Nicola, who worked hard on Vanguard's innovative active Tough Mudder campaign, has been instrumental in reshaping how financial services engage with professional audiences.

Vanguard's foresight and creativity in blending the rigorous world of financial investments with the physical challenge of Tough Mudder have set new benchmarks in experiential marketing within the asset management industry.

Join us as we delve into the story behind this groundbreaking campaign, gaining unique insights from Nicola and the team's exceptional journey in the financial marketing landscape. Nicola, thank you so much for joining us here today. But before we dive into the campaign itself, can you give me a little bit of background about how you came to be working at Vanguard?

Yeah. Thanks for having me. So, I joined the financial services industry just over ten years ago, when I graduated from university. And I started at what's now called Janus Henderson, but at the time was, Henderson Global Investors. I'm in the investment trust team working alongside a gentleman called Simon Longfellow.

Nicely having very well.

Also had on this podcast. So yeah, hopefully he's very proud that I'm following in his footsteps, but yeah, started there. Initially joined the firm on a six month contract, thought perfect, worked for six months, travel for six months, four years later, still there, but loved it. I had a great time and there I was focused on retail.

Finally left to go and do a bit of traveling, came back and worked at a company that is now called First Sentia. But when I was there, it was called First State. And there my role was more sort of, was B2B focused European, but with heavy weighting towards UK B2B. And from there, I was there for about four years, I think, and then moved over to Vanguard and I've been at Vanguard just under three years, it'd be three years in March.

And same role that you've been in at Vanguard?

Yeah, same role ish, so it's expanded slightly. So when I joined, it was a UK intermediary, but looking after the adviser end of the market, and now it's UK b two b, as a whole, so covering, institutional wholesale and and adviser.

Fantastic. Nicholas, so how on how on earth did the campaign come about? You you got Vanguard. You got Tough Mudder. You wouldn't necessarily put those two together. So how how did well, can you tell us about how that that initial thought came about?

Yeah. So we had an objective to raise the profile of Vanguard as an active manager in the UK for our b two b audiences.

At the moment, we're very well known as an index manager. And so that's how advisors at the moment sort of value and partner with us. But actually we've got a really credible and successful range of low cost active funds that we want to let advisors know about. And thinking about, I think at the end of December, last year, I think around seventy percent of AUM was going into active funds.

So for us, was sort of a business objective to raise the profile of active. So we sat about that and being sat in a room, I remember it to this day, it's actually been my manager who was like, know, get active with Vanguard is such a simple concept. You've got to think differently about this. And within a minute, honestly, less than a minute, we must have gone from enter a competition to win a Peloton to maybe we should do a sports day.

What about Tough Mudder? And I think within ten minutes I then gone and found the sort of corporate sponsorship contact on their website and had emailed them.

And it was that quick. And so it started with this whole sort of get active with Vanguard, which didn't end up being the strapline that we used, but that was the foundation concept. And the reason we leaned on Tough Mudder as a brand was we wanted something that was known, but was different. It was creatively disruptive. And when we go on later on, I'm sure to talk about what we were trying to achieve with the campaign, we needed something that people would understand and recognize quickly. Yes. Yeah.

And Tough Mudder had that X factor for us to be able to do it.

No bill. Yeah. Yeah. Fabulous. And how did that initial call go with Tough Mudder?

Yeah. Well, they obviously said yes. Yeah. For them it opens up a whole new revenue stream.

And we're thinking about the different ways that we could approach what the event could look like. So originally we thought, you know, could we run multiple events across the country to serve and partner with advisors throughout the UK? Quickly realized that wouldn't be financially viable.

So then we sort of, okay, worked around what would become viable and what that meant. And, you know, the conversations with Duffmatter were extremely positive and, you know, we'll talk about the results of the campaign later on. But what I would say is if anybody is thinking about this for their industry or their firm, fantastic partner to work with. Right. The challenge that we had was that they hadn't done a full corporate takeover before. And so figuring out what that looked like from a contractual and from a sponsorship perspective was a little bit more difficult and took potentially a little bit longer than we would maybe have liked.

So just to be clear, they weren't set up for doing this already, or was it on something that they were looking to do or?

They'd had clients, I don't know from what industry or what background, contact them historically to say, we'd like to do this, what does that look like? But they'd never actually seen anything through to fruition or saw anything over the line.

Right.

So we were the first partner that contacted them that actually started to look like it could be viable.

Okay.

And then shaping what that looked like.

And that was great. It was a little bit of a double edged sword, as I said, some of the challenges that came with it, but it also meant that we could have a lot of influence in terms of how that played out and what that could look like.

Right, right.

So we worked very closely with them on that. And now I think they've got a blueprint and a footprint in place for them as well as us. But for any competitors listening, we do have a non compete clause with them, so you can't go there.

Yeah. And for other brands that may want to, that aren't competitors, competitors, what would your advice to them when they're starting to explore that partnership?

Yeah, really good question. Because I think it was a learning curve for both of us as we went along and thinking about all those different things that we wanted. We didn't know what the end game would look like, but actually going into that conversation with them, we weren't trying to reinvent the wheel in terms of the event. You know, we were partnering with Tough Mudder because people know what Tough Mudder is, what it means, leveraging off of their brands.

So we weren't trying to reshape what it is that they were doing. We very much wanted to lean into that. And also, you know, don't run, Vanguard don't run muddy obstacle courses for our day to day. That's very much not what we're trying to do.

What we wanted to do was create an environment that felt like it was a partnership between Tough Mudder and Vanguard. So my advice would be is let them be the experts on what they are doing. Yeah. But make sure that you're getting in the questions that are, you know, asking the questions that are important to you when you think about the outcomes that you'd want from the experience on the day.

Yeah. Yeah.

The event was a part of a broader campaign for us. So was an element of a bigger picture. And, of course, that had to be successful, but actually, there were loads of other considerations along the way when we were thinking about partnering with SoftModder that made it a really viable, incredible brand for us to work with.

So coming coming back to the campaign itself, a couple of questions. Who is the primary target audience for it? And then what were your main objectives to to for the campaign to to reach to that audience?

Yeah. So a very high level, we're trying to raise awareness of Active for UK b two b and financial professionals. So advisors through to DFM wholesale institutional investors. Now the products that those different types of audiences might buy might vary slightly. So you have multi asset buyers considered portfolio, buyers. They are looking to outsource all in one solutions, and we have active multi asset that supports that and helps that audience.

Okay.

We then have, you know, we think about portfolio builders, those investors that want to build their own, and construct their own portfolios made up of active funds. We have a range of active equity funds and fixed income funds that would appeal to potentially some of those audiences. And so for us, was how do we raise this profile across the board for all of these different audiences?

In terms of what we were measuring with that, this was an is, continues to be an awareness campaign. So we know that advisors don't necessarily, see us yet as an active manager. And that's the primary objective was to shift the awareness metrics so that advisors recognize, know and value Vanguard as a valued partner for Active. The way that we're measuring that we have, well, on a quarterly basis, we ask six questions to advisors from awareness through to advocacy of our Active range. And primarily we're looking, you know, the campaign today is let's shift that awareness. Let's get people knowing that we do Active and what that range looks like. And over time, you know, shifting that into the advocacy, you know, shifting those advocacy metrics as well.

Yeah, fantastic. For anyone that hasn't seen the campaign or didn't take part on the day, we've got a short video that's just gonna show some of the highlights from the day itself. Let's have a look at that now.

We are here to celebrate the fact that we all work together ultimately to help clients have great investment.

My team where I come from, I work for Tenjou Wealth Management. There was lots of help from Financial Times who were in front of us. What inspired me was this chance to mix business with pleasure and have a good time.

Brilliant. Takes me back. Takes me back to feeling very, very muddy.

So we understand the audience and what you're trying to achieve with the audience.

How can can you expand on how the strategy came about and what the different components that existed within that strategy were?

Yeah. So fully integrated campaign, so digital social content. But because the concept itself was quite sort of disruptive, that's how we kept talking about it internally was disruptive. The way that we could leverage and use those different, levers essentially, we could be a bit more innovative with them.

The creative that we came up with that was quite complex and quite challenging because it has to do three jobs. It had to invite people to an event that was different for our industry. It had to raise the profile of active and that was the primary objective. So more than anything it needed to say Vanguard through active.

And it also had to look and feel like, and respect the Vanguard brand and values. So trying to create something where you've got people running through mud, inviting them to event and looking like it's a Vanguard ad, bearing in mind where these, where it's being placed was actually quite a challenge, but it actually delivered something that was incredibly rich that we could then build off of. So I don't know if, you know, hopefully people have seen, seen the advertising and the creative, but the main creative was, a man and a woman in muddy suits, but they were in an office and sort of game face was how we described it and slight tangent, but quite nice story.

When we put out the casting, no to try and get the, to get models for that shoot. The guy who we actually ended up using came back and said, I know exactly what you need with this. I was actually one of the founding people that started Tough Mudder as an originator. When he came in, he was sort of quite excited about it and was just a little story that we had, But that creative in its final output gave us something really, really strong that we could then build a whole host of content off the back of.

So, you know, working with Hub and if anybody does want to go and look at this, it's still available online, but coming up with the idea of training videos. So when we're thinking about sort of rolling out that strategy, it was like, okay, know we want to get people there. So that's one of the objectives of this campaign. What are the reasons why people would want to go, but also what are the reasons why people wouldn't want to go and how do we sort of help enable and facilitate those that may not.

And so we created a load of content that would play into both of those camps and that kind of element of competitiveness, the teamwork camaraderie day out the office, you know, a of our clients used it as a philanthropic cause and raise money for charity. And that was great to see. But thinking about all of those different reasons for and why you may or may not, sort of was a core or were core considerations when we're thinking about how we would use these different tools at our disposal to build the campaign.

You had the kind of the two concepts already, so made it accessible for everybody, but it was, are you a completer or a Competer. Computer. Yeah. And I thought that that was really nice because it just took the pressure off for for everyone that wasn't trying to be over the line first or in the first group. There was a lot of teamwork. Yeah.

And I definitely needed plenty of help to get on some of them.

It was funny because nobody can do it. I don't know if people have have done a tough mudder themselves, but nobody can do it on their own. Physically, you can't do it on your own. And if you're claiming that you can, you're walking around them. So it is about teamwork and it's about camaraderie. And that is part of, you know, from a brand perspective, that was one of the sort of pleasant benefits of this campaign was that, you know, what's I think our RMD after the events of described as, you can't get around without teamwork, camaraderie and to achieve a difficult task and what could be more Vanguard, you know, sticking together for the long term.

I'm sure he said it in more eloquent words than that, but it was something along those lines, but yes, of bringing those different spheres together and creating something.

Yeah.

And and the the distinctive, I guess, look and feel of bringing together Vanguard and Tough Mudder, not two brands that you would immediately pair together by any means, almost complete opposite ends of the spectrum. But actually, with the right creative visual execution, it worked really well, didn't it?

Yeah.

It was really, really You had to be pleased with that.

Oh, so pleased. I mean, going along to the shoot on the day, it was just so much fun. Normally, you're there trying to keep somebody pristine and we were like more mud, more mud, throw more mud at them.

And it was just so you don't see something, but that was part of what we were trying to achieve. You know, when you say just then it's two brands that you don't expect to see together, but also you don't expect to see them in the environment that you see them. And that was part of part of the beauty of what we were doing was that, you know, somebody clicking onto a trade media site and seeing this big ad with a big Tough Mudder logo and a Vanguard logo, what's that? And actually peaking that interest. And I know we'll come on to talk about the results of the campaign, but that was what we think sort of drove that sort of disruptive.

Yeah. And that to me is the best kind of brand sponsorship. So when you're when you're when you're taking the bests of what one brand does together with the best of something else, and you're actually coming together and and making more than the sum of its parts, and that's, I I think, where I think you really hit the nail on the head with this.

Yeah. Thanks.

Yeah. No. Great fun. Let let's go let's dive a little bit more into the creative.

Let's talk about the different processes which went through the execution.

I guess I'm interested in hearing about how the content came about for the social media, the the the narrative was then interlinked with that that drew it through into active.

Yeah. So like I said, sort of high level, it was the creative was sort of people in muddy suits running through. And that was really, really smart from our creative agency to bring Corporate World and Top Munda together.

That then gave us a platform for us to run off in a hundred different directions to think about how we could bring it in. And actually, you know, one of the sort of beauties of this campaign was no idea was a bad idea. So when we had that main creative sort of different people from around the business sat in, given their ideas about how this could play out.

And going back to what we were talking previously around computers and completers, we then thought about, okay, well, what are the different assets that we would need to support either of those two groups? On the completer side, we went and did some training videos and that the second you're working towards the end game, it feels, you know, you can talk about Vanguard active. Now, again, with all of this content, the message that we were giving out was it was just Vanguard active. You know, we weren't going deep down the funnel to get people through each product when we were talking about these assets.

It was sort of at that broad awareness piece. But you know, good example there, the training videos to support the completers, how do you approach this? Everyone can do it. Here's some top tips to get you through on the computer side.

Okay.

Who's challenging you? So we tried to create a little bit of engagement within the industry. So we had trade media partners saying, you know, we're in a year and tagging the other trade media partners, just to create a bit more across social.

We had a you had a great hero video with a very special guest that also appeared, I know.

We did have a very special guest in hero video. So we were going along to do a recce of one of the Tough Mudder sites.

Anyway, on the Sunday, I think it was. And I think we were talking on the Tuesday and we knew we were going to do some promotional content. But at this point we were, I think relatively far out. So we still had a bit of time. And we were still working through that, but we had this idea or you guys came up with this idea about doing this hero video that was a little bit like a film and creating that kind of, okay, something's happening here momentum.

And then we quickly realized that we would have to do that video on that Sunday in order for us to be able to turn it around based on the fact of, know, they're tough mothers. We had to align with tough mother schedule, know, they weren't gonna set something up for us, bespoke to do training videos. So we went along. So this was, I think we had the phone call on the Tuesday, needed somebody to be our main headline person.

And so I FaceTimed my dad. I said, dad, are you free on Sunday? And he said, why? And I said, wasn't the question. Are you free on Sunday?

I need somebody to come along and get muddy. And he did. So he turned up with his suit and his briefcase. So again, if anybody wants to go and watch that main hero video, my dad and I are both featuring in it.

And it was really nice. My dad then came along on the day and it was that that to me was just an extra Yeah. Bit of icing on the cake.

Well, he clearly made a big impact on everybody because he was in the in the in the video, he was wearing a certain city bit of attire in an unusual place.

Yes. He had a tie around his head.

A tie around his head, and there were lots of people with ties around their heads.

Yeah. Again, for me it was just that was the cherry on the cake on that day, was just seeing people bring the creative and the content that they'd seen and engaged with and consumed and thought about how they wanted to integrate that into their experience on the day is just, yeah, for me was genuinely the cherry on the cake.

Did your dad enjoy being all part of it?

He did, yeah. So we invited him along on the day because he'd been a part of the campaign and a lot of people were talking about it and hearing it.

And he, on the day, was like, you know, if you do this next year, I won't be able to come. So now I think he's trying to think about how he can feature in part two, the sequel, to see whether he can get an invite next year.

Yeah, good. Well, he must have been very proud. So it looked fabulous on the day.

So what were the big challenges that cropped up along the way and how did you navigate around Yeah, so I would say the biggest challenge we had was in the buy in at the very beginning.

So I think everybody saw and felt like it was a great idea, understood why we were thinking about doing that, got the fact that it was disruptive and what we were trying to achieve with it.

But actually getting that idea through to sort of approval, there a lot of conversations along the way. And when I first shared the idea internally, you know, one of the questions back was, you know, why not a five ks? Why not something, you know, do we think that people are going to come to this? It's also in a single location.

Is that going to cause challenges in terms of people getting there? And we were saying it's not, you know, doing a five ks is not different. You know, another big competitor has a big run, actually two big competitors have big runs that happen every year. It's not different.

You know, there's nothing different about Vanguard doing a five ks run and putting that ad up. And what we were trying to do was raise the profile and be disruptive. So it needed to be different. So getting that buy in, and I understood that particularly from our distribution team who would have a role to play in raising the awareness of the event and getting clients there.

So I do totally understand where that came from, but from a conceptual perspective and from an idea perspective, you know, we were so, we so strongly believed that this would be a good idea as a broader campaign. I actually, I'm sure talk about it. I actually genuinely truly believed that we would get the numbers. Yeah.

We sort of, sort of, you know, built that, that case around why we, why we should continue to do this. But inevitably there were the conversations that happened with the business. So just from a brand perspective, again, going back to the ads, you know, there are bits of mud over it.

Having ads that, you know, for your corporate brand that have mud, you know? Yeah. So it went up to the, I think I had two meetings with the brand team in the US around it, you know, because I, okay, this went through a process of, you know, me and my manager discussing it very sort of openly and candidly and we do then to the head of the European team and then it was okay, but just maybe run it past RMD and then it was okay, but can you have a chat with the team in the US? And then it was subsequent team with the whole team in the US, the brand team in the US. And there were some really difficult questions that were asked as a part of that, but ultimately sort of everyone was sort of like, okay, good. Then there was the legal side of it and what that looked like and sort of anecdotal story. But when I emailed our business partner in our legal team, I introduced or spent the first few lines of the email, we're explaining what a Tough Mudder was in case he wasn't familiar with that.

And I got the reply back and it opened with the words Tough Mudder, fill me with dread. I broke my ankle doing one last year. I thought to myself, nice idea whilst it lasted, know how this email is gonna end. But instead he was like, great idea.

Here's the, you know, the things that we need to do to kick off the conversation from a legal perspective and what that looked like. And there were multiple conversations along the way, you know, the security of the site, you know, very, very mindful of the fact that we had clients in one place, you know, that to us, we take incredibly seriously. And so a lot of conversations with our security team around what that looked like on the day. But ultimately I kept sort of saying, okay, at what point do I think, is this gonna, is someone gonna tell me no?

Yeah, yeah.

Sort of, if we keep going through this, it was- Slowly ticking I was like, okay.

And everybody in the business knew this was happening by the time at which we came and it came into play before the campaign went live. I just kept thinking, when does this get more and more challenging?

But ultimately when we press go live and you know, we started to see the registrations come in, my favorite game to play was refresh on the registration page. Honestly, almost by minute by minute basis, I could tell you how many registrations we It was just so fun. And so all of that hard work that had gone into it and all of the challenging conversations leading up until the point at which we pressed go just made it all worthwhile when we started to see those numbers come in.

And it was pretty much instant, was it, from when it went live?

No, and actually that's one of the sort of really good points to make is we didn't know what the rate of signup would look like. There was nothing really comparable that we could look back on. So when we do a webinar or an economic outlook, we know, you know, roughly that we're gonna get, you know, X number of registrations and roughly when we can expect them to come. But with this week, we didn't have any idea.

We had sort of suspicions over what that could or might look like. So my sort of thinking was that this was probably more sort of broadly shared, but was that, you know, imagine David, you get this email at hub and you're like, oh, have you seen this email from Vanguard? Have you seen it? Like, have a look at this, shall we do it?

And then you go through a process where you get your team together. You will say yes, you get sort of sign off on the Friday. So you just take it out of the office and then you will sign up. And that was sort of what we saw.

We saw an initial blast of people that obviously loved it. And like, I've done talked about it before and we're like, yeah, man. And then you would see jumps of sort of twenty, thirty, forty people all from the same firm in a single go. So you would then say, okay, we'll hover in, because we've just seen, you know, the whole team has signed up.

Yeah. And that was really nice to see because then you started to see it working and you saw the the, you know, the firms from where they were, you know, where they're based in the regions.

When everyone was in the opening sort of section where the stage was before we all went off into our groups, Everyone had their t shirts on, their different brands, and you could just see what you had done is that you've literally brought the whole industry together. And I I was like, wow. That just seeing that enormity altogether in in one place. The only time I really see that is at the award sessions or something like this, and this was totally different. And, yeah, so it it literally ignited within the industry, didn't it?

Yeah. And we again, that's there was a moment on the day, and I can't remember at what time it was, but similar to that, I looked around and I just thought at that point, I think we'd got about seventy percent of the people in. I was like, this is good. I remember the first two clients arriving and they were early and we'd set the open time as early.

And I was like, you're the first two here? And they were like, yes. Was like, right, they're going be in the starting wave, yes. It's like an over one. But it was just really nice, then to see people arriving and then enjoying the space, it was just incredible, loved it. And to your point, there were, you know, professional bodies, rating agencies, as as well as clients of different size firm, you know, different regions.

I'm not gonna say that we had everyone, you know, every firm from Scotland, but we had firms traveling from Scotland and from Plymouth. We had eighteen year olds through to seventy year olds. We had trade media, we had agencies. It really was a comprehensive sort of representation of the industry. And I am thoroughly proud of how much, yeah, how we brought everyone together and the feedback on the back of it.

Yeah. And and not only was everyone there, but everyone was literally helping each other get around, wasn't they? Competitors going up against each other, helping each other over obstacle courses.

They had no choice.

I'm guessing that it created a big buzz internally within Vanguard and I Yeah. Tell me about that.

Very important, but probably less interesting for a podcast. No disrespect to our legal or or security teams, but obviously a big lift from from those teams.

But when it got to this promotion and telling the story and the engagement side, I mean, it really was a joint effort between distribution and marketing.

Right.

So our distribution team, you know, when we got to the point where like, this is live, this is, we're ready to go. It was okay, all hands on deck and sort of mini competitions around what that looked like. I remember having a conversation with one PDM and he was talking about, had a meeting in Scotland and he's like, I'm not sure whether to mention it to them. And we sort of said, you're missing the point. You know, they might not remember that you put in front of them a global credit slide, but they will remember that you've a tough mother slide in there and whether they choose to attend or not. You know, it was thinking about it as a campaign, not as an event. So the engagement that we needed from everybody internally was around that campaign.

But when the numbers started to come in and we got closer and closer, then you could start to see the internal buzz go. Was almost, somebody made a joke about how we should have a sort of almost like a number on the wall and I would change it every time, press a button and change it every time we got another registration.

Fabulous.

And as we saw it sort of getting more and more traction, the buzz just started to continue to grow. So then we started to bring crew into the communication and what that looked like. So going back to the conversation we had around content, we got our Vanguard crew talking about why they wanted to take part and what that looked like. Again, that blend of competes and completers. So wasn't everyone there sort of winning to take part or taking part to win. It was bringing in all of those different stories and then using them across social and having, you know, particularly our client facing, crew PMs, distribution sales, sales leaders, talking about their reasons to take part, which varied Yeah.

And using those as tools to try and drive engagement across social was really good and gave us again sort of quite nice, friendly, comical reasons to take part content.

So all all of this started to come together. We we we've spoken about the event on the day.

Even the weather Yeah. Was good for you, wasn't it? It was that must have been something that maybe caused you a few sleepless nights.

Yeah. Especially going the day before because it was not good the day before when we were setting up.

Dread. And then actually in reality, it turned out to be perfect because the floor wasn't hard, it was very, very muddy. Yeah. So there was a lot of mud, tough mudder. And then this, I think the sun, yeah, shone pretty much until five thirty. Yeah. And I think actually we needed everyone off-site by six.

I thought, perfect.

And did that happen? Did it run like clockwork for the event itself? Yeah.

Yeah. We were really, yeah. So the way that a normal Tough Mudder would run, you would get given your start time and you would arrive in waves. And we basically took over waves and essentially then we wanted everyone to arrive at the same time so that you had the buzz at the start and you saw everyone And then from there it just went, Round one clockwise. Brilliant.

So let's talk about the campaign and how what what how did it work?

Was it a success? Are you happy? Was all that effort worth it?

Yeah. I mean, if if anybody's watching this, they'll be able to see my smile to know how I feel about the campaign.

But anybody listening, it's, yeah, could not You can probably hear your smile.

Yeah, could not be happier with how things have gone so far. And this is just the start of the journey for us in raising the profile of Vanguard as an active manager. But you know, the creative that we had in some instances had ten times average engagement by engagement, talking about somebody will see the ad click on it straight away, or they'll subsequently go on to search, and visit the Vanguard site later on. I think three publishers that we worked with had more than ten times average industry rates.

Everyone that we worked with had doubled more than doubled industry engagement rates. So we knew the advertising was working. The campaign landing page was the most popular site on the Vanguard UK website. In fact, was the most popular page on the UK Vanguard b two b site during the campaign period.

And when you think about the fact that we have life strategy range, which is thirty six billion or something range in the UK, that for me, I'm really proud of, you know, driving the engagement to but how we ultimately measuring it, you know, we had a thousand people there on the day.

We had, I think within that six hundred new contacts were created.

Right.

Something like that. And then we had, you know, ultimately we're raising the awareness of Vanguard as an active manager. So going back to those metrics that we measure from advocacy through to, from awareness through to advocacy, sorry, that awareness has shifted both within advisors and DFM. The DFM jump wholesale jump has been a little bit bigger, which is great for us, probably quite a big jump. We wouldn't have expected it to be as big this year, but that those awareness metrics are moving in a positive direction, which is great. That's ultimately where we wanted to get to. And now it's, you know, where do we keep going from here?

So you can safely say you completely achieved your objectives and some?

Yeah. Although, always things to do. So I think, you know, in an ideal world, we'd have had that funnel, would be moving people down the funnel.

Probably would have done a little bit more of that if we had a bit more time in and around the campaign, but yeah.

So that's that's that was actually coming onto my next question about what what would you have done differently? What I don't know if it's if you'll be doing it again next year. Let's hope so. But what what learnings would you take if it wasn't necessary for for this campaign? Is there anything that you can say, right.

That was a very successful campaign we've run.

Anyone that's thinking of doing something similar, here's some advice that I would give to to you going forward.

Yeah. I mean, from my perspective, the biggest lesson that I think we're taking as a discipline across the board for Vanguard going forward is how do we be creatively disruptive, but respect to the brand. So that creative disruption, I think underpinned everything that we were trying to do with Tough Mudder on. And naturally that concept enabled us to do that.

You know, it was a, it was a nice concept to be able to do that, but it is about, okay, how do you position or create something that feels like it's disruptive in a positive way? Yeah. The other thing I think I would like to have done more of is some of that social content around it. I think there's so much nice stuff outside of active that sits around active as a core concept and the way that that can play out.

Honestly, we had so many different ideas that were on the table at some point, but having the time to be able to structure that, to support a campaign at the time at which we were figuring out what it all looked like.

There was a lot that went into the foundations to support the event that probably wouldn't, you know, we wouldn't need to spend as much time doing going forward if we just do it again.

Yeah, of course.

And that time I think can then go into creating a whole load of good and funny content.

You know, that was one of the great things about it.

And that's that's that's interesting as well, think, when you when you look at the the content itself of the campaign. There there was a real element of of humor Yeah. Within there.

And often in the b to b space, in marketing in particular, people find that quite intimidating to use humor as part of their creative, I guess, tactics. Have you got anything to say around around that side?

Yeah, I mean, was definitely a balance for us. And there were, I remember one particular occasion where we were bringing in, I actually brought in my own weights from home and the idea was that we'd create some videos in the office and it'd just be like our normal sort of corporate media room setup. But rather than having a plant pot on the shelf in the background, there'd be a kettlebell or a little weight and it would just be subtle ways to bring it in. And we actually, there were, when we were recording some of those interviews with, with, with client, with crew, we kept calling them active ambassadors. Actually, we think in some instances we probably went a bit too far and actually we drew it back again. So we didn't use some of that material. And so there was that, there was a line where we were like, okay, what's the right side of this in terms of it being it supported the campaign, but in a very respectful way.

Yes.

Yeah. Tough Mudder, the creative itself was was was comical almost. It was about us making sure we didn't overstep the line. Yeah.

But it enabled us to be able for people to bring out their personalities. You know, why they were taking part was very different and very individual to every representative that we had on camera. And then we had different personalities. One of our portfolio managers, Sarang, he comes across incredibly well.

He is so dry and delivers his lines with such humor and precision that I just cracked up when I watched them. But the editing from, Nicole in our multimedia team was spot on. She brought them together in a really nice way, but it did enable people to put their personalities out there. And that meant that you could lean in on humor where it felt natural and then sort of draw it back where it didn't.

But I think there was a fine line.

Yeah. And that really nice to bring out the personalities within the business like that and having a device which allows you to do that. It's that's great. What what are future implications then for for for marketing, for Vanguard?

How do you take what you've learned now into not just potentially other future active campaigns, but with the other work that you do?

Yeah. I I keep I've used this phrase a lot in this this recording, so apologies to say it again, but it's that creative disruption. So how do we take an idea and deliver it differently? And ultimately that's what we're trying to do.

You know, a few weeks ago we had, all of our European team over and we had a session where we were thinking about what our objectives were for the individual regions and how do we do something creative to disrupt how we might, or how do we create some disruptive to be able to deliver that message? And that, you know, there were some really bad ideas that we came up with. I definitely contributed to those bad ideas, but also there were some foundational ideas there that could be really, really smart. And it's not all about going out and leveraging other brands to be able to deliver something that wasn't what, you know, that isn't going to be the foundation of what we do going forward, But it is thinking in that way, how do you take a simple idea, but deliver it in the most creative way that we have based on the resources that we have available to us.

It sounds to me like the success of the campaign and the fun that you've had doing it is is almost emboldened the the team to to lean into disruptive creative more.

Is that a fair Yeah.

Fair view?

Yeah. I would definitely say that. We had a lot of conversations even with our creative agency around the lead message and how that got delivered and what that looked like. And I think it's just being confident to have those ideas and put them on the table.

Yeah. They might not go anywhere, but actually sometimes they might, you know, that might be something that suddenly sparks somebody else to say, what about this? Or what about this? Or let's give this a go, that might not work, but how about this?

And then using the tools that all of us have available to us no matter where we work, but in a smarter and more efficient way.

Last question from me. Anyone that's thinking or taking on board what you're saying, likes the idea of trying something creatively disruptive in their organizations, what would you say to them?

Try. Sounds like a really, really simple answer. But like I said, I didn't think that, I thought that a number of times that someone would say no to this but ultimately, because we'd done the right research around why it could work, We'd done the prep around how it could play out, that looked like, but all the right stakeholders that needed to be a part of the conversation into the conversation very early on momentum sort of started to go with us. And I think that would be it is try get the right people on board, explain why you want to do it, not just what you're trying to do, but the reason for it, and then get the right people around the table.

And also actually one of the things I would say is, give every, you know, not necessarily the people that you work with all the time, but get other people involved. So we got people from different teams into some of the videos. We got them into a room to come with any ideas that they had. We had a competition to name the obstacle, not a competition, but we said, you know, we get to rename the obstacles, funny ideas win and put it out to the business.

But thinking about ways that you can get different people engaged with the idea that you're trying to execute on really helped us to build that momentum and buzz internally, and ultimately became something that the whole organization was talking about and were a part of, which again, for me, I'm just so incredibly proud of.

And rightly so. Was a, you know, Hub worked on it in a, you know, small way, but we absolutely loved every minute of it, and I was so proud on the day to be part of it, and I think you should be very proud too. Was very well executed.

Well, I think you went above and beyond as well. Like I said, go and have a look at those training videos.

Yep. Yep. Cool. Thank you. Thank you, Nicholas, so much for joining us today.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you for listening today to The Growth Engine. If you enjoyed this episode and like to hear more, please do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from and follow us on LinkedIn for regular updates or on www.hubagency.co.uk Thank you and see you next time.