Isaac Goode

Isaac is the creative lead at Wild Cosmetics. These guys seriously impress me. They're smart with how the commingle user content and language into their creative strategy. No surprise, it's working.

Listen on Apple.

In this episode we discuss:

• Utilising Facebook groups to create great content
• Why do some brands struggle with creative
• How can a brand improve their creative using Isaac's simple processes
• Where do most brands get it a little wrong and how to fix it
• How do Wild think about their unboxing experience

 

Transcript

[0:00:01] George Reid: Welcome to us, Always Day One. My name is George Reid a former Amazonian turned amazon consultant. Each week on the podcast you're going to hear industry experts. Brand owners and amazon employees share their answers to the basic yet fundamental questions you should be asking yourself about your amazon business now, let's jump in. Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of It's always Day one, about a year ago, I had the founder of Wild cosmetics. Come on, charlie Lewis Bowen, I think I pronounce that correctly. Um and he wowed me with some of his strategies that wild, We're doing them a kind of reusable recycle bold deodorant. Now recently I was scrolling through linked in which I do quite a lot of some sad like that and saw Isaac Good who's joining us today? Post an incredible beautiful packaging image which was whilst latest latest kind of released into the world um and asked incarnates, come on Isaac's here today, we're going to talk to us about content creators and all that sort of Jazz Isaac, I want to give us a brief background on who you are, what you do and we can then jump into it

[0:01:09] Isaak Goode: for sure. Well first off thanks for having me and for I'm complimenting my packaging so much good job, it's a podcast, I'm blushing. Um Yeah, I I joined Wild at the beginning of this year. Um and I want to say it was a it was a big turning point for the brand but it feels like every month is a big turning point for us there's a you know, everything is always, is always developing. We're always looking ahead. Never taken for granted where we are. It's just such a dynamic environment.

[0:01:41] George Reid: Yeah, I think what I got from that was since you've joined is accelerated massively. It's correct, yeah.

[0:01:50] Isaak Goode: I mean if that was the subtext, I won't argue with it,

[0:01:53] George Reid: I'll put that is the kind of tag for the uh um so obviously your world was creative lead. If I've read linked incorrectly, what exactly does that look like to give me a better understanding? Probably others,

[0:02:05] Isaak Goode: it depends which day you're asking. Um it's an incredibly varied role, which I'm very fortunate to do. So this this extends pretty much everything that might need creative input across the brand from, you know, new product, um social content, website, packaging, as you mentioned. Um yeah, every day is different. Um a lot of photography at the moment as well. So we have, we have an in house studio now. So for, you know, sometimes weeks at a time I'm just in there shooting as much content as I can with, you know, all of the products and new things that we're launching.

[0:02:52] George Reid: And that's that's an interesting take. I mean, at what point did you decide that you need to bring that in house was always in the house? Was that a conscious decision where you're like, we need in the house or is it something where one day you were like in order for us to continuously be great with content, we need to be able to rattle out quickly on a regular basis, was that your decision or

[0:03:12] Isaak Goode: no, That was definitely a decision that was made, but it was made before I joined, and it was the reason that I joined, um so before I joined, there was Pretty much all of it was done via, via freelancers and agencies, and they did a fantastic job from, from day one. It's very clear that our co founders, Freddie and Charlie put a lot of effort and, you know, the necessary budget into creative, which just gave such a great platform for me to start from, and then obviously, once it comes in house, you have much more sort of control and you can experiment a bit more. Um and it's just it's just developed amazingly. Since then,

[0:03:54] George Reid: yeah, I can suddenly you kind of see that developing as well, you know, what looked at some of your new new videos that came out recently as well, kind of do in july period. Really strong. So you can see that kind of maturing, I guess you could say, um with, with that in mind, is there any particular, it's kind of tricky question and hopefully I struggled too much to answer, but there any process that you're putting in place right now to allow you to achieve this higher level of content, whether it's, you know, dig into one if you want, packaging or video, is there anything you're putting in place to help?

[0:04:30] Isaak Goode: Uh it's let's say yes, but it's it's it's always always changing. I think one of the benefits of being a startup, and, you know, even though we're growing a bit bigger now, we're not we're not losing that mentality. So there's there's so much crossover between the different departments and I'm a I'm a very methodical, creative, I like a lot of data. I like a lot of, you know, research to go into why something looks, looks the way it does, and I think we benefit massively from having um an incredibly creative team, whether they work in creative or not. Um, so there's just always another perspective to add into something. We have a lot of debriefs on, you know, past past campaign, so we can see what worked, what didn't work, what we can do different, you know, always always putting in curve balls to, you know, test the waters. So there's not, there's not really a set uh sort of a procedure in place at the minute, It's just sort of taking anything and everything and then, and then kind of living in the chaos and, you know, trying to mold it into something that we can send out into the wild, sorry, I have to say that, that's

[0:05:42] George Reid: going to go up every time you say that. Um so I really like your mindset there about how you're always trying to make decisions based on some data point if you can. And this leads me quite nicely into the facebook group, which charlie and I spoke about initially and complimented you guys on how how exactly you taking content from that group right now and using it within your creative work

[0:06:09] Isaak Goode: in in kind of an abstract way.

[0:06:13] George Reid: So

[0:06:14] Isaak Goode: the thing about creative is especially when you see on social is that the vast majority of people will take the action from it. You would hope in terms of, you know, if it's if it's a sale add or something like that, they'll then go to the website and shot the sale. But very rarely do people comment directly on the creative. So we have sort of judged by the reaction. Um you know, whether that that that just be, you know, looking at like link clicks and things like that rather than, you know, what actually works. You know, visually you kind of have to read between the lines with it. Um but at the same time with this kind of V. I. P group that we have, we can be quite honest with them. And if we, you know, if we want to show them two or 33 images to head up a project. Project or a campaign and say which of these, you know, do you do you feel what works best we could do?

[0:07:12] George Reid: Yeah, that's some of the things that I saw working beautifully and I was that inspired some of your product decisions as well. One of the things I I particularly enjoyed was asking them how they described the product and then obviously using that as customer language, then embed it within within some of your creative work copy as well as design I imagine. So are you from your perspective, are you going okay? So what they've done their when I'm then thinking about the ads, when I'm then thinking about our landing pages when I'm then thinking about social, are you embedding that? Is that I am assuming I'm assuming

[0:07:51] Isaak Goode: correct. Yeah. 100%. I think I think the most obvious way that that has manifested itself is in the is in the packaging, not the retail packaging. The packaging you get when you order direct from us, which we obviously want to look nice. So that when people open it, they like it if they, you know, if they're filming themselves open it, we wanted to look good. But it also needs to have a lot of education, you know, crammed in there without just being hit with a, you know, 100 page instruction manual. So definitely looking at the way that people react when they first see the product, we've done tests when they received the products without any information with a little bit of information with lots of information. Um, yeah, definitely. Looking at the way that they, you know, they naturally handle it kind of language they used to describe it um and that's that's all manifested in, I don't know if you've seen but on the on on pretty much every books now you get you have like a technical illustration of the case with steps using the language that we've been presented with, as opposed to what what we call it in house, you know, it's um I don't even need to think about how to, you know, open the case, it's like, it's like I'm a soldier like rebuilding a rifle with a blindfold on, you know, so it's yeah, it's it's it's it's a strange one because you don't want to say, oh it's you know, where, you know, we're taking this information from people who are completely ignorant to the whole brand. Like they still have an awareness but they not not being affiliated with the brand, they still have that kind of like raw, raw sort of honesty that you need.

[0:09:32] George Reid: Mhm. No, and I love that the split testing goes right the way down to the unboxing as well, that one of the things I'm quite passionate about is invoking an emotion at every possible touch point. And one of those touch points without doubt is obviously the first physical one you have with a product until you obviously went into Sainsbury's, was that unboxing experience, how did you then capture data? I don't know if this was part of your area of expertise, but how would you capturing that because you obviously designed the packaging, no doubt, and the unboxing experiences on you. How are you then going, right guys, um I need, I need this from you. What was that if that was the case?

[0:10:16] Isaak Goode: Yeah, well, this is the sort of links back to, I was saying before about having such a great team that works, you know, overlapped with each other so much. So we have um I suppose it would have been a marketing team that sort of arranged a series of of send outs to mostly sort of like friends and family that that we have um that we then unbeknownst to them, we we sort of section them off in terms of demographic and how much they know about the product, the idea being that most of us knew nothing about it and then put them into categories of, okay, you're going to receive a box with, you know, the bare minimum, you're gonna receive a box with like a tiny hint of what to do. Um and that that came about quite quite naturally to be honestly, that was redoing that packaging was one of the projects that was sort of known when I came on board. So all of those sort of like, you know, wheels are in motion, but that kind of thing has continued on, you know, we're all sort of aware of like, you know, constantly what we can, what we can do to improve. So yeah, sometimes things things need to be action, but quite often they just happen because everyone's um she's my favorite phrase, part of the language, everyone's got their shit together.

[0:11:33] George Reid: Yeah, I completely understand where you're coming from. The, I like the phrase, they're just, they're just on it, they just, they get it

[0:11:41] Isaak Goode: just on it, that's probably a bit polite to everyone's on

[0:11:45] George Reid: it. Um you get

[0:11:48] Isaak Goode: that,

[0:11:51] George Reid: hey folks, is George here. I'd like you to check out my new site georges dot blog. It's where you can find all of my famous weekly emails as well as how we can work together to repeat that georges dot blog. Now let's carry on with the episode. So if we think about flipping on the other side of things where some companies perhaps aren't on it. Um because what a lot of what I see is brands that struggle a bit with their creative and they just seem to miss a trick and I'm sure you see this because you've got a much better than I than I do. Why do you, why do you think that is? And that could be competitors or whatever? Why do you, why do they miss something?

[0:12:33] Isaak Goode: I could ramble on for days about sort of like creative and creative approaches. There's, there's never a wrong one, there's definitely a better way to approach it from a, a more um I guess response driven point as before. I'm a very methodical creative if, if every challenge was was blue sky thinking with with with no input, you know, making something from nothing. I I'd struggle every time and it's great that some people can do that, but then you sort of miss miss the aim if you don't start off with the right information and then you end up at last minute having to change direction or shoehorn a product or you know, some information, something that wasn't built to contain it, which then doesn't work. I think, I think a lot of it as well comes down to the size of the creative team. Um so for me it wild. I'm technically the only creative, but because I have such an incredible team that I can sort of bounce ideas off and you know, they can come to me with ideas which they do on the regular, which is amazing. Um he gives me the ability to sort of stand back from creative and and see and see the bigger picture as opposed to if you are working alone quite a lot, then you are zoomed in dealing with the minuscule and it's it's so easy to miss the overall message.

[0:14:06] George Reid: Yeah, I can actually resonate quite heavily with that when it's even just come down to playing with with my website for instance, on the block that you get so ingrained into it and then you haven't necessarily got someone else, you can go, I need an opinion from someone else who is on it who are who can use opinion I trust and you can just take it from a different angle. Um So it's interesting that obviously you're you're the sole creative kind of lead, but then you're leading into other people from another brand listing on here, how could they take that and create some sort of action? Obviously it's happened through the culture in your team naturally, which is beautiful. But is there anything that someone else listening can go content a bit shoddy right now? Let's look to action X y. Z. To get us to a better place.

[0:15:01] Isaak Goode: I think I think having having the sort of point guide to action things and not necessarily have the final say but to be the lead on it is definitely important but it's important that that person be a collaborative person. Um And then within that as well it's always important to be aware of where the information is coming from. So someone might say oh it needs like you know this here for example and that person needs to be able to go, okay, I understand why you want that there, it's not gonna work, but I understand the point of it and then that's gonna manifest somewhere else as as something else. So it still does, you know, everything still still performs as it should, but you're not sort of relinquishing control of you know the small details to perhaps people with without the you know the insight to make it work. Mhm.

[0:15:58] George Reid: Yeah, I completely get that um and leading on, obviously sometimes you're gonna see loads examples of this and I see a lot as well, what what mistakes are you seeing a lot of right now from other brands and you've touched upon a little bit there of how you can avoid them, But is there any kind of follow ups of how they can just go, don't go down this path?

[0:16:19] Isaak Goode: Well, again, it's difficult to say with, you know, you have to be aware of where, where the perspective is coming from, you know, in the previous question, it's more about creative opinions coming from non creative sources announced, it's kind of the other way around, you know, I might see things and say, you know, those two lines of text are too far apart and I can't see anything beyond that. So as a as a kind of like general audience member and perhaps not the best um call for that to really question that because I would just focus on the smaller details. Um sorry, can you repeat the question for me?

[0:16:59] George Reid: I was saying, what mistakes do you see most from brands, I guess, to keep it simple.

[0:17:05] Isaak Goode: Yes, so probably repetition. It's always good to to sort of see the same thing and sort of like build up that awareness in your head, but when you are seeing the same creative a month after month, it's you know, you just don't see it anymore, you're not aware of it, it needs to be switched up. I realized obviously not not every brand has the kind of capacity to be, you know, churning out new content every week, but I think just keeping things fresh but with the same sort of brand feeling. So it's it's a good kind of repetition. Mhm. As opposed to you,

[0:17:45] George Reid: not me. Um I spoke about this recently as well with another guy, I have to send you this podcast, I can't remember his name now, but he used the analogy of when you have filter coffee, you've got the filter bag and the coffee beans on top, the coffee beans on top represent your brand, and then you pour the creator through your brand each time, and then the creator comes out the bottom, whatever you're doing, you're filtering through your brand, so there is a consistency, but each time it's going to be a little bit different, it's filtered through slightly differently. So I quite like the analogy and I see where you're coming from there, like there's commonalities, but we're also different each time as well.

[0:18:23] Isaak Goode: I like that, I'm gonna I'm gonna absorb that into my own, you know, collection of metaphors, but I might change it to a cast iron pan, you know how every time you're cooking it absorbs a bit more of the food.

[0:18:36] George Reid: Yeah, like

[0:18:38] Isaak Goode: yeah,

[0:18:39] George Reid: whether like don't wash it, keep it filthy and greasy food in there. Um, and that matures over time as well. So those original images, they've got something nice about them. They both worked with friends. As I said, it's been, it's going to say it's been an absolute pleasure, pleasure chatting. Hopefully you got some enjoyment out of it as much as I did. But there's stacks to go out there and knows a nice little nuggets that we can hopefully share with the audience.

[0:19:08] Isaak Goode: It's been fantastic. Thank you so much. It's um, it's always great to be able to talk about these things in a kind of, you know, you know, open and understanding the environment.

[0:19:19] George Reid: Absolutely. And if people want to see a bit more from you, you've been showing some great inspiration at the moment where it's best to get hold of you or see your concept.

[0:19:28] Isaak Goode: Um, probably instagram to be honest. I have a website but like, like most creative, it's, you know, I built it a few years ago and then not really touched it since. Um, so instagram. So the wild instagram is probably the best place that's where the best content of mine goes, which is wild refill at world

[0:19:46] George Reid: refill. Beautiful. Um, well, thanks again may appreciate the chat and our speeches suit

[0:19:52] Isaak Goode: perfect. Thank you very much.

[0:19:53] George Reid: Hey guys, just a quick one. If you are enjoying the podcast, I either have some actionable next steps or new ideas. I'd really appreciate if you could one subscribe to the show and leave us a review. These are really, really important to us, as you probably know, being in the amazon world and two. If you're looking for additional support with your brand, head over to the website, it's always day one dot co dot UK where we've got links to other resources as often our guys speak soon.

Thanks,

George