Here is a transcript generated by Otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with Eugene Nouril, EMEA marketing director at JLL, on real estate marketing:
Shaheen Samavati 0:13
Hi, everyone, I’m Shaheen from The Content Mix and I’m excited to be here with Eugene Nouril, a seasoned marketer based in the UK, currently the EMEA marketing director for JLL, a leading professional services firm. Thanks so much for joining us.
Eugene Nouril 0:24
Hi. Hi are you doing?
Shaheen Samavati 0:26
Good. So to get started, can you just tell us a bit about your background and how you got into your current role?
Eugene Nouril 0:32
Yeah, sure. So I know a lot of people say this, but I don’t have a traditional marketing background. I haven’t studied marketing—well, I have a little bit since I’ve gotten to it, but I didn’t study it when I was younger. I played sports for a living. And then I started, started a couple of my own businesses and never quite worked out why anyone, who… any entrepreneurs were trying to spend money on marketing or spend their budget on marketing because if you don’t know the type of people you want to attract and what your brand should look like, then you’d be probably in the wrong game. So I really got interested in the marketing side and off the back of those businesses, I ended up working for for b2b marketing agency, which produced a lot of content for some for some big, big clients. And I was an account director there, and we worked at Facebook, did some good projects at Google. But one of my main clients with JLL, professional services firm in the real estate industry, who do all sorts of things from finding and leasing space, to managing property to sort of designing and delivering home builds, to investing in real estate and advising where, where, where people should invest in real estate and also have a world sort of technology and sustainability, understanding around their whole business. And they were, they were, they were my client, and we did some really interesting projects together. And actually, I was always interested about how much they were trying to change the brand from just sort of white middle aged men in suits, standing in front of buildings to really moving the brand forward and trying to be, you know, make branded differentiator and producing really interesting content and I ended up going went to work for JLL two years ago as UK marketing director and have moved recently into a EMEA wide role at the start of this year.
Shaheen Samavati 2:07
Okay, so what’s your day to day like in your current role?
Eugene Nouril 2:10
Well, it’s very varied. I mean, it could be anything from working with our new global brand campaign, which is promoting our purpose, which is shaping the future real estate for a better world… Which is trying to push boundaries, actually, because, you know, as I mentioned before, our brand isn’t super well known outside of the industry. And we’ve been tasked with making it so. So the fact that we’re working on a big new brand campaign, it obviously takes up quite a lot of time. Alongside that, we’ve got a partnership with Bloomberg Green new sustainability channel that Bloomberg have launched at the start of this year. And I’m responsible for the EMEA campaign side of that. So picking and choosing our best part, our best case studies, the best way that we help our clients and putting that through adverts on the channel is a big piece of my role, also trying to be as efficient as possible as a marketing function across Europe. So working with all the local teams to make sure that you know that they’re pushing back to the business from a self service perspective where they should, and that we’re not wasting too much time on low value marketing tasks. Because, you know, in traditional industries and professional services firms, marketing has sometimes been seen as a support function rather than a strategic partner, which we’re trying to get, which I think we are now what has been the task of the last few years is trying to help people understand that so helping the business understand what how marketing can help them and bring in more revenue. Also, the other thing I’m involved in is planning some of our sustainability marketing, especially in the UK, where we’re sort of industry leading on our net zero commitment, net zero carbon commitment, and responsible business approach. I will then it might be, you know, another thing like there’s helping my team with brainstorms and that kind of thing. So yeah, very, very these days pretty different. And there’s a lot of presentations involved anyway, to all the different people around Europe.
Shaheen Samavati 4:01
So which markets are included in the EMEA region?
Eugene Nouril 4:04
So everyone from the Nordics to Southern Europe to France, Germany, Central Europe, Middle East, Turkey, South Africa so, so pretty wide wide region and it makes up less, less than 50% of JLL’s whole revenue because the US is our largest market but it’s the second largest largest with UK the biggest region within that. So being based in London is really handy for working across all the different markets because I can pick and choose the content that’s coming out with the teams I know really well and try and leverage that across Europe obviously localizing it a little bit because you know, different cultures and different audiences. You can’t just plug and play as as would it would be really easy to do that but we can’t we can’t do that.
Shaheen Samavati 4:49
Yeah, so are you working in different languages in all of the markets I imagine?
Eugene Nouril 4:53
So there’s local marketing teams that will translate as when needed but I’m just working in English… in English…can’t even say it! And you know, we generally work in English with all the other teams. And the market that’s in local teams will take key messaging and maybe try and translate that in terms of headlines. But a lot of the ad campaigns, we’re doing that sort of thing on our English speaking platforms and channels. So our clients who are generally sort of we our C suite and business decision makers do work in English, even in other countries as well.
Shaheen Samavati 5:26
Yeah, that’s really interesting how, because I’ve talked to a lot of people from different industries, and it really depends on your audience and your market, like how much sense it makes to really localized like on the language, like to the local language.
Eugene Nouril 5:39
Yeah.
Shaheen Samavati 5:40
Yeah, so that’s interesting, but you still need to, like adapt in terms of cultural, culturally, or maybe just like, because you were saying that you do have to kind of, I mean, it’s such a large region, that I guess maybe the same tactics don’t necessarily work in one.
Eugene Nouril 5:57
Yeah, that’s exactly it. I mean, we can never assume because one country is doing something that another will just follow. There’s things that are, you know, marketing 101 in the UK that are totally alien in some way like Poland, or the Netherlands where they just do things slightly differently. Now, from an investment side, a lot of our investment into EMEA comes from outside the borders, outside the region, so in the US or Asia they’ll invest into Europe from a real estate perspective. So in that way, your… the the way we talk to an audience in the messaging can be quite similar. But when it comes to local campaigns, different ways of doing business, different cultures. So patience and understanding is obviously required. And we really plug into the knowledge of local marketing teams for them to tell us well, maybe we should do this, maybe we shouldn’t do that. You know, what we’re trying to do really is concentrate on themes that can be regional, you know, region wide, and to take it to market so that we can kind of share resources across across the whole, the whole of Europe and then localize each campaign very slightly. So for example, with the Bloomberg Green purpose campaign that we’re doing, we’re taking EMEA wide case studies where we’ve helped clients from a sustainability angle. And we’ve got we’ve got slightly different case studies from Spain and France that we’ve done we have done, than we do from Northern Europe, for example, where sustainability means a slightly different thing and response from businesses is a wider umbrella that can take in health and well being and that kind of thing rather than just a greener space or the traditional sustainability piece. So yeah, there is a lot of variation from the different regions. But we do try and you know, off the back of obviously COVID, and we can’t get away from it, just trying to streamline what we do is really quite important.
Shaheen Samavati 7:39
And you mentioned earlier that the JLL has really been like, kind of like modernizing its approach and being like less stuffy and maybe injecting more personality, I guess, into your kind of content you do. I mean, how do you do that? How have they managed to do that?
Eugene Nouril 7:55
Well, it’s quite a traditional company, but we have… I mean I’m not I’m not from property background and plenty of people that whether or not from a proprety background… So I think that, I think the hiring over the last five years has tried to be slightly different. So not bringing people from industry, and I think that’s really worked to elevate some of the brand and content stuff that we do. That’s not to say there’s not a huge amount of knowledge and interesting people that are working in this space because they are but when you combine people that think outside the box with people with the knowledge, and you do a brainstorm together, then that’s better. That can be a sweet spot. I mean, social media, for example, is quite difficult in a, in a traditional b2b area, but we tend to use it to profile build or to promote particular industry research or thought leadership, rather than just talk about our brand too much. So there was about three years ago, there was a big, big rebrand a new look and feel that’s really elevated our brand. So it looks quite different and quite powerful within our industry space. And the purpose work that I mentioned earlier is designed to take that look and feel and elevate it from from a messaging level. So that people really get what we’re trying to do as a company, and don’t just put it put us in a real estate box, because you know, we’ve got I think over 450 researchers. So the amount of content we produce is scary. But it’s knowing which client… which audiences, which clients will get the most out of it, and not just sort of sending, pumping stuff out all the time and being a bit more measured and targeted. And also streamlining, globally, with with other markets on…from a social media level, because now that obviously marketing budgets are hit as part of the kind of current health pandemic, we need to be, we need to be really savvy about how we use it. So, so giving those researchers a voice and linking them back to our brand is something that is really useful. And things like live webinars, are replacing sort of podcasts and that kind of thing where we get where we’re getting industry experts, but also people again, from outside the industry together to talk about issues such as climate change, what the built industry can really help with. So yeah, I guess alongside that we have, you know, in-house production and videos and creative campaigns where we produce everything, but it really needs to be underpinned by such that sustainability and technology and, and our purpose that I mentioned earlier and taking that taking those kind of snackable content bits, pumping them out in social is also quite interesting as well. And I guess, you know, the other thing we try to do is to use our content to cross-sell to different people, because we do so many different things. Some people know us as an investment firm, some people know as, as a, you know, property management agent, some people notice as a residential agency. And we need to make sure when we’re talking to those particular audiences that we’re always talking about some of the other things and other services we can provide, which might help them that they might not know about. So with that kind of approach of trying to cross sell and trying to bring a global campaign locally, it can be quite it can be quite busy. As you can imagine.
Shaheen Samavati 10:57
Yeah, definitely. Definitely noticed that JLL seems to have like, I mean, on the topic of like sourcing expertise from members of the team, definitely, it can see there’s like lots of personalities and people speaking on behalf of the company, like how is that managed? And how can anyone in the company be involved in a content piece? Or how do you how do they like fit that into their regular role? Because I imagine like, their main job isn’t creating content, right. They’re experts in a certain area, and they’re contributing once in a while. So how do you…?
Eugene Nouril 11:28
Yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s really good observation. I’m actually as we, one of our main selling point to working with people is our people. We’ve got really smart people and I know every company says that, but we really do with 90,000 people globally, you’re not going to fail to find people who can you know, we really know their stuff and talk about it in a in a positive way. So that it’s nothing to with levels. So we have junior people as well that we try and build profile on through PR and social media and other media channels. And yet I mean, often it is part of their day job. So it might be part of their kind of, you know, what they’ve, what they’re what they’re planning out to work on for the whole year. But also it might be just that we try and make, we try and have a broad list of people who are quotable. So for something like sustainability, which is so important at the moment, and actually really is something that everyone in the company needs to work on, and is embedded into everything they do, you know, there might be a surveyor that also knows about sustainability. So they can be quoted either in the press or on social or through an interview or on one of our videos. Then we also have the head of sustainability who, who will be able to talk about the same sort of things right up to the board, who also are, you know, have the same talking points circulated and are part of the same web… internal webinars… that we produce to make sure that everyone is understanding what we’re trying to do. So no, we very much encourage it. Anyone from any team can get involved with trying to sort of promote what we do as a company, and we think it works. I mean, obviously, if you’ve noticed that through our website, then then it probably is working. That’s a good thing.
Shaheen Samavati 13:00
Definitely. And then also, as someone, personally, my background’s in journalism, and I’ve moved into, you know, creating content for brands. And I think like, there’s obviously been a big shift in terms of media and brands creating their own content and being publishers and not having to rely on traditional media as much for advertising. But I’m curious, it seems like you, you mentioned this project you have with Bloomberg or the partnership. So just curious about your thoughts on on the role of traditional media and how much value that brings?
Eugene Nouril 13:31
Well I think it’s changing. I mean, I think PR is something that is not dying out, is less important. I think media is still…actually I think the current health pandemic has seen us scale back a little bit and some of the content that people are digesting online is it’s probably gone up then it was maybe it was last year. But we have a we have an in-house content team who write trends and insight articles that work with our researchers to create thought leadership pieces, and we always pump them out to different media as well as through different media channels to see if it’s something that they want to partner with, or they want to promote. My thoughts about media in general is that it’s a very, very powerful tool. And that’s the issue is that you need to try and elevate from outside your industry. So for someone like us who are professional services firm that generally people who don’t use us don’t know as about, it can be extremely strong for us to try and get into national press and that kind of thing, or quoted on something like sustainability where people actually like oh, JLL, so what do they actually do? And then they realize that maybe they do need our services and and would like to work with us or at least talk to us about something. So you know, that role of media is becoming, or is as just as important as it as it always was, if not, if not more so. Especially with marketing budgets being cuts, and the inability really to do large campaign pieces that that in times gone by would have got your brand and your logo and your messaging to a wider market. However, the reason we partnered with Bloomberg Green was very much to increase our reach, so, you know, Bloomberg Green, has about 75 million subscribers. So for us, it’s a real sweet spot in terms of the audience. So with launching our purpose and wanting to get it to a different audience, and there’ll be lots of 74.9 of those 75 million who don’t know who we are, it’s perfect for us to do that. So media partnerships is probably something that we we would always look at.
Shaheen Samavati 15:25
Yeah, tapping into existing audience rather than it takes time to build that on your own. But I imagine you’re pursuing both strategies, right?
Eugene Nouril 15:32
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.
Shaheen Samavati 15:34
Yeah. So well, let’s move into the…your recommendations. So would you recommend an influencer who you follow?
Eugene Nouril 15:41
Well, Mark Ritson is always really interesting. And he’s written a really interesting article recently about, you know, off the back of the Black Lives Matter movement, which is the probably the most important thing that we’re that we’re facing at the moment, and hopefully will continue to be to be on the top of every company’s agenda. He wrote a really interesting piece about black boardrooms and the lack of, lack of black directors in boardrooms, that was really interesting. But, you know, I guess I’m always looking for people that write about thinking outside the box and not just settling for, you know, from a marketing perspective that we do this because we’ve always done it. I mean, that’s just not that just leads to sort of slack marketing and that tactical first approach that we really try and avoid. So anyone that writes about that stuff is is always of interest to me. And, you know, there’s there’s a few podcasts as well that are quite interesting. The Foundr podcast with Nathan Chan is good. I mean, it’s slightly more entrepreneurial, but it also deals with big corporates as well and talks about sort of how they how they went on that journey. Then Gary Vaynerchuk is always always quite good for for a quotable podcast as well with the Gary Vee audio experience. I’m sure you know, these ones as well.
Shaheen Samavati 16:52
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I’m a fan of all. So great. So well, for the next recommendation: a professional event or resource you recommend?
Eugene Nouril 17:03
Any of the Gartner webinars have been really interesting I’ve listened to a couple during while during lockdown… thankfully we’re coming out of it… but they’ve, they’ve been really interesting and I think something that anyone should watch it they’re interested in marketing. They keep it quite broad, so yeah…
Shaheen Samavati 17:18
Oh cool actually, I haven’t watched those yet so I’ll definitely check that out.
Eugene Nouril 17:21
Oh, wow yeah…well I’m happy if I know something that you don’t!
Shaheen Samavati 17:26
Well I’m sure there’s quite a few things. And well, your favorite app at the moment?
Eugene Nouril 17:31
There’s a few but probably Netflix because while I’m on back-to-back video calls a day they can keep my daughter quiet. I just give her my phone. It’s not the best parenting advice but at least it will keep her quiet so probably the Netflix app for now. And actually now that, now that soccer started back up, Sky, on my phone’s always good to get back into sport as we, as we come out of the lockdown.
Shaheen Samavati 17:54
And I’m sure people will be curious like what professional sport did you play? Or?
Eugene Nouril 17:58
Yeah, football, soccer.
Shaheen Samavati 17:59
Okay, great. Well, we’ll have to Google to learn more about that, I guess cause we’re out of time. But well, thank you so much for those tips. And thanks for being on the podcast.
Eugene Nouril 18:10
Thanks a lot Shaheen!
Shaheen Samavati 18:12
Yeah, it was great, and thanks, everybody for listening in. For more perspectives on the content marketing industry in Europe, check out TheContentMix.com and keep tuning into the podcast every weekday. See you next time!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai