Here is a transcript generated by Otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with VeraContent’s Kyler Canastra and Rory McEntee, brand and marketing director at Gymbox, on why brands should create disruptive content:

Kyler Canastra 0:00
Hi everyone, I’m Kyler from The Content Mix and I’m excited to be here with Rory McEntee brand and marketing director at Gymbox, one of London’s most unique gyms. Back in 2003, Gymbox founders were thinking outside of the box and wanted to bring a new approach to fitness in London. Starting in a Westend garage. They replaced cars, bikes, and then with knightly resident DJs, neon lights and dancers, blending exercise with pleasure. Their fresh approach to fitness helps members associate exercise with fun and not sweat and tears. And content marketing has been a driving force behind their success. So there’s no better no one better to speak with then in the businesses own brand and marketing director like Gymbox. Rory, his career has been about taking creative risks and having an independent spirit, something that I thoroughly believe in. So without further ado, I’d like to welcome Rory to the show. Thank you so much for joining me today, Roy. Hi, Kyler. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, no, it’s our pleasure and excited to learn more about Joe.

Rory McEntee 0:57
Well done on pronouncing my surname, and everyone has often been my Irish Irish surname. So

Kyler Canastra 1:04
whenever we have Irish guests on the show, I always get a bit worried because I always have these different pronunciations. And, you know, I’m from Boston originally. So there’s a lot of Irish people. But still, I still have to wrap my head around, sometimes. So please share with the audience that you are Irish. So can you just tell us a bit more about like, where you’re from? And what’s your direct connection to content marketing? And you’re

Rory McEntee 1:25
sure, so yeah, I was born I’ve lived in London there probably about 13 years. So I’m going to London based market here. You really some some meal quite well, in that in that introduction, I’ve kind of worked through a quite creative and content led brand over the years. And I have a real passion for for content on, you know, particularly challenger brands, and kind of, you know, I’ve worked for David and Goliath type brands, big brands, small brands, in the kind of numerous industries and across kind of the whole marketing mix. I think my, you know, my passion and really kind of delivering disruptive content for a small challenger brand, and really kind of challenging the status quo.

Kyler Canastra 2:10
And where does that passion come from? Just to like, kind of help, I guess, the underdog, you’d say in this case.

Rory McEntee 2:16
So I think, you know, I’ve been very lucky in you know, my background and my career in marketing, I, you know, I worked agency side and brand side. So I’ve also kind of worked for brands that I’ve had a real interest in. So I’ve worked in kind of film and entertainment, I’ve worked for a number of different cinema brands over the years. And on my agency side, I work for Heineken, and McDonald’s because I kind of wanted to get to get a big brand experience. I’ve also been going to work in sports and fitness, under the really great brand Paddy Power where I kind of learned my trade who are who are known around the world for amazing kind of disruptive content campaigns and I think settling down and Gymbox in a brand that is 11 clubs in London, and you know, what is fighting with your small resource and, and trying to do things differently. It I kind of landed in an area what I like to do, which is kind of really, really do things differently and not accept what what other people are doing. So it’s kind of my personal passion for kind of challenging, you know, the norms has kind of led me into doing that kind of from a career point of view. And, and I just love generally kind of brand and storytelling. And, you know, I’ve never been massively, a crazy thing to say working in marketing, I never been massively into short term KPIs and sales that on the long term brand building. And that’s probably where my passion and where, where I really kind of get excited in content and marketing.

Kyler Canastra 3:42
That’s fantastic. Now, just before we get to I want to learn more about how you ended up working for Gymbox, but is that like fitness, something that you’re interested in as well, like, personally, is that something you’re combining your interests there?

Rory McEntee 3:54
Yeah. 100% So I think, you know, my, my, again, I feel very lucky, very privileged that I’ve been able to work for brands where I have that personal interest. Like a lot of people I like food, I like drinking, I’m Irish. And I like sport. And I like I like looking after myself, I like fitness. And I think I’ve been very, very focused on where I want to take my career and I only wanted to work for brands where I’ve got that personal interest because I find it difficult to switch off and I wouldn’t again, no disrespect to anybody else. But I wouldn’t want to work for a toothpaste brand or a dog food brand. And I need to have that passion because I don’t switch it off and I’m always thinking about ideas. And in my day to day life, I don’t have that kind of shut off nine to five. After work I’m always thinking so Gymbox kind of came about from me. You know, networking and actually, you know, really kind of getting into fitness I’m a little bit older now. I’ve actually got more fitter as I got older and I want to have that in my in my kind of work career and and again, number of factors in terms of meeting the right people right place right time. But I think a lot of my creative work they did for some challenger brands such as Paddy Power, Every Man’s Cinema in London, I think that the team at a Gymbox saw that and we had a conversation and things here I am now.

Kyler Canastra 5:18
That’s awesome. And I’m assuming they give you a free membership? No,

Rory McEntee 5:21
it’s one of the one of the perks one of the many, many perks of working in a gym in the office is next to the gym to there’s no excuse not to go, which is great.

Kyler Canastra 5:30
Yeah, that’s awesome. Now, you kind of have a challenge. And I wanted to know a bit why how this role is different from the previous roles to help because he said that you have 11 clubs, right and London, and you’re talking about London, which is one of the biggest cities like you know, in Europe, and it’s a world power and you’re gonna have all these different types of gyms and people are gonna have so many options so kind of a challenge now to really differentiate yourself but then such a big market.

Rory McEntee 5:53
Yeah, it is. I think my job is made a little bit easier because the brand there’s a brand truth behind the marketing that I do so our gym there are very different to other gyms we have, you know, getting used ended up really well at the beginning. But, you know, we have the most creative and unique classes in the industry. So, you know, we just launched some recently, we have swordplay, which is a class where you can go to channel your Kill Bill and do a sword class, we have a roller skate class, watch my wheels, we have a new class with a comedian called Sunday Roast where you have an instructor and a comedian in the class. And then you kind of you’re getting roasted verbally, and physically, really making a bit of fun of you, you know, in a very kind of, you know, inclusive way. We have a cannibalise class, which is a recovery class with CBD oil patches. So we have a real brown fruit in terms of what I do. And we’ve also got DJs. In our clubs, we have a statically beautiful club lighting, they’re huge. So I’ve got so much content to play to it. So that makes it a little bit easier in the first instance.

Kyler Canastra 6:59
Yeah, yeah. I was just gonna say to like for that, like you said, storytelling is key to your mark, like the marketing strategy and something that you’re passionate about, which I think it’s always nice to hear. Because sometimes when content marketing, people are more concerned about the numbers, but it seems like you’re someone that believes like the whole mission of what content marketing is. So how is like, why is content marketing essential to the success of Gymbox?

Rory McEntee 7:20
Well, I think look, ultimately, nobody really reads advertising, you know, people could have real interest in or consumed or interest them. And that just made so happened to be to be allowed for content. So, you know, my, my approach and how we do things very differently is, you know, we’re not about trying to make that sale. Initially, we’re about generating brilliant content, and trying to get that content, whether that’s through our classes, our club interiors, our DJs, and our music, or all we do these really cool parties in London, in an underground clubs. It’s about creating this community and lifestyle. So I don’t even see Gymbox as a gym brand. I see it as a lifestyle brand. And people naturally are drawn to cool, interesting different brands. And a London is a place where people want experiences, right? It’s a melting pot of every culture. And every type of person on our brand ethos is letting go. So you can be whoever you want to be in Gymbox. And for me, then that allows our content strategy to be really different, and quite unique. And now not only in, in the gym industry, but I think we’re quite well known across numerous industries as delivering really, really strong and different content. It’s almost what will Gymbox do next that people are waiting to see what we come up with? And that’s, that’s a little bit of a challenge internally, how do we kind of step up every time and deliver deliver really good marketing campaigns and content?

Kyler Canastra 8:50
Yeah, and I think it’s really cool. Like that idea that you kind of compared it to London itself, like the city is a diverse city, and people are coming from all different backgrounds. And that’s kind of what you want to like that community, you want to foster that within Gymbox and kind of make it unique, but also welcoming to anyone with different fitness levels and ages and interests. This seems like a really cool idea. Yeah. Now, this is not your first podcast, either you were in an interview with the marketing society, and recently and you discussed the importance of taking creative risks in marketing and how this helps keep your brand fresh. So something that you were mentioning before how Gymbox people are kind of on the edge of their seats, waiting for the next, you know, piece of care campaign is going to come out. So why do you think taking creative risks is so important when it comes to marketing? And what’s an example of a creative risk that you’ve taken and you know, the outcome doesn’t have to necessarily be positive?

Rory McEntee 9:38
You’re really good question. Actually. I you know, I think first of all, as a small challenger brand, you have to do things differently to stand out. And I think, you know, you we tend to toe the line a little bit we tried, we tried to be topical, we tried to be you know, disruptive but not offensive and the world is changing and what we would have done years and years ago creatively and taking risks, we have to be a little bit more mindful now with particularly the social media world and our audience is, is changing. So the audience we had 15, 20 years ago, it’s very different to the audience that we have now. So creative risks is at the heart of what we do, however, so we do always look to try and kind of move to move the needle and push pieces to get essentially, you know, PR and response to our campaigns in a cost effective way, we don’t have budgets to be doing, you know, billboard adverts, or tv adverts, so we have to be very clever what we do. So a couple of examples of creative risks we’ve taken, I probably bring it back to our classes actually, were being topical and being relevant. So in the height of Brexit, which, you know, was the most topical probably still is the most topical thing. And that’s on the news over the last couple of years. Here, we, we developed a class called brexfit, which was essentially a class to vent your frustration out on on Brexit, and essentially got an anger management class. And we put politicians heads on punchbags and, and slamball balls and did a lot of different things. And it was a bit of creative risk, because Brexit was so divisive, and what side what side you’re on. So we needed to be very careful that we weren’t picking a side, and that we were actually doing it to you’re being completely impartial, allowing our members released their frustration. But it wasn’t real creative recipes. We didn’t know how people were going to quite react to it. But we always trust our gut. And we, we developed a lovely piece of content, we filmed it in the gym. Yeah, as I said, we kind of have Boris Johnson a punch bag, we had Nigel Faraj and a slamball with a treasom, a sack race. So it was a little bit of humor as well. And actually, from a creative point of view, it went global. So it didn’t just hit the London market, we had content on television in Australia, India, in Canada, it went, it went completely global. So it was a risk. We didn’t spend a lot of money on it, it went really, really well.

Kyler Canastra 12:11
That’s awesome. Now, you also like alluded to in that part, I’m just talking about how like the audience has changed. And I think, you know, alluding to the idea of like being more inclusive and making sure you’re not like offending anybody, because I feel like that’s kind of the shift that’s been happening where people are more aware. So how’s that, like, with the political thing, like, that’s a risk in itself, like, you have to make sure you’re doing it in a way. So have you found it to be difficult to, you know, keep the humor, I also do think like in terms of like, British humor and know, you’re Irish, but British humor, like, that’s part of it is, you know, making fun of politician and so like trying to find, like, walk that fine line and like, have you been able to do that already have you found it to be difficult,

Rory McEntee 12:47
you know, it is really difficult because you you do need to try and get a sense of the way our community and making sure that we are, you know, inspirational, aspirational to our community and not pissing them off. But also trying to have a little bit of disruption in the marketplace that people notice you. And I think our view, as I said, Our view is to be disruptive and not offensive. So again, what offends one person may not offend another person. So we’ve got a great team of agencies, freelancers, in-house, we’ve got a really young, cool kind of staff network of your sales teams, and we run these ideas across the board, almost sense checks, almost like internal market research before we go with it. But ultimately, we really trust our gut. If we feel comfortable with it, we know we’re going to probably offend some people, because people can get offended by anything in this day and age. But as long as we feel that it’s true to our brand DNA, we’ll go with it. And as I said, we don’t always get it right, a creative brand will sometimes, I won’t say get it wrong, but you know, we are what I want to call the the ‘un’, we’re unexpected, we’re unapologetic, we’re unpredictable, we’re unusual. So with that, you’re always gonna, you’re always gonna rock the boat a little bit. And that’s kind of the brand.

Kyler Canastra 14:12
Yeah, it’s essentially like going with your gut and making sure that if you feel like confident and proud of it, then you know, it’s gonna be right, exactly. Now, we’ve talked about a lot about the rescue take in your marketing strategies, particularly at Gymbox. But I’m also curious to know more about the risks you’ve taken in your career. So you’ve worked, like I said before, in a variety of roles from an account manager to communicate communications management, do you think risks that you’ve received taken have led you to who you are today and where you are today? And has your personal decision to not follow the status quo impact impacted your success as a marketer?

Rory McEntee 14:46
Yeah, I think it kind of goes back to what I said earlier around my my personal journey and my career have kind of run in parallel, I think, you know, sounds a little bit kind of wonky, but kind of most of our heroes are Heroes because of like, acts of rebellion or defiance. And by no means I’m saying I’m a hero at all, but I just mean, take taking that analogy, it’s, it’s almost to do things differently in your career, you know, I don’t want to follow up people do, I want to try things that are different, I want to take risks, I’ve always wanted to kind of become better, I thought, I’ve always had a journey, my wonder where I wanted to be, I wanted to be kind of, you know, top marketing person to my career. And I knew, you know, I couldn’t, for example, stay in a job for six, seven years, if I wasn’t progressing. So I’ve always taken risks, and particularly my early career move jobs quite regularly to get skills that I hadn’t been receiving. So, you know, for example, a Paddy Power, which was, you know, a huge brand and great things, and it was really making waves, but I wasn’t getting certain digital and social skills. It’s going back probably 10 years ago now, which I saw where the industry was going. So I had to leave. And I had to take that risk to actually jump ship and leave it leave a role that I loved and a brand that I that I admired to get those personal skills. So I think for me, you know, I do take those risks. When people say to you, God, you’re mad leaving that role? or Why are you leaving to do this? I actually think that’s a good thing for me, I know, I don’t want to feel comfortable in a role. Well, it feels too comfortable. It’s time to actually challenge myself. And I like being out of my comfort zone a little bit.

Kyler Canastra 16:25
Yeah. And I think there’s like two ways to live life, right. I feel like some people just live on cruise control or autopilot. And they’re just kind of not taking risks, they’re comfortable, and they don’t want to disrupt thing. But then there’s, on the other hand, people like yourself, who were taking risks, and we knew to challenge themselves. And I think, in a way you become a role model, not because you’re trying to be a not like a superhero, or be the best of the best. But since you’re taking risks, you probably affect like the circles around you and the people who we work with. And then I, you know, hey, I want to take a risk like he did. It’s kind of like passing that along to them. So

Rory McEntee 16:53
yeah, and you know, it’s funny at the time, I, I’ve never, I never thought of it that way. I never felt I was taking risks, or I felt, you know, I could be a role model or anything like that. It was just Well, you know, it’s just a personal choice. It is just being ambitious, and being just being hungry, and having a desire to kind of better yourself. And it’s almost kind of self fulfillment, in terms of trying to be happy and what I’m doing and when I’m not happy. I just, I just go, exactly. You know what I’d rather I’d rather I’d rather live with the regret of trying something that didn’t work out and then not not taking that risk and kind of always thinking should I have should I have tried something different.

Kyler Canastra 17:33
Exactly. And it’s like, the idea of being happy. But while taking a risk and taking yourself your comfort zone that kind of ties in to what Gymbox know, like having fun, while doing things that may not be, you know, mean, or not being to fitness, and it’s your first time trying to do it, and you have this fun class. And that kind of takes your mind off of that. So why it’s like kind of your philosophy is kind of what the gyms philosophy is.

Rory McEntee 17:52
Absolutely. That’s why it’s such a great personal and brand fit for me. Because it needs kind of my personal ambitions, too.

Kyler Canastra 18:00
But I’m a bit curious, though, to learn more about like, what a typical day at work is like for you. Because you mentioned before that you get a free gym membership, the gym is right across the street. Like, I want to know a bit more about how that works, like do you work out during the day? Or like what do you get to go like, see what’s going on in the gym? And also just learn a bit more about what areas of responsibility you have?

Rory McEntee 18:19
Yeah, you know, with a brand like Gymbox we’re really lean. So the I do I do everything. So you know, I, you know, have very small team, I have a number of internal, or I guess, a couple of freelancers that we dip into every now and again, I’ve got some external agencies that we use. And because of that, I tend to be meeting up people all the time. So I’m an early star, we have the gym, I come into the gym in the morning. To get that done. I like to have a little bit of quiet time before everybody then come then. And because we’re quite topical and trying to relevant campaigns, I try and have an hour 40 minutes to an hour every morning, right? I feel very old school now used to get all the newspapers delivered. And I kind of go through net now is very different. I’ve got my my kind of whole internet favorites up. I kind of I just scour the news, just just see Is there anything going on that we can tap into? I mentioned Brexit, Brexit before, obviously, it’s quite a big one. We’ve done stuff around class around climate change CBD oil. So these ideas come from what’s going on in the world. So I like to have a bit of that thinking time in early in the morning, which is my kind of creative time before the day goes crazy. And then really the day become the kind of in the mornings. It’s internal that actually just setting up team we got so much going on from paid social media to PR campaigns to new brand campaign to new creative classes launching. We tend to also then have workshops in terms of coming up with new classes. So I actually quite often then lunchtime go to another class and I held the class so I can see what’s going on and and give some input into How I think we should structure it. And then really Mike, my afternoons I try and get out we have a lot of, again, we don’t like to be too insular and just stuck in the office all the time. So we do a lot of networking. So in the afternoons, I tend to want to go to agency and work from there and set up different partner meetings, some great brand that we partner with in London. And actually, it’s really about network in the afternoon. So the first half of the day tends to be inward focus, setting up the team, everything done. And the second half of the day is really about kind of networking, brainstorming and kind of getting a new partnership going. So but again, there’s no typical day of Gymbox, but what what may be important today, tomorrow, something will drop, it becomes the biggest piece we have to work on. So everything’s,

Kyler Canastra 20:41
that’s awesome. And it seems like you really have a lot of evidence seems like the days are dynamic, which is makes it really interesting. And you’re not gonna have the same day over and over again. But also, like you’re having hands on experience with the product that you’re marketing itself. So you’re actually doing the classes, you’re talking to the people in the classes observing. So it’s really cool, you get to like, take that, and then use it and see where you can improve and where you can change.

Rory McEntee 21:02
Yeah, it’s great. Having that passion and being interested in that industry makes it so much easier. It doesn’t feel like work. I know, it gets to cliche, but it really doesn’t feel like if you if you get a job you love, you won’t work a day in your life, it does feel like that a time to Gymbox, which is a great place to be very

Kyler Canastra 21:21
rewarding. Now, one thing too, that you’ve mentioned a couple of times that you’re organizing a team and you work with freelancers and other agencies and in house resources. Now, in my experience, because I’ve worked as a freelancer and as a project manager at one of those agencies that helped, you know, other companies get their marketing off the ground. The one thing I really have heard a lot from, like the people in the clients I’ve worked with is how difficult it can be to manage and organize all these resources. So how do you do it? Like, do you have any tips or tricks on organizing everything and making sure everyone’s kind of aligned and cohesive?

Rory McEntee 21:52
Yeah, you know, what, probably the most challenging part of my role actually, because, you know, I’ll take credit for all the ideas we have. But ultimately, I don’t really do anything, all I do is is project manage, and move different pieces around. Now, I know we might have a little disservice there. But my role is very much about bringing in the experts in there in the individual field. So finding the best PPC and SEO guy, we can get to help drive that part of the business, getting the best copywriter very copy later, but to the amazing copywriter. We got amazing free freelance graphic designer. So because we are a small business, we don’t necessarily have the resource to bring everybody in house. And I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t necessarily have the work full time for a graphic designer, but I can dip in and out of this person when I need them. Now, the big challenge you have with that would having I would say probably we got between freelancers and agencies, maybe maybe 10 different, different kind of people slash agencies. And it’s making sure you’re my role is all about making sure they buy into what we’re trying to achieve. And they can get our brand depart our our business is led by brand. And you know, it’s very difficult, particularly in his COVID world when everything’s on zoom and Google meets where you’re you’re having one on one conversations. And what I’m trying to do now in the world is kind of getting back in and getting back together in a room regularly. And a bit maybe not talking about day to day, but just what we’re up to the brand, what my vision is, where we’re where we’re going in the next year, and making sure everyone’s on that journey with us. And, and that’s the kind of key challenge for me kind of going into kind of 2022 and beyond my aim makes sure people are motivated and, you know, cohesive in that sense. Yeah, there’s nothing worse than a disjointed, schizophrenic looking campaign that does. Somewhere, it’s kind of my biggest pet hate and it has happened, we’re kind of one on one conversation. So my, my focus is just making sure as a member or a prospective member, if they don’t see that, we need to make sure we bring it all together.

Kyler Canastra 24:01
Now you brought up like probably the most topical, like AI piece of conversation right from the last year, which is COVID. And he recently had Ant Martland from Gym Nation, which is based in the United Arab Emirates on the show. And he does like marketing for them. And we talked about kind of the future of fitness post COVID. And I hate talking about COVID. But it’s also something that we have to deal with every day in our lives. So kind of In your opinion, I’d like to hear your insight on this, like do you believe that the pandemic was beneficial or detrimental to the fitness industry? And how is your approach to marketing changed over the past year and a half?

Rory McEntee 24:35
You know, I know I didn’t know he was on actually I should I should have listened to his podcast before to make sure we were aligned. But I think it’s a super interesting topic. And still something that we’re all figuring out a little bit. My personal view is so you know, our business shut down overnight, like many businesses did, and the initial thought was like, shit like, you know What if what’s going to happen are we gonna lose our jobs in the gym, and if you’re a survivor, we’re gonna survive. Now, I think when you look back at it, there was obviously some short term challenges. And However, now looking back at it, I actually think a few things has happened. So we we’ve now, we now have a digital project, product with a digital product. And at the bath, which is our online fitness platform. Now, we’re a small London brand, we have 11 clock clubs, we are now in 75 countries worldwide. So our brand presence in the space of you know, 18 months has gone from London to global Now, obviously, on a very small scale. And, you know, we are a bricks and mortar business, and now we’re coming to digital worlds. So it was a huge learning, and it’s different. But actually what it does is it gives us massive opportunities to kind of you know, I’m super excited because we have ambitions to grow internationally beyond London. And we want to look at kind of really interesting cities. And the fact that we are now in 75 different countries, we can actually build up a brand presence, we can look at where we are, and over indexing on classes online, so we can see actually, maybe New York or, or Sydney or Sau Paulo is a place to actually build the brand and open up new clubs. I think also the way we will work in the future is going to change to having that hybrid model of a member thing, we’re only going to be in London today, the week or treating the week, our gyms are very city center based. Having that digital platform, which we may not have had if it wasn’t for COVID means that we can actually give people a full service to say, Well, actually, we’ve got digital products. So you can come to the gym two days a week, and then you can work out from home too. So I think it’s actually allowed us to, to build the brand in a way we may not have done before. And it’s fast, but it’s fast tracked a lot of our projects that we we’ve always talked about living with knew we were always gonna go digital, but we had no choice. And we did it quickly. So I think my overall view is, in the short term, it was an absolute disaster and a nightmare. But we learned quickly we move fast. And I think actually it’s going to set us up well, wouldn’t it be cool to come out to your side, which we are now.

Kyler Canastra 27:18
And especially people that take a lot of risks, like you said before, like you want to go digital, but then you maybe you know didn’t have the time or because of the situation you had to you had no choice. So I think a lot of people were pushed to do things that they maybe they had not in the backburner but like in their mind, and they just had to implement that right away?

Rory McEntee 27:34
Yeah, 100%. I think I think also, you know, maybe we are sometimes too critical, and we won’t launch projects until we’re 100% happy with what we have to do. We have to move fast and think on our feet. So we were getting stuff out the door maybe 80%. Correct. Because we needed to. And we were tweaking it as we went, but I don’t think we would have ever done that before. And it’s actually just changed our mindset, which I think other than for us.

Kyler Canastra 27:57
Yeah. And I think that like anything has its pros and cons. I think one thing I really enjoyed about the pandemic, you can’t say that, but what is the result like with things like education and fitness, I think it’s people have had more access to these things that they never had before. And I I mean, I do think there’s nothing like going to a gym with people and having that human interaction the same as like education and going to school. We’re having a class setting, it’s been important, but I think one good thing is, you know, people have access to it. And they can, I think people maybe will prioritize things like learning or fitness, they can do it at home, and they can fit it easier into their schedule. 100% 100% I think is really that’s a cool thing that’s come out of it. So

Rory McEntee 28:35
yeah, so I think that you may never have done it. And actually, you know what it’s been it’s been it should show but I think people are better for anything, you appreciate things more now.

Kyler Canastra 28:47
Now, we also touched upon kind of like the changing times, and something that we just talked about now with COVID, but also with your into the audience and using social media. And I want to ask you, like, in your opinion, what are some skills that you think are really important for marketers to have nowadays? Well, everything’s changing so quickly.

Rory McEntee 29:05
You know, what, I, I’ve got a slightly different view on this one in terms of so with COVID, it was an opportunity. A lot of people left businesses, if they got new careers, people have a chance to to take what they wanted to do. And I was in a position where I was actually hiring and rebuilding the team over over over COVID which was a little bit tricky, remotely. And I was getting hundreds of CVs through we you know, we’re quite a cool brand people want to work for us. And you know, I was looking at all these different skill sets and people had, you know, pay social media skills or PPC skills. And actually, my view changed a little bit to my interview process where Yes, skills are important, but I think it’s more about attitude and that personal connection, you have somebody I feel like particularly I’m recruiting and slightly more junior people getting into marketing. It’s about having the right attitude, are they hungry have their desire to To learn, will will, culturally they fit in skills you can you can learn. And I think as long as you have that right attitude and desire and you can you can, you know, learn anything, I think actually, if people have been in a job for five, six years, they may be institutionalized the skills or learning are part of how that company does it. And actually, I feel that as long as you have the right mindset, and yes, you’ve got to, you’ve got to have some skills I think having in my role or in market roles, project management, being commercially minded, having a creative eye are important, but actually, it’s more about will you kind of push yourself and will you want to learn from me, that’s, that’s what I look for now, when I’m when I’m recruiting.

Kyler Canastra 30:43
I’m like that desire to keep learning and challenging yourself, essentially. Now, on the show to like, our listeners, kind of our you know, people who are very experienced in content marketing, or they’re starting out in content marketing, but I think all of them come to this show to listen to hear advice from other people and how they can improve. So it’s a two part question. But first, I kind of wanted to know, like, what do you think some companies get wrong when it comes? Or some marketers get wrong when it comes to content marketing? And then what advice would you give to somebody who’s just starting out now? who’s interested in the field?

Rory McEntee 31:15
So I think, to answer your first question, it’s kind of difficult, you know, what do people get wrong on the market, we get a lot wrong and content marketing. But that’s, that’s you because we take risks and you try stuff. And my, my view or advice on that one would be, you know, don’t don’t just follow what other people do, I see a lot of that in the marketplace. Now, it’s very obvious. And, you know, being safe with your content, and actually not taking those risks is probably the worst thing you can do. And, you know, I’m a little example, that I’ve seen quite recently is quite topical at the moment was Drake’s new album, drop, certified Loverboy. And it sold all the babies and everything brands kind of did a version of that. And I’m kind of gone. Just a bit boring. Like, you know, I could put a kettlebell on it or a dumbbell, but it’s like, you know, who cares? It’s not original. It’s not unique, it’s not different. I think you do see a lot of brands doing that, I think it’d be easy. What brand from content marketing is they’re trying to do too much. In one, one piece of content. They’re trying to make it go viral, but have a sales message in it, and convert that sales. Now, actually, our content isn’t about converting sales, it’s great content, getting that engagement. And then we’ll hit them later, we got their data, we can go follow them, we can go and convert them at a later stage. But right now, let’s entertain them. That’s the big thing that people are making the mistake of trying to do too much with one content.

Kyler Canastra 32:46
Yeah. And I think like, that’s something that’s been coming up a lot. And these interviews I’ve been doing for the podcast, I think we had like Hayley Collingswood on two weeks ago, and then last week, or this Yeah, it’s gonna be last episode before this was with Adriana Carles And they both talked about the importance of building your brand, but also like not doing not overwhelming yourself and kind of knowing what your brand is. And then organically then building the content marketing strategy behind it. And it seems like you’re also a proponent of that as well, like not overwhelming yourself. And the numbers come after, it’s just more about telling your story. And getting across.

Rory McEntee 33:18
the big the bigger challenge for marketers is internally, you know, I’ve got a board to report to you and they’re looking for results, and you’re trying to you’re trying to bring them in that journey, same results will follow. We’re looking at long term brand building, and that’s the bigger challenge. And I think to answer your second question, in terms of advice to people starting out, you know, I did touch on a little bit earlier on taking risks. So my view is, particularly if you’re starting out, there’s so many areas within marketing and content, you know, it could be brand strategy and market research, it could be PR, it could be paid social media, the list goes on, you know, my view is, you may not know what you want to do yet, and that’s okay. You know, try and try and get a role I went agency side to start off with because it gave me exposure to different parts of marketing that I made on the web into particular brand. And, you know, don’t be afraid to move around when you’re young. I as I say, I think somebody who has five years, early on in a job on their CV is doing themselves a disservice. They’re going to get institutionalized. They’re going to you need to keep learning. I think really, if you can do something you’re passionate about, and it’s very difficult to walk into a brand like Gymbox for Heineken or McDonald’s as a marketing assistant or whatever entry level may be. So my tip of what I did was go into an agency and get that experience. I wanted to work for Heineken, and the agency had Heinekan as an account so it was my way kind of in to a brand that I’ve interested in to try and try and find different ways in time work for brand are passionate about because then it will make you make your life so much easier.

Kyler Canastra 34:53
So that’s really great advice, I think. And if you if you’re not passionate about your job, then kind of like what are you doing? You need to find someone that really You know, gets you going and get you out of bed in the morning. I think that’s so important. Now, I think a lot of people are gonna be curious now too and so am I. Someone you see someone that takes risks you’d like to challenge yourself? It seems like you’re constantly trying to learn and you know, learn about new trends and what’s going on in the news. So do you what are your daily habits and what habits would you attribute to your success?

Rory McEntee 35:20
Um, well there’s a couple of things I say, I don’t really switch off I’m a very you I take a lot of things I tend to cycle around London, I’m always kind of you know, looking at adverts, you know, when I go to you know, I go to cinema, I’m actually thinking about how can I steal what are their ideas and take a budget the gym world so I’m always kind of thinking about in my daily life stuff, I see that I can come and adapt into my world of I see a great advert someone’s done on pissed off. I didn’t come up with it. And like I kind of try and take ideas but you know, I, I don’t, it sounds funny for some in marketing, but I don’t really like everyone says, you read this marketing book. And here’s what we’re learning. I’m not a massive reader. I like listening to podcasts. While I’m walking or sometimes cycling in, by provision, the last bit dangerous, but but there is there is one book I would recommend that I’ve read, which is probably I actually reread probably a six or seven times, every couple of years. The book called be more pirate. And by next add man called Sam Conniff for pronounce correctly. And the premise of the book is a business book. And, again, it takes to kind of it takes the kind of it’s inspired by the golden age of pirates, and the fact that they had to rebel against the, you know, the anti establishment. And it draws parallels between their strategies, to do things differently, and a comparison to kind of modern kind of rebels like Elon Musk and Banksy. It’s just a very funny and super interesting way to think about challenging about yourself, and your daily tasks, and then kind of taking that into your work. And you know it. What it does is, it’s a funny read, but actually, there’s workshops and a little mind, bits you can do to kind of go actually, should I be kind of thinking about things differently. And it has some really, really good examples, as I say, we’re Banksy, who, you know, biggest kind of rebels around. And what he does is brilliant. It’s literally changed my mindset. And it’s helped me think about how I do things differently. So as I say, I don’t read a lot of books, I couldn’t recommend a huge amount of marketing business books are just all I would highly recommend for anyone who, who wants to try and just kind of, you know, just shake the tree a little bit and do things a little bit differently to challenge the status quo.

Kyler Canastra 37:55
That’s awesome. Now, besides like that book, as well, and it seems like you take sources, your source of inspiration seems to be like the world around you, you’re very observant, and you’re observing different advertising and different things, wherever you are. Do you have like any other sources of inspiration or a role model or someone that you look up to?

Rory McEntee 38:13
No, you know, what’s funny, I’ve never, I’ve always been a bit unlucky, I’ve never had a massive role model. In my work, you know, I like to, you know, I’ve worked with some great CEOs, and I respect a lot of people, I actually, it’s a bit of a bit of a funny one. But but I probably take more inspiration from and actually one of the one I’ll be looking at recently, again, is Russell Brand, I’ve been watching a lot of stuff and just again, you know, trying to be, again, it sounds a little bit spiritual. I’m not a spiritual person as such, but it’s trying to be kinder, and also, you know, I work in Marketing, and I’m kind of, you know, it’s about commercial and driving sales and right, it’s doing it in the right way. I actually think by listening to kind of other people and, and being kind and doing the different way, I’ve actually kind of taken a little bit of inspiration from that in terms of making do things doing well and make sure I feel proud of what I’m doing. And I’m not just peddling memberships to people who may not need them necessarily. So you’re very much kind of just taking inspiration from other say everyday life and just listening to podcasts and different people.

Kyler Canastra 39:21
That’s awesome. And it’s really nice to hear that I think a lot of times people were like, you know, I have this inspiration, this person or this book, and it’s kind of you’re someone that’s observing the world around you and in trying to be a better person. I think

Rory McEntee 39:33
I knew I 20 I think inspiration can come from anywhere, you know, as you say, it’s not necessarily a role model. But there are some amazing, amazing things going on on a micro level where you just see kindness with people in supermarkets, crossing the road, helping motor people out and actually that inspires me.

Kyler Canastra 39:50
Yeah, and that’s something we need more than ever nowadays. Yeah.

Rory McEntee 39:54
be ambitious, but you know, be humble and be kind and, you know, do The best you can do for your business. But also make sure you can sleep well at night and make sure you’re you’re trying your best to improve other people’s lives.

Kyler Canastra 40:08
Yeah, well, on that note, unfortunately, we’re at the end of the interview, because I feel like we could have talked about that for much longer. podcasts a whole nother podcast, but super inspirational. And like, it’s nice to hear that but you know, paying it forward, and just being a good person, things fall into place. But before we conclude the interview, I was just wondering, do you have any, like, final takeaways or a piece of parting advice for our listeners? You know, well, I

Rory McEntee 40:31
would just say, certainly, from a marketing point of view, just really, you know, be brave, trust your guy, and, and just do what makes you happy, really happy because it will, it will enrich your life. And you know, there is more to life than just than just work. So make sure you kind of, you’re fulfilled in anything you do.

Kyler Canastra 40:55
And those are Words To Live By, for sure. So, thank you so much for again for sharing your insights with us and that inspirational last little note at the end of the podcast. But I also want to thank everyone for listening in. So for more perspectives on the content marketing industry in Europe, and other exciting interviews like this one I just had with Rory, check out veracontent.com/mix and keep tuning in to the podcast for more interviews with content experts. So we’ll see you all next time. Thanks again, Rory. Thank you. Bye bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai