saying you don’t want to call them competitors. And I know in particular in Scotland, you know, a lot of people donate to our SPCA not realizing that in fact that money doesn’t stay in Scotland. And instead of, you know, fighting, continuing to fight against that, you’ve embraced the partnership and you’re doing work together.

 

Kirsteen: And I think that’s on us. I think we should be clearly articulating where the Scottish SPCA please support us. So that’s actually on us to build our brand and ask for that support.

 

And I would say the same with every charity. We’ve got an animal welfare. There are certain issues to be resolved.

 

So we have to get together to resolve them. And as I would say, leave your brand at the door, just deal with this issue. Let’s get all our brands behind it.

 

And when it comes to who you are and raising money, then it’s really up to you to do a good job of that. So that people want to support you. I love that.

 

Laura: Leave your brand at the door, focus on the strategy, focus on the problem, because that’s what charities were born out of. We’re all here to solve specific problems.

 

Exactly.

 

And I think if you focus on that, you can’t go wrong. And the other thing is, we know from market research that the general public want us to get together, they want us to work together, because they say, how do you maximize the potential of what you have to offer? The best ways to work together.

 

Kirsteen: I know, absolutely.

 

Ali: Yeah, 100%.

 

Laura: I know. There’s only so many donor pounds, aren’t there? And we want to prevent cruelty to animals.

 

Ideally, we wouldn’t be here because there wouldn’t be cruelty to animals. That’s what I would be working towards. You know?

 

And so if there are people who care about animal welfare, we have it’s incompetent on us to work together to try and cure the ill of the day. The same for you in the cancer spaces.

 

Well, yeah, absolutely. You know, everyone has their own variation of their vision. Our vision is to see a day where no life is cut short by cancer.

 

So why wouldn’t you partner with other people whose missions and visions are very similar vein in order to achieve that? Because everyone will know someone who’s been touched by cancer in their lifetime is one of those causes that affects absolutely everyone. So it makes sense to leverage the different skill sets and different knowledge bases in each organization to get to that end goal for more people.

 

Ali: Absolutely. It’s quite inspiring hearing all of this openness and partnership.

 

Honestly, I think a lot of areas could learn a lot from charity, actually, and how charities work together.

 

Be more open in their environment and sharing best practice.

 

Laura: Well, Kirsteen said earlier about doing the best thing for your organization. I think that is what is at the core. That’s what our CEO always says to us as well.

 

It’s definitely at the core of the majority of the work that people do in the third sector. You can achieve more together than you can on your own.

 

Ali: In these times of talking about reducing waste, reducing waste of all types, wasted time, wasted resource, wasted time, discovering something somebody’s already discovered. All of those things are important.

 

Laura: That’s a great point on wastage. Yeah, 100 percent.

 

Kirsteen: I think we need to make it easier for people to support us because I have worked in a commercial environment and I’ve got lots of friends that will work in commercial environments. And I know there are organizations who would want to help charities. They just don’t quite know how to do it.

 

So there definitely needs to be a way that charities are able to connect a bit more and make it easy for people to give because I don’t think we have made it hugely easy.

 

Ali: Yeah, I think it’s increasingly challenging for commercial organizations to pick a charity because their employee base have got different sense of purpose themselves, different drivers, and they have different belief sets as well. And so it’s difficult to find a common goal to unite behind as a group of people. So it’s really important that you can quickly relate to what a charity is offering you as an ability to engage as a corporate as well.

 

And so I think that is a really interesting challenge for the future of how you can engage with teams, and how they can get involved in the different ways that they can get involved, and the element of individual choice within those teams as well.

 

So we have talked a lot about the cluttered space and the direct correlation perhaps between brand salience and raising funds. So has it been challenging in your organizations to divert effort and budget towards brand as opposed to, I guess, traditional activities with the fundraising ask? Because you touched on the Reader’s Digest and the direct mail thing, and we’ve worked on that with you, Kirsteen, in the past as well.

 

We’re certainly seeing more organizations focus more funds and seem to understand the ‘halo effect’ of brand. It’d be good to talk about that in the context of your organizations and how you’ve influenced the diversion of budgets to brand.

 

Laura: Yeah, I think, where to start here? I think the challenge that you’ve got if you’re an organization that’s so heavily relying on individual giving and individual donations, is that that’s a very expensive way to fundraise. There’s not a cheap way of doing it, which is why people automatically think you have to have an asterisk at the end of anything that you’re doing. But we have a fantastic board, which I think is that that’s a big part of the rejuvenation of our organization. We changed our board, we looked for specific skill sets, brought them all on. We’ve got a fantastic marketing and fundraising trustee who has worked for The Guardian, who’s worked for ITV, so she’s got a great background in brand building. And we’ve just brought on a new category specialist as well. And I think having people on the board who understand the importance of brand has been massively important for us and being able to change the gear slightly on actually, if we start to push more down the brand piece, then we’ve got more potential.

 

Because if you think about just general funnel conversations, we’re actually doing quite well on the conversion elements, but the top, but our funnel is really, really tiny width-wise. So we need to try and broaden that. So I think for us, having those trustees on board has really helped because it’s helped the conversations flow better and people understand that some allocation has to go there. I think the thing that’s perhaps more challenging for us is finding the right way to do it because of the cluttered space that we’ve already mentioned and finding a way that brings the brand to life in a more specific way. We needed to land key messages. We had to do that with some sort of media campaign.

 

So we did our ‘Cure Starter’ campaign last year, which really brought the brand to life and helped people understand what starting cancer cures meant and who are the people that do that? Well, it’s cure starters and they’re not just owners, they’re scientists, they’re people who share socials, they can be anyone really. So for us, that journey really did start with the board and making sure that we could have those conversations because our CEO was bought in, she understood that that was important.

 

So for us, that’s probably the starting point, I would say.

 

Kirsteen: So same actually, I guess, when I joined, my background had been in brand. So in financial services, it was a lot of brand, there was a lot of M&A, and I would do that branding. And then in Skills Development Scotland, it was also about their brand, and it was a new brand, so brand positioning.

 

So it was in my mind clearly when I came to Scottish SPCA. I didn’t really start there as such because I was looking at the kind of go round and get to know the whole organization. And then very quickly it came to, well, what’s her brand purpose and proposition?

 

I would say it probably took a number of years and completely aligned. You need a board who completely understand this and understand why from a very operational charity like us, you would want to start to directing a bit more to investing in income growth. And we probably got to that a bit later than I would have hoped. “And in our history, in our long history, we have fantastic trustees, including one who you know, in fact, that you’ve met, Ali, who has huge experience in brand, and therefore they completely got it. And the fact that we’re managing to plan to deficit at the moment, as I explained earlier. And we still got trustees who are saying, yes, you need to invest in the right things because we have a growth strategy; it’s not a strategy to cut and to reduce in any great way. This is about growth and income growth. So how do you do that?

 

If you don’t invest, if you don’t have the right team, if you don’t have the right resources in the right way, you’re not going to be successful. And I truly believe, and I back our brand, that if we raise awareness, we expand the funnel that you’ve talked about, because our conversion is good as well. When people know us, they genuinely really want to support us, and they support us year on year on year.

 

And, if we don’t invest the right levels in our brand and get out there and try different things, some of this is about piloting different things. And we originally, in the past, when our books balanced, and it didn’t cost us as much to run, it was very individual giving. It was door drops. Do you remember this Ali? It was door drops, ask at the end of it. And there really wasn’t any halo or warmth or here’s who we are, or here’s why, here’s why we need your help, here’s who we are, here’s what we do. That was absent, and that’s to our detriment.

 

So we have to do more of that, and we have to appeal to broader audiences, and we have to make it really clear. But in the past, we didn’t have anyone thinking about corporate, anyone thinking about trust and foundations. It was very much an individual giving legacy.

 

And so the team is a lot bigger, and that still does one person, one job. So if I compare it with other charities, we don’t spend nearly as much. But for our charity, it’s a far bigger proportion than it used to be in the past, so there’s been quite a lot of internal engagement on that, I would say, because colleagues would say, well, why are you spending money on that? So it’s explaining, you know, you have to spend money to earn money, and you have to build your brand. And that has taken quite a lot of explanation because it’s not that simple, if that’s not the kind of background that you’ve come from.

 

Ali: Yeah. So a top tip actually from both of you is get a marketer on the brand, on the board.

 

Kirsteen and Laura: Definitely, yeah.

 

Ali: It’s interesting what you’re saying there, Kirsteen, about getting the team on board and understanding the importance of brand. It’s funny because you forget the things that you did, but that was something we really focused on. We wanted people to understand, we’re really focused on our purpose, and this is why, and this is your role in it. For that to work, you all need to be bought in, you all need to be able to communicate what this organization is all about, etc. I think the other aspect of it is showing your work, and not being afraid to go to the board and say, this didn’t work, but this did.

 

We’ve gone into the YouGov charity index, so that we can understand our position against our peers. What are they doing well? How do we maximize the potential of our budgets, like some of these other smaller charities are doing, that have got a bit of a better awareness ranking than us.

 

But also, I think the key thing is, you know, where PR strategy has worked, you know, the board have been able to see and really understand the impact things have had. And I do think this sort of unsolicited philanthropic gifts that we’ve been receiving via the website, unsolicited corporate donations that have been coming and people choosing us as their charity without us actually, actively going after that, is halo effect on the brand. It’s a really difficult thing to demonstrate, but you have to be aware of it and you have to keep thinking about it and thinking of ways and finding ways to help your board understand, well, this is why this has happened. And keep drumming that message home to them. Because in fairness to them, unless you tell them, they don’t know the impact the brand has.

 

Laura: You’re gonna think you’re lucky.

 

Ali and Kirsteen: Yeah, exactly. 100%.

 

Ali: Or that it’s free. Sadly, it isn’t. We would all love it if it was, but it isn’t.

 

And you’ve both touched on the teams, the employer brand side of things there. And do you think there’s particular challenges in employer branding for charitable organizations? Kirsteen, you mentioned it’s difficult for people that have been, perhaps, focused on animal rescue to think about why the brand is important.

 

So I guess you’ve both done work on your employer brand. You’ve touched on that as well, Laura. Would you like to expand on those, Kirsteen?

 

Kirsteen: Yeah, definitely. I think people choose to work for a charity because of the purpose of that charity, because they care. And I believe that it’s brand inside, brand outside.

 

So we believe in supporting the people who support Scotland’s animals, basically. I want them to have the best experience that they possibly can, because charities can never be the top total reward package employer. So you have to really think about that.

 

So what does your brand mean? And our brand, it’s our team. It’s our team that go out there every day.

 

And they do a job, it’s the team that people will see. And they are the brand, they’re wearing the uniform. So it’s so important.

 

And I think when I joined, there were lots of amazing people doing great things, but they didn’t necessarily come together as one and they didn’t really talk about what they all did, and so there’s this misconception about who did what different kind of role. So a huge part of over the last few years, really, has just been opportunities for people to engage and talk and know. And I share how we’re getting on. Here’s what our re-homing is, here’s what our income is, and well done to ‘blah blah’ for a reason. The storytelling to try and bring it to life, it’s an ongoing thing.

 

I think it’s fair to say that you need to attract brilliant people who care about your purpose and you need to really keep them because it’s a hard job. It’s really hard. I think anyone who thinks come and work for a charity and it’s going to be a nice job, oh my goodness, the hardest job by far I’ve ever had, and I take my hats off to my colleagues who give it all, more than all, every single day, no matter what part of our charity they work in. And we do a kind of hashtag one team. We’re all in it together.

 

We all rescue animals. We’re all part of the rescue. That is, however, an on-going focus on employer brand.

 

And there’s more that we need to do in that space. Great.

 

Laura: You’re the one team thing so important. I think, if I’m honest, that our employer brand is probably part of the thing I’m most proud of that has been worked on in the time that I’ve been at the charity. When we did, you might remember I mentioned that we did a big restructure relocation back in 2018.

 

We had to basically recruit a whole new team and we used an agency and we really struggled to get people because they didn’t know who we were. Who are these random people that have come to Edinburgh and they’re needing loads of staff? What’s this sorcery?

 

What’s going on here? We did, we found it really tough, but we did manage to get some really good people. I think at that point we were like, we really need to work on how do we attract talent?

 

Because if we want the world to know that we are the charity that starts Cancer Cures and for people to choose us as their charity of choice, we need to have people who would choose us as their charity of choice for employment. So we really focused on value proposition, culture and benefits. Because like you say, Kirsteen, we’re never going to be the top package on offer, particularly when your city center-focused in Edinburgh.

 

So first of all, the culture piece was something we really took a long time on and we got the team involved in it. We created an acronym that the team all decide what the values were. So they are totally bought in.

 

We talk about our culture every day. They’re not just words on the wall. In fact, they’re not on the wall at all.

 

And now that we’re in our new office, we’re like, do we want to put them on the wall? Because we keep on saying we’re not just words on the wall. And then the other, the value proposition, we did a lot of work with the team, asking them what’s important to you? Why did you choose to work here? Was it salary? Was it location? Was it the cause? What was it specifically? And we tried to understand a little bit of what was underneath so that we could try and leverage the good things that people liked and maybe do something about the things that they didn’t like.

 

And Helen was really a braver CEO in deciding that we would trial a nine-day fortnight because we couldn’t compete at salary level, but we could give people time back, work-life balance. So we do 100% of the pay for 90% of the time, and we’re off every second Friday. And I think what I would say is what we have seen is productivity going through the roof because people value that so, so much.

 

And it’s made them even more dedicated to us as an organisation. And for a charity who struggled for that initial recruitment when we moved to Edinburgh, our retention is unbelievable. Our exit interviews, the things that people say.

 

Anybody that does move on, it’s for things like progression. We’re a small organisation. We can’t offer massive amounts of progression, but they stay with us longer than you would expect for an organisation of our size, so for me, that employer brand piece is every bit as important as the other, because the people who you’re employing are the people who are speaking to the supporters that you want to attract. They are your brand. And we were rewarded back at the end of last year with the employer brand award from the Marketing Society because we have really chipped away at it. But you also can’t rest on your laurels. Like you say, Kirsteen, you can’t just go, oh, that’s us, done that.

 

Kirsteen: Yeah, because of the whole new wave of people.

 

Laura: What’s happening next? What are people looking for now? And you talked earlier on about work-life balance being a thing for one part of the workforce, but perhaps not for another.

 

Some people are more hungry for different things that we don’t offer. How do we look at that? How do we think about that succession planning, for example?

 

So it’s got to be a constant evolution, and you’ve got to make sure that you continue to focus on it. Otherwise, that’s where things start to go awry, I think.

 

Ali: Yeah, I think that’s it. It’s that it really needs to be built into your marketing budget every year. You know, that’s an ongoing.

 

Motivations are changing. You know, the people that you are employing now, you know, they’ve got a different experience than the ones that have been there for longer. And it’s about how you continually evolve that.

 

Kirsteen: Is there not something now about there’s something like four or five different generations in the workplace at the one time for the first time and very different needs, attitudes, motivation. So as an employer, you really need to be alive to that and think about it.

 

Ali: Yeah, I hadn’t thought about it that way, but you’re absolutely right.

 

Laura: I mean, they’re just an audience. The way that your audience are, that you serve for, you know, why would you not survey them and ask them questions and learn how you can do better? Because we do that with everyone else.

 

Ali: I know.

 

Laura: It’s been that we’ve started to really treat our audiences holistically through the organization. So we’ve got our donation audience, like our giving audience. Then we’ve got our research audience, the people that are applying for grants. And then we’ve got our employer audience because actually they all need different things. And like you say, Kirsten, there’s so many, it’s so multifaceted now in a way that perhaps it wasn’t in the past.

 

Ali: Yeah. I mean, it’s just compared to, you know, what marketers looked at it in the past. We have so many channels, so many audiences now.

 

I know it’s really about being on top of that and making sure you’re constantly evolving it.

 

Well, we have gone through most of our questions, but it would be good just to finish up this part of our podcast today with your top tips for any other organizations, peers, not competitors, peers, peers or maybe smaller organizations as well about how to convince their board to invest in brand and around what’s next for your brand as well. So if we could just finish with a top tip from each of you, I think that would be great.

 

Laura: I think my top tip is show your work. Because in the past, I think people have been afraid to demonstrate how results are going because brand is such a difficult thing to demonstrate. But focus on where you can see incremental gains because not all of your donations will be coming just from direct response.

 

Some of it will be halo effect of brand and try and attribute it. YouGovBrandSurvey is a fantastic tool for that. We really benefited from being able to see our…

 

We did a fantastic legacy campaign at the end of the year last year. The effect that had on our brand overall. And then similarly, it had an effect on our cash donations.

 

So that was specifically on legacies, but it had brand impact and donation impact. So having the tools in your toolkit demonstrate to your board the impact across everything that you do of a positive brand, I think, would be my number one thing. Don’t be afraid to show what’s working, but also what’s not.

 

I think that’s a really important point with boards. And it’s something that we’re an effectiveness oriented organization. And it’s really important to us to share what hasn’t worked as well.

 

And on a lot of the channels, we can dial down what hasn’t worked and dial up what is working. But you learn so much from what hasn’t worked and you avoid future mistakes rather than keeping on doing the same things over and over again. And I think it’s really important that marketing teams are brave about sharing what hasn’t worked and honest, because it creates trust from boards and leaders as well.

 

Ali: Do you second that, Kirsteen?

 

Kirsteen: I would completely second that. And I was going to say something very similar and test and learn. You have to test and learn and we’ll go into the board and there may be some red, say, so behind target.

 

However, it’s showing the evidence of sometimes it takes a while, especially when you’re moving into different income streams. It’s not the traditional, we’ll do this and that will be the conversion and that will work and yada, yada. It’s a, here are different audiences we’re trying to reach and we believe if we look after these people well, then they will stay with us.

 

And it’s a very different kind of proposition. So being brave and bold and showing your workings, saying, well, that didn’t work and that did work. And do you know what?

 

If we stick to the course, we believe this will be successful. So let’s stick to the course.

 

I think your language is really important in that because in the past, we’ve always talked about failing fast. But if you change it and talk about learning fast, it’s a much better message for your board because they’re like, oh, they’re actually making progress. It feels like progress being your doesn’t, even though it’s the same thing.

 

But I do think your language that you use with your board is absolutely vital.

 

Ali: Brilliant. Thank you for sharing that. So this has been fun, but on to some more fun now.

 

We always round up the Leading Conversations podcast with the famous Dream Dinner Party question. So I’d like you both to share with us, if you could have anyone in the world at your Dream Dinner Party, who would they be and why? They can be inspiring, entertaining, shocking, pick two perhaps, tell us all about it, and it’ll be a nice way for us to wrap up today.

 

So we’ll start with you, Laura.

 

Laura: Well, when I started thinking about this, two people came to my mind and neither are shocking, but to me, they’re quite personally interesting. I’m a big sports fan. So the two that came to mind immediately for me were Andy Murray, and people might think he’s got quite a boring voice, but I think Andy Murray is very interesting.

 

He’s got a lot to talk about. I love the way that he advocates for females in tennis. I also think it’s quite interesting, this sort of hotel business that he’s built with his wife at the Cromlix.

 

“So for me, I feel like, and then obviously all of the amazing things that he’s done, he put his body on the line to get to his main ambition, which was to be number one in the world. I heard a really interesting piece of research on the radio yesterday about personality traits of successful sports people. And the word manipulative was on there, and self-centred was on there.

 

It was a very interesting piece of research. I would love to understand his perspective on it because I think Andy Murray has leveraged certainly the self piece massively. But the person that was on the radio arguing against this research was saying, you know, we can’t be afraid to be successful.

 

And I think Andy Murray has been an individual who has not been afraid to be successful, and has not been afraid to say that he wanted to be successful. We’re in a world now where we get a wee bit shy about saying we want good things and that we are ambitious. So for me, Andy Murray would be my number one, always been a big fan.

 

And then my other one would be Jürgen Klopp, because as a leader, he’s everything I aspire to be. He talks about, you know, leaving our room better than the way that you found it. And it’s something that my mum used to say to me when I was young. So for me, I feel like he’s got the personality and the fun and he makes football not just about football, he makes football about people. And I think working in the third sector and, you know, every job I’ve ever had has always been about how do I serve people through the work that I do. So I’d love to sit and have a chat with him.

 

I could have had so many more, like, kind of fun people who are maybe a bit more different. But for me, they would have such great conversations. I’d love to sit here and pick all their brains about everything they’ve done in the past.

 

Ali: Definitely. Those are good ones. Kirsteen?

 

Kirsteen: So I’ll join yours and I’ll also bring my ‘Georgies’, George Michael and George Harrison. So anytime I am allowed to get the great honour to name an animal, I name the animal george. And they say, well, it’s not George Michael this time, it’s George Harrison.

 

And I enter. So I love, I’ve just always loved both of them. And that might sound a bit random because it’s not just about music.

 

They’re both really talented, obviously. And we’re underrated, I would say. Nobody had the expectation of them.

 

Really talented songwriters, musicians, both got a very dry sense of humour and wit, quiet confidence, yet absolute strength of character, and what was right and what was wrong. george Harrison became a vegetarian in the 1960s, got into his Indian classical and transcendental meditation, all of that. He was the first one to leave the Beatles.

 

He doesn’t always get given that honour. He walked out first. And in 1971, he had a concert for Bangladesh, which was the first charity pop concert. He does not get any credit for that. Way before Live Aid. So George did that, very kind man.

 

George Michael similarly lived his own truth, did it his way, stood up against Sony, because he didn’t agree with that. And made a music video when he refused to be in it.

 

Listened without prejudice very much. You’re not seeing me just listen to this without any prejudice about who I am and what I do. And also random acts of kindness.

 

So he supported an animal welfare charity in London, Mayhew. Not that well known. He did it in a very unassuming way.

 

And after he had passed, all the people who said all the random acts of kindness that he did, you know, he saw people on TV and just in it money. So they’re both quite similar in that way. Quite quiet, unassuming.

 

But I really admire that boldness, that strength of character and what’s right and what’s wrong. And I’m going to do this and I’m going to do it in a very fair way. And I’m not going to shout about it.

 

I don’t need the all the pizzazz that goes with the name that I have. So, I really admire both of them. And I’d love to have dinner with them.

 

Ali: Exactly, and both philanthropists. And you wouldn’t really have known that about them.

 

Oh, what a great party. Definitely coming to your party.

 

You have to call Ali. Absolutely. I think we need one other girl in there so we can email the numbers.

 

Normally, it’s sort of all women, but that’s great that you guys have picked some great men today as well. And all people people, which I think has really come out today. You know, it’s all about people that we’re talking to and the people in our team and the people that we’re reaching out to for the benefit of all people and animals.

 

So thank you for joining me today and thanks for being so open and honest. And I’m sure it’s going to inspire some other marketers in your space.

 

Laura: Thanks very much. I know it has. Same time next week.

 

Ali: Exactly.

 

Laura and Kirsteen: Thank you so much. Thanks very much.

 

Ali: Thank you for joining me, Ali Findlay on the Leading Conversations podcast. I’ve been speaking to Kirsteen Campbell from Scottish SPCA and Laura MacLachlan from Worldwide Cancer Research. Thanks as ever to Keith at Woosh for his production expertise and of course to our podcast partner, the Marketing Society Scotland.

 

As ever, I’m always keen to hear more from our listeners, so please drop us a line if you’d like to say hello, tell us what you’ve liked or disliked about the pod and any topics our listeners would like to hear about for future episodes. If you’ve enjoyed this episode of the pod, it’s easy to follow for more episodes on Spotify or Apple or anywhere else you tune into podcasts. Just search for Leading Conversations and follow for immediate access to our future episodes and our growing back catalogue.

 

Thanks for listening.