Episode 184 / Barney Worfolk Smith / Megadog / Director
Podcast: How to Succeed in Going to Market Through a Unified End-to-End Vision
Barney Worfolk Smith has worn many hats, but considers himself a salesperson through and through. Jumping on the opportunity to be creative and making a success of it in companies such as Unruly and That Lot, he is now focusing on working with start-ups and scale-ups and developing their go-to-market strategy at Megadog. His Shiny New Object is thinking, planning and doing in the context of going to market.
There is no consensus on what going to market really is and how brands should approach it, as Barney found out when he researched it himself. So he went about trying to put together a more measured and structured way of thinking about the whole process, which begins with creating the values, mission and vision of a company.
While this can sometimes sound like a boring corporate exercise, it’s referring first and foremost to that step that a founder takes defining how their offer responds to a need in the market. Often, Barney finds, founders will do this and have a clear idea of it to start with, but as they grow and multiply the roles within the company, this gets diluted through various channels.
A good example would be a marketing leader then taking the vision and trying to “flog it” in the market by focusing on it from a digital communications angle. Then a sales team can further move away from it through adapting on the field. Before long, the original vision has changed drastically.
Instead, Barney is proposing that brands adopt thinking, planning and doing holistically. Then their go-to-market process will be coherent and so much more powerful.
Listen to how Barney suggests brands should do that, what his top marketing tip is, and how to best approach him for more brilliant insights, on the latest podcast episode here.
Transcript
The following gives you a good idea of what was said, but it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:03
Hello, and welcome to the shiny new object podcast. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of automated creative. And this is a weekly show where I get to interview really interesting folk from the marketing and advertising industries about their vision for the future of that industry. And this week is no different. I'm on a call with my friend Barney Worfolk-Smith, who is director at Megadog. So Barney, for anyone who doesn't know you in this industry. Can you give them a bit of background about what you do and where you've been?
Barney Worfolk-Smith 0:36
Yeah, cool. Thanks, Tom. Thanks for having me. Right. So background, oh, crikey, I suppose there's three main chapters to how I've ended up doing what I'm doing at the moment, which we'll go on to. The short description of what I do now is that Megadog is a go to market consultancy that does thinking planning and doing thereof which is quite a big grand thing. And we can dive into that later. But yeah, I've been kind of lucky. I've been a salesperson throughout, I suppose, like we all do in our different roles. But the first stage was media, working supply side to the media agencies. And then frankly it all got bit boring doing that. So whenever the opportunity to be more creative, sprang up, I got involved in doing that. So I ended up being head of creative solutions at Unruly for example. And that really sort of brought me into the second phase of what I've done, which was around creative and the business of creative. Which I suppose the key pivotal moment in that was That Lot, of being a major shareholder, and one of the founding team of That Lot social creative agency. And we built that and grew it and sold it as social group. And that enabled me to do the third bit of my life, which is startups really, I'd always found it very exciting, you know, all the youthful vigor and excitement and pivoting and all the other jazz that goes with it. So I subsequent to the sale of That Lot, I exited and put a bunch of money into a VC. So I had skin in the game, and then became Megadog, which did go to markets, thinking planning and doing predominantly for scale-ups, but I do it for a lot of other people as well. So that was how I got to where I am.
Tom Ollerton 2:29
So across all of those interesting jobs, roles, functions, and businesses, what new belief or behavior has really improved your work life in the last few years?
Barney Worfolk-Smith 2:41
Work life being so important, of course. This is a weird one, up until probably after we'd sold the creative agency, I've always followed my nose, and never actually sat down and planned what I was going to do with my life at all, which I felt a bit silly about continuing, I think I was 43 at the time. And so I just saw something on LinkedIn that inspired me to start thinking about it. So I did a bit of Googling, and ended up at Mind Tools website to do with personal goal setting. And I mean, you know me Tom, I'm not necessarily this sort of guy, you know, I'm not some sort of West Coast "12 things to do to be a hustler before breakfast." And I'm not like a sort of tree hugging sort of hippie guy either. But I felt when I looked at all this stuff to do with personal goal setting, I realized that I'd been trying to do all this stuff, but I've never really measured it or managed it or, or been able to look at it in a more measured way. So I just made a big long list of all the stuff that was important to me to do with career, financial goals, my continued education, family, things like the fact that, artistic I like taking a photo, giving back charity work, et cetera. And yeah, I just made myself a big spider diagram that I check in on every Monday morning and just go, right. Have I neglected my family? Have I neglected my... some attitudes, some facets of my attitude that I perhaps could do with changing? And yeah, that's been a pivotal change. I can't say I've stuck to it religiously. But just the act of measuring it and quantifying it has been a real game changer in how I approach work life.
Tom Ollerton 4:31
So, what has been your top marketing tip that you've hoovered up over the years? You mentioned some very interesting and admirable businesses, but what is that bit of marketing advice that you find yourself relying on on sharing myself?
Barney Worfolk-Smith 4:50
It's a significant part of what I do. I can't really get away from the fact that while I worked at Unruly, we had a particularly, an amazing marketing machine, b2b marketing machine. Working there under Sara, one of the founders, and I was part of it. And the basic, it wasn't so much a tip, it was a modus operandi, which was whenever we were fashioning stories to tell to market, to generally make ourselves visible. We made everything recognizable and repeatable. And, if possible, soundbiteable, the type of thing that if it was said on stage or within an article is that journalists always hold it for something to share and to type. And it's just give them exactly what they want. So an example of that might have been when there was some early conversation about ad blocking. We just leapt on this. And there was a talk that Sarah gave called the hashtag adpocalypse. And just so we basically gave stuff a name. And I suppose now I look back. And I do employ this tactic quite a lot. The virtue of that is that if you give something a repeatable name, you're just giving it fuel to travel further by itself, without having to rely on the business of actually pushing it a bit further, so recognizable and repeatable, if possible soundbiteable.
Tom Ollerton 6:18
Oh, that is that it's really good b2b marketing. I'll make a note of that for myself. And Unruly, but you know, what a succes they made of that. So the proof's, certainly in that pudding. So we're now going to go to your shiny new object, which is kind of embarrassingly, your business. But that's fine. But your shiny object is go to market thinking, planning and doing and then here we go. I've already made that repeatable what you said at the start of the show, so you're applying your tip to your own shiny new object. Very, very good. So I chatted to you the other day, and I said, what what is go to market? It sort of makes sense. But can you just explain it to somebody who has no idea or just pretends to know what that means?
Barney Worfolk-Smith 7:04
Well, everybody's pretending. And that is the problem. So I was sort of repurposing Megadog a little bit, I used to refer to it as growth in communications. And I was going out, I went through a phase of talking to lots of current clients and potential new clients, and this go to market thing kept coming up. And people were confused as all hell. And I started Googling, go to market strategy, go to market template, go to market this. And literally, every single definition I found was different. And that's incredibly unhelpful. When, let's say I specifically work around scale-ups, but go to market, it can apply to a repositioning or it can apply to a big company, that's, that's launching a new product. And that's incredibly unhelpful, when the actual ultimate measure of success is that thing, you know, people buying that product or service, and if there isn't a clear definition of what go to market actually means. So the reason why I called it thinking planning and doing is that I am in the process of trying to put together a much more kind of measured and structured way of thinking about the go to market process. So yeah, does that answer the question the initial?
Tom Ollerton 8:23
So go back one layer, what is the go to market process? So you're talking about scale up, who is I don't know what 50 to 150 people, or 10, or 20, and you want them to go the next level and go to market is how you show up in your comms?
Barney Worfolk-Smith 8:40
No. So this is the way I think of it. There are misconceptions, you know, the tale of the blind man and the elephant, you know, just everyone blind value goes up and grabs either the tail or the tusk, or the leg has a different interpretation of what it means. And this is the problem with go to market. So the reason I split it into think, plan and do is I believe they're all integral parts to the success and by being siloed inherently reduces the potential for success. So think so let's say for example, you've got a CEO, and in the early days of the setup of the business, they thought about the mission, vision, values, they've obsessed over the problem as all good startup founders should. And they've got a really clear idea in their mind as to how they should turn up in market and what the cool things are that make their product or service viable and valuable. Great, that's cool. Then a while later, what will happen is that let's say they've raised they've got some money and they start to invest in marketing. And the marketing job will get let's say drop kicked over to the chief product officer, the product person because the CEO is busy off going raising more money. And their interpretation of it, they might suddenly Google go to market and go crikey, I just I need just to flog some stuff. And they'll get sucked into a marketing automation wormhole. And perhaps might not be that subtle in their marketing thinking, they might start focusing on product features, rather than thinking about the problems it's solving for their potential customers. And then doing their, let's say, it's a little while later, they've got some salespeople who are going out to market. And they're just operating in a silo again, they're just just like salespeople do, making it up as they go along and finding what works and then just following their nose on that, and all of a sudden, you've got one part of go to market, which is the thinking, which needs to be there for a successful company, which is divorced and in a silo, from the execution of the marketing, which might be targeted and messaging in a slightly different way. And then you might have an account by sales team, for example, going out, but again, not being linked up with marketing. So that's the challenge that I've found is that these things are not linked up. And what if they are? And if there's people to oversee that, and within a business, if someone takes responsibility for that overlook seeing that as a long term fashion, that's where success lies.
Tom Ollerton 11:17
And so what are the first points of remedy? So if a lot of founders listen to this show? So what would you be saying to them, like they may recognize the problem that you've just identified, but what are the first steps in solving that?
Barney Worfolk-Smith 11:36
So I, the other day, I listed out all of the things that I could think of that potentially should be within, or could be within a go to market plan. And there's 22 that I've got at the moment, but I think there might be more. And the earlier phases of that thinking piece is to do with getting your mission, vision and values sorted out. And in reality, that the problem definition and the value proposition, they should really understand that themselves but I can help with that because I do that sort of stuff. So it's really about I've been calling this Tom, the special sauce this first bit, which is an awful marketing phrase. And I'm sorry, but it really is, it's about looking at you as a business. What have you got? What is your competitive advantage that you can talk about that differentiates you? So it's that first part, and I find as a rule that comes out of mission, vision and values, and the stuff that you need to be saying repeatedly and recognizably to market on an ongoing basis.
Tom Ollerton 12:41
So I'm halfway through, I think, ish, the Pixar book, I can't quite remember what it's called. But the guy who set up and ran and sold Pixar at Disney. And he's very... there's a whole chapter on roundedness. It's called Creativity, Inc. There you go. It's a good listen. And one of the things that he talks about is that when something goes well, we have that like, hindsight isn't 2020 is his point that like, we attribute success to all the wrong things like usually our decision making or our action, whereas in actual fact, our perception of the world is very limited. And so it's very difficult for me to see the world from someone else's perspective, as they see it, as you can imagine elements of it, but ultimately he said all of Pixar's success was based on lots of sort of happy accidents. really, Yeah, they worked really hard. They're really talented, had a vision, mission and purpose and all the things that you mentioned, but how do you plan for random shit that just gets in the way?
Barney Worfolk-Smith 13:46
How do you plan for random shit, I suppose agility, I mean, startups, scaleups have agility built in more than other types of customers and clients that you might work with? Because it's just the nature of the game. I suppose there's two things there. It's about how do you perhaps create random brilliance? And how do you overcome it? In terms of creating random brilliance, I think it's a case of just being open to turning up in a slightly different way. And then avoiding random problems. I don't really know. I'm not sure I mean, this is the problem with randomness. You're posing me a really difficult question.
I'm gonna come back to that one Tom. There's a better answer for that.
Tom Ollerton 14:47
Okay, so a different one. So we talked a bit about you know, how to get started. But what are the key things to avoid? You know what, when you meet new client and they say, Oh, well, you know, we're struggling with X, Y, Z. What are those kind of facepalm moments where you like, not another one? What's the common error?
Barney Worfolk-Smith 15:11
The worst error that I think people make with regards to go to market is just falling down a rabbit hole of one of the particular interpretations of what it is that might become fixated with partnerships. While you might think that the only actual answer is to get a bunch of sales people, or the only answer, and this is actually a predominant one that I see is to build a lead engine, and just rinse digital communications. And it's, it's, yeah, it's focusing on one part of what go to market is rather than looking at it holistically.
Tom Ollerton 15:48
And so then the other thing is, you talk about like, purpose, mission, and vision. I know you've probably worked for agencies and organizations where they go, right, we're gonna have a purpose, mission and vision session, and a small part of you always dies. So howdo you not do that, with that kind of like small death going on in the background?
Barney Worfolk-Smith 16:11
It's really interesting. Here's hot new news for you, I'm just about to launch a little partnership with one of my own clients called Grounded World who are based in the US. And they are the real deal in terms of they mirror a lot of what I do, but working with organizations that want to align purpose and profit, their first client was the UN. So they're the real deal. They're not talking bullshit. So where purpose comes into the equation, when I'm dealing with clients, it has to actually mean that. I'm not greenwashing or greenhushing, as I've heard is another phrase recently, just won't cut it. You know, my job is to try and help companies find their special sauce. And if they're, you know, making it up saying that it's something that it's not, that's clearly visible to the customers. So it has to actually mean something. And by that, I mean, it needs to either be entire raison d'etre of what they're doing needs to be purpose led, or they need to look back at their entire supply chain and the way that they do things to ensure that it's not just a badge that says, Yeah, we care about the environment, or we care about homeless people, or whatever else it might be, needs to be real.
Tom Ollerton 17:31
So unfortunately, Barney, we are at the end of the podcast, so I've no doubt people will want to get in touch with you. Where is the best place for that? And what makes a killer outreach?
Barney Worfolk-Smith 17:44
Oh, right. Well, the best place to get hold of me is, as you know, I mean, you're the one that's omnipresent across social, I told you I was gonna get that in. That you'll find me on Twitter tweeting a lot about a load of these subjects at @mightybarnski. Barney@megadogorg, is where you'll find me in Megadogorg on is my site where there's lots of other information. What makes killer outreach is this to me, or is this to other people?
Tom Ollerton 18:12
No to you. So if someone wants to work for you, give you some work. What are you looking for? And what's a great email look like to you?
Barney Worfolk-Smith 18:19
Well, in my, my mantra to do with the world is to fuck it to be focused, upbeat, curious, and kind. And so if you can give me an email that has at least two of those elements, then I would love to work with you.
Tom Ollerton 18:37
Wow. What a way to finish it. Barney, thank you so much for your time.
Barney Worfolk-Smith 18:43
That's my pleasure, Tom.
Tom Ollerton 18:44
Thank you.
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