Oliver Lago

How Allianz used digital marketing to tell the brand story of 3 Trusts | Interview with Oliver Lago

How do you market three distinct investment trusts to a broad and fast changing retail investor base?

In this episode of The Growth Engine, David speaks with Ollie Lago from Allianz Global Investors about the multi year digital and broadcast campaign behind Allianz Investment Trusts.

Covering Merchants Trust, Allianz Technology Trust and Brunner Investment Trust, Ollie explains how the team shifted from product led communications to an investor first approach, backed by research and Consumer Duty testing.

From refining target personas and redefining what a younger investor really means, through to Sky AdSmart TV, stock story videos and always on content, this is a detailed look at how a traditional sector is modernising.

What you will learn:

  • Why retail is now a core growth area for investment trusts
  • How Allianz segmented a very wide retail audience and built practical personas
  • The role of Consumer Duty research in shaping websites and campaigns
  • How Sky AdSmart was used to reach targeted retail viewers, with 677,000 impressions and strong app engagement
  • How manager led stock story videos support trust and education
  • Balancing individual trust brands with the Allianz master brand
  • What has worked so far, and where social and other channels fit next
  • Ideal for marketers and distribution leaders in asset management who want to engage retail investors more effectively.

More on our guest

Oliver Lago

Vice president & marketing manager, Investment trust, Allianz Global Investors

Transcript

Anybody who has money to invest, who either is investing or should be investing, those are the people we we want to be capturing. We've got AI in the picture now. Technology is is always moving forward. Have a pride in supporting those brands and helping to build those brands as well. The overall TV campaign, we had six hundred and seventy seven thousand impressions. And through through that, we were reaching around sixty four percent target retail audience that we wanted to go after.

That's fantastic.

Welcome to the Growth Engine. Today, I'm delighted to be joined by Ollie Lago from Allianz Global Investors. Ollie, thank you very much for joining us today.

Thanks, David.

Allianz Investment Trust, there's three investment trusts that sit as part of the group. So we have Merchants, we have ATT and we have Branner Investment Trust. So those are the products, essentially three individual companies that sit under the master brand.

But your role and responsibility within Allianz is addressing the retail side, is that correct?

By and large, yes. I mean, we, you know, we look at the professional side as well, but the lion's share of what we do from a marketing perspective is looking at the retail investor, you know, that's really the growth area for investment trusts, has been for a long time actually, you know, it's something that we've looked at for a long time, but yes, that's been in the main, that's that's what what I'm I'm spending most of my time on.

Yeah. So that's that's a competitive space.

And I think for many people working within marketing, they find that a complex space to work in. I often find asset managers a lot more comfortable selling in institutional professional, but when it comes to retail, it it can often be a challenge.

I I think having worked in the industry a long time, I think that there's been a bit of a cycle, but it's quite interesting now because I think everyone's recognizing the, you know, the power, if you like, that's in retail or the opportunity, let's put it that way, that's in retail. And you can see this almost like an upswing again in the desire to be playing in that space.

I'm keen to talk about the marketing campaign for, Allianz. Now I I find this interesting because it's three individual companies doing slightly different things, but also following a a common path. So let's start at the beginning. What what was the challenge that you and the team at Allianz were trying to address with this campaign?

I think we were trying to reenergize what we were doing to get real relevancy in there for investors, you know, to make sure that we're hitting the right notes for investors, really. We've been through a period where we'd very well over a period of probably almost ten years, I would say, in terms of bringing retail investors onto the, registers of those three trusts. But I think you never rest on your laurels. You you know, you you always need to think about what's next.

And interestingly, just just, you know, a few minutes ago, and you mentioned it being a competitive space, think actually I've seen that changing over recent years. So there's always been some competition there, of course, but actually, as people wake up more and more to that opportunity, there is more and more competition. That trajectory of the competition within that sector has definitely become more and harder to deal with. So I think all the time it's an evolving piece.

You need to be evolving what you're doing to access that market effectively.

Is there anything about the, I guess, rethink on how you communicated with the end retail investor? Was there any shift in that perspective?

I think one of the things for me that's absolutely key is trying to move away from shouting, hey, here's our product, to, you know, what are we doing for you? And I think, you know, most marketers will recognize that as kind of a a key tenant. Actually, a lot of business people will recognize that as as, you know, a a a key strategic thing. It's not, you know, it's not about, hey, we're here and our product's great.

It's it's what can we offer you? What's our service? What's our product? So, you know, for for a long time, we've been thinking about elements like this, but but definitely part of this campaign was thinking how are we saying to to the customers that are out there what we're doing for them?

How you know, what problem are we solving for them?

What what does this product do for you? Not just it's a great product doing x.

It's almost a a a kind of, I guess, customer first approach thinking about their issues.

Yeah, I'm a strong believer in that. I think, you know, that's I don't think there's another way to do it, really, if you want to do it I think interestingly, we work in an industry which has been slow to get there. Think now again, with this competition in the space, you can see it happening more and more as people realize that element. And actually, it's not just in the consumer side as well, it's in B2B marketing as well. But I think, traditionally, I would say the industry, asset management industry, has been quite slow to get there. It's there's been a big swathe of it that has just been, you know, here's another poster about our product and what it does, you know, rather than thinking as a client, as a customer, what's your motivation and how are we going to dial into that?

Yeah. Yeah. Amongst the UK retail investor base, you'd you'd spend a lot of time already as a business nurturing that target of of the investor base.

But can you talk through how you started to modernise and and change the the digital engagement with them?

Yeah. I mean, think it's, I suppose, just take a step back as well. One of the interesting things is that there tends to always be this tendency to do exactly that. You say, well, we're addressing the retail investor.

Now that's actually a massive spectrum, you know, from one end to the other is you wouldn't recognize them as the same people necessarily. You know, the top end of your retail investors can be as knowledgeable as some professional investors. The very starting point of that are people who are very nervously taking their first steps, you know, into investing at all. And that's that's a real difference, a real Huge spectrum.

It's a huge spectrum that you're trying to deal with.

Therein lies a problem in itself.

But I think, one of the unassailable truths, guess, is that stepping away from that almost, life has just become more digital.

So everyone is in those digital spaces. If you want to address people, doesn't matter actually, whether they're professionals, retails or where they are on that spectrum of retail, you've got to be in the digital space. Yeah. You've got to be in the right digital spaces. So you've got to understand that as well. You've got to understand what spaces you want to be in and and how that's going to going to work for you.

Yeah. Yeah. So when you when you talk about the the the spectrum of of the types of investors and how did you kind of hone in on the right type of individual for each different trust? Were they the same for across trusts, or were they different types of clients that you identified?

There's a little bit of difference between the trusts. The the trusts have different investment focus for each of them, and that necessarily means that the people who are going to look for them are slightly different, especially where suppose Merchants and Brenna, they're different, but they both generate an income, so there's some similarity among the people who will be looking for that element of it. Allianz Technology Trust, very different, very growth oriented, very focused on tech, obviously, does what it does on the TIN.

So you've got quite a different person potentially who's looking for that. So there is, you know, a differential definitely.

You know, it was just a case, I suppose, of doing some research, looking, you know, at those elements, trying to build some personas as well, and really think about what those investors look like, both in terms of what our typical investors look like, but also what an aspirational investor looks like. And, you know, I mean, we had hours of debate around what does a younger investor mean? Because, again, in terms of terms that are bandied around a lot, you hear that a lot, you know, oh, we need to access a younger investor. And I think, you know, it's one of those interesting ones, if you drop that in the middle of the table and said to everyone they can't talk to each other and they need to write down what that means, you know, table of ten people, you'd get ten different answers probably of what that means to people, because psychologically, it means something different to everyone.

And, you know, so we needed some coherence around that even in terms of, you know, directing strategy. Okay, yes, we want to go after potentially a younger audience to what we've typically done or typically been pursuing, but what does that actually mean? And actually, I mean, even then, it means a range of things because you have what we said was probably younger investor meant to us, which was actually not far off what our typical investor was, but there's the people entering that profile, and they're probably the more profitable ones. But there is also the actual younger investor in absolute terms.

Yep.

Yep. You know, and you want to be trying to access that as well, but it's a very different outcome.

It's moved a long way. I remember when I first started coming into this industry and listening to people talk about retail, the name that was always given to the retail investor was Mrs. Miggins.

And I just heard that, and I was almost like, who the hell is Mrs. Miggins? Everyone keeps talking about her. It was almost done in a sort of slightly disparaging term, because there was, certainly when I came into the industry, the focus really was on the professional side, and that retail was a slightly awkward bit that you had to, but as you say, there's been a complete shift in the way that the industry thinks. And, again, the sophistication of the the the defining of those target segments within the spectrum that you talk about.

We're talking about this huge spectrum that that that we've been discussing, And actually, the people we're talking about are us. You know, it is anybody, any professional, not just in this industry, anybody who has money to invest, who either is investing or should be investing, you know, those are the people we want to be capturing. Yeah. Absolutely. We should be capturing.

You talked about insights and data to inform the strategy. Where where how did you gain insights and data to started to before you actually started developing, I guess, the tactics to implement the strategy?

Some of it we already had, and some we went out and did some additional research on.

We did a piece of research which was, in a way, staple to Consumer Duty. We said we wanted to look at how people were working their way through our website and whether they were able to find certain information or not, but that yielded some information, you know, in terms of clarity, usability, and so on, meant that we could steer what we were looking at in terms of campaign assets as well.

There's also a rapid evolution in the way that people research and find information as well, though, you know, we've been going through a digital evolution in the background to all of this, haven't we?

So I guess in very and still continue to do so, I mean the way that the marketing world looked five years ago compared to how it looks a year ago compared to how it looks three weeks ago, keeps maneuvering.

Massively, massively. And, you know, it is going to continue on that pace, I suppose. You know, we've got AI in the picture now as well. Yeah. We've already been looking at that with various partners and agencies and research agencies as well in terms of what does that look like for consumers, how much a consumer is using it, What does that trajectory look like? You know, when does SEO start to turn into AEO, GEO, all of the other acronyms that are out there at the moment, you know, in terms of adapting your strategy that you've got at the moment.

It's something that keeps us on our toes, shall we say.

Let's let's go back to the the campaign and thinking about the different audience types. Now when you think about the the retail investor space and you think about the specific campaigns that you have to run for the for the three trusts, what what differences did you see between people that are kind of, you know, early awareness stage versus, right, let's get down, I'm ready to make a purchase decision? Is there any different way that you go about?

Absolutely. I mean, you know, in psychological terms, I guess, in terms of what you're putting in front of them, yes. So in terms of the content, what it looks like, but I think in the way they act as well. And that was born out in the research pieces that we looked at.

Know, somebody who is closer to it, who is researching, I mean, you talked about how people research now and digital channels for that.

That is very different to somebody who's just kind of looking for something that might do something for them. They think they want to invest and they're kind interested in edge.

Almost window shopping, isn't it?

Yeah, almost window shopping. And, you know, we've done research pieces which have completely shown that divergence, where you can show the same page to that two ends of the spectrum that you've just asked about.

And, you know, let's say it's kind of a generic landing page with your, you know, a nice glossy video on it. The person who's window shopping, and I quite like that phrase, you know, generally receives it very well. Okay, that gave me a nice intro, you know, I kind of understand now. Thank you very much.

The person who's close to that purchase decision is like, bump, you've just put bump in front of me. You know, that's just wasted my time. You know, I really dislike this, you know, so it's not even it's not as applicable to them. It's almost a turn off.

Right. Can go the other way.

I think the other way, yeah, because actually they're just looking for I want, you know, these four or five hard facts, which are on my spreadsheet of the three companies I'm potentially looking at buying. I want to, you know, just know these numbers or know these facts or whatever it is. And you're, you know, probably two paragraphs on your manager's latest view. You know, it's a completely different mindset to the person over here.

We need to take because you need to cover that. But we need to take people from here to here. We need to think about the journeys as well. Yep.

Yep. You know, so the person who is just looking for that, can they find that easily?

And, you know, we've done some of that work to date, you know, but I'll be completely honest. We haven't done all of it, and there's always room for improvement. And I think you you you kind of see that constantly as well. And I've seen, you know, some of our competitors have put up, you know, really good site redesigns, you know, over the past year or so. And I think it's something that we'll probably see more and more of happening, I'm sure, you know, as that kind of takes hold really and grips everyone and everyone sees the power of of really thinking about that, not just, you know, having a a basic size and throwing all your stuff on there and letting people kind of select.

Need to Really considering their route through.

Yeah, fascinating. In my experience, boards all kind of want to be very, very differentiated, but there's also a kind of challenge of being linked back to the mastermind, so they want the halo effect of being over a large global brand like Allianz, but also want the individuality of being their own company. Any words of advice that you can give on how you manage that process?

Not really. It's a massive balancing act. And you've actually kind of given the answer there almost, which is exactly that. There are benefits to each side of the coin, and it's not necessarily the same from even one piece of activity to the next. So for us, what we do is we try and provide a very bespoke service for our three client trusts.

You know, that's something that's been a key tenet of how the business unit has been set up at Allianz for a very long time, actually predates me, really. You know, I've tried to carry on that strategy.

But it is a balance and it is a debate. Sometimes it can be a debate with your boards or the boards of the trusts, and it can be a debate internally within the asset manager. You know, sometimes asset managers that have certain things centralised can become very touchy about, well, you're doing something differently there, it needs to look like this. You know, and then you have an internal education piece which says, you know, this is not a product.

This is, you know, Tony, you said it right at the start of the podcast. This is an independent company that we are lucky enough to have the the mandate And, you know, if they've got a very strong feeling on a particular thing, we we could if we disagree, we can try and educate and move that. But actually, if we think, yeah, fair enough, they've got a bit of a point on that, then we need to to make that happen as much as we can. So there's a real, you know, there is a real balance between the interests of the trust and the interests of the company.

And it does come down to all of those things. Actually, when we're doing that balance internally or where we're doing education internally about the Trust and what they do, you know, it's not been something that is making us feel uncomfortable to do within the organization. You know, we're proud to have those companies on our They're great, you know, companies and, you know, therefore, we, you know, we we have a pride in supporting those brands and helping to build those brands as well.

So let let's let's start diving into, I guess, the the the specifics of each individual trust and, I guess, the creative focus of each. You you said that Merchant and Branagh have income related focus on their investment strategies. But is there anything more you can tell us which differentiates between the three trusts?

Yeah. I mean, just a very broad brush. Merchants Trust is UK equity income. So invests in the UK market predominantly, has a small sleeve. It can invest overseas if it wants to.

You know, aims to provide a good total return for investors. But a big part of that is the income stream that it provides.

It's got a good yield on it, and it's raised the dividend every year for forty three years, which is a great record. It's one of the AIC's dividend heroes, they call it, which are companies that have raised a dividend for over twenty years every year. And I think that was something that showed itself in general. This is not just for our trust, but in general as a benefit in COVID when suddenly everything was slashed.

But investment trusts were able to, if they had the revenue reserves to back it, able to carry on paying their dividends through that. You know, going back to the very original point we were making about client customer needs, you know, people who are investing with you for an income and they need that income. Yeah. That that's a really important point.

And a huge selling point.

Huge selling point. And I know it's something that boards spend an awful lot of time thinking about. It's not just a throwaway thing. They spend an awful lot of time thinking about what that next dividend is going to be.

But that's, so we've got Merchants Trust. Brunner is a global equity trust, invests, as, you know, as as the name says anywhere anywhere in the world. It's also got an income focus as well though, and is also a dividend hero, actually one of the longest running dividend heroes. So it's got a fifty three year unbroken record of raising the dividend you know, sort of a really nice story there where they really balance the investment styles within it.

So it's kind of had this tag for a long while of being an all weather investment trust. It's not looking to necessarily follow a particular style and absolutely shoot the lights out when that style is going really well, but just to generally perform well through various cycles.

And then finally, we have Unions Technology Trust.

Name gives it away, really. Technology is an incredible sector.

And in terms of, I suppose, the creatives that we were looking at, you know, if I if I kind of go backwards then, know, technology, you know, was all about looking to the future, you know, that that's what it's it's all about. You know, technology is is always moving forward. I mean, it's, you know, you can write something, I guess, and it's almost out of date the next day. You know, it's not quite like that, but it feels like that sometimes.

So it was all about this this idea of, you know, the the trust is trying to capture, you know, the the future basically and that future future growth.

Brunner really was about that that all weather portfolio feeling and and really taking that to the market and saying, you know, this is what it's about, really describing what that means. You know, it's very nice. You can put up lots of of, you know, pictures that illustrate all weather, but we really wanted to explain from the core what that means for investors.

And then merchants, again, back to the key proposition of that. I don't know. I mean, the one thing I didn't say is is that's a a value style that they follow, and have very consistently followed that style for for for many, many years.

How did you did you balance then, to understand the three trusts, the three creative, I guess, articulations of the investment strategy of each trust, how did you then, from a marketing point of view, both work for long term brand building versus short term sales generation? What were the different tactics that you started to employ and different channels that you used to implement them in?

I suppose materials that we were looking at creating that were longer burn pieces were more evergreen. And I mean, we I guess this, you know, in some ways, I hate the word campaign because it was so multifaceted what we were doing, you know, there was definitely an always on element and some of the early evergreen, so to speak, pieces that we did are still running for us now.

This has run over multiple years.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Which was part of the strategy at the outset was one that, you know, this is a build. So you have you layer, you know, you're layering those base elements with certain campaign elements on top of that to actually, you know, amplify the end result rather than just dripping in bits.

Yeah. I guess that helps from a budget point of view, because to do lots of these things, it takes budget to do.

But if you can spread that cost over several years as opposed to one, it's probably It does help from that perspective.

Plus, you have that ability in an interim sense to prove where you're going, to have some interim results that you can say, okay, this is on target or above, below, wherever it is, but we know where we want to go from that. You have some proof points in there as well to underpin carrying on with the strategy.

You mentioned at the top you started auditing, you did consumer duty testing to identify within their customer journey what working well, what wasn't working well, defined, I guess, value propositions for each trust to make them distinct within their space.

And then you say you built campaign or or or built assets over a multiyear way in in order to give you the firepower, I guess, to have that always methodology. What mediums did you utilize for different parts?

So a lot of it was video, but also we we did audio, and we looked at written pieces as well that that backed that up. But I I suppose it was, you know, that's almost that's just the mechanism. Really, what we were looking at was, you know, what what are the key tenants of those campaigns? What are we trying to message are we trying to put out there?

And then we're looking at those different pieces that could really support that and how they worked together.

Okay.

So part of that, you know, again, is going back to the earlier bit, I suppose, that we we we talked about those customer journeys. Know, how is somebody going to come in? What's going to attract them out of the pieces that we're doing? Where are they going to come into?

So what's your landing page or landing area? What does that look like? What supporting pieces do we have on there? How are we drawing people through then?

Where are they going to go from there? You know, again, there was lots of discussion about about the the actual route to market as such, you know, investment trust is a very strange beast. It's not retail as in you're selling a product. You can't put a, you know, well, you can put a buy it now button, but it's not, you know, literally a transactional piece that you can do.

I've known that you also did broadcast as part of the of the campaign mix. What what was the reasoning behind deciding to use broadcast and how did you go about that?

So we used Sky TV, Sky AdSmart actually, and it was quite interesting because again, you know, you talk about the way the speed in which things move and change. And that was something I don't think you need to go back many years at all before until, you know, broadcast was truly broadcast. So, you know, I think actually it's a bit of an anomalous term as well to to call it broadcast. But, you know, at one point, broadcast was broadcast, and none of us ever had the budgets for that, you know.

Terrestrial TV. Terrestrial TV. Exactly. You know, some firms had a, you know, a very big central budget to do some elements on proper broadcast, and that was fine.

And we all looked from afar and went, you know, wish I could do that one day. And then actually with the rise of streaming services, all of a sudden you've got all of these packages available where it can be much more targeted for you. You can go along and you can say, going back to our persona's point, this is what we're trying to reach, and they've got a set of buckets, if you like, that you can access and you go, yep, we want that one, that one, and that one. And we want it on this frequency, these numbers over this timescale, and you get a cost.

And actually, when we looked at it, we're like, yeah, that cost is quite reasonable. There were hurdles definitely, but it was, you know, like I say, it was really interesting to be able to access that market and, you know something we hadn't done before and I think you know very anecdotal but a great moment was going into a board meeting and the chair saying I saw an advert for our trust That's wonderful.

It sounds like there's been a lot of quite a seismic shift change in the in the in these different tactics that you've employed over several years.

How have compliance teams managed this?

I think where we've started to do new things, or things that are new to them, we've tried to take them along on that journey as much as possible. We've got a very fair and compliance department. They don't often give us a lot of trouble, if trouble is the right word, with things.

But one of the things they are very worried about is when we talk about single stocks. Right. So I think I kind of remember the day of going to them and saying we want to record stock stories with the managers. You know, there was definitely a sharp intake of breath from that side of the fence, but we brought them in, sat with ourselves, agency, compliance, and discussed it, put examples up on the screen of what other companies were doing, got their assessment on whether they would have passed that or not, and if not, why not, and actually then got to a point where we had an agreement both on disclaimers that we would need upfront, and we actually for those early ones we did, we actually prescripted them as well, so they had the chance just to say yes or no on the elements that we would be talking about in there.

So they bought in from the start, basically. And that worked really, really well, which is I suppose you would kind of expect it. In some instances, I suppose, you know, compliance have a very hard task in that they are the end of the journey and they get given a fait accompli in some ways and said, please sign that off.

You know, sometimes it might not be what they want to see in there. I think if they understand from the start what's coming down the track at them, then that can be a much easier conversation at that end point. It's probably just tweaking the margins really.

It's almost like a co creation in a Yeah, a little bit, yeah.

And just going back to the TV, were you pleased with the results that you're getting there?

Very pleased, I mean, the what's interesting about Sky AdSmart is is you get the the the broadcast to to use that that vernacular element of it, which, you know, is is just a number of impressions.

But you also get it put out on on the Sky app. So if you're a Sky customer, it it knows that you're not only, you know, watching the TV at whatever time and it's gonna serve within a certain window, but it also knows you're on the app. So you will get ad repeats on the app as well. And actually there, you do get the click data right through from that. We had some comparisons as well with some other major campaigns, sort of major financial services brands that were out there, and we'd done really, really well. One of the campaigns actually surpassing some really big names out there for clicks on the app So we were really, really pleased with that.

Sort of, you know, just really pleased as well, even without the data side, actually, step into something a little bit new and just to be trying some of these things as well and and get a few, you know, a few different executions on the plate.

Explain a little bit more about the the creative execution of a stock story.

Sure. Well, what we decided to do was go for video. Again, we want to show our managers that to people.

A a big element, I think, you know, even before this campaign of what we're trying to do is is put our managers in front of people. Right. I'm a big believer in people by people. Yeah.

And so trust is a big element of that. And, you know, apart from going to an event like an AGM and seeing the manager and being able to talk to the manager, the next best thing is is seeing them on video or on a webinar. And, also, it gives you the opportunity to illustrate more things about the the company as well if you want to to put some some b roll in there to to to really, you know, illustrate the point. So that was our kind of ethos from the start was to do, you know, that was the best way, the best route to market.

And and it also plays into some of the stuff we've been talking about as well in terms of how people are consuming Yes. As well and consuming information.

I guess it's kind of amplifying their reach in a way, isn't it? Getting them in front of more eyeballs.

They were short videos in the end or relatively short.

So they're always the thing that you can take little sound bites out of as well. You know, we can that lends itself to social and so on as well.

There were probably some elements where we're like, we want to see more improvement than where we've got to. You know, had interesting strategic conversations on that in terms of, you know, where can we go from here? But we've definitely had good results as well, both at the macro level, if you like, in terms of what we were trying to achieve. So one of the big elements we were trying to achieve was increases in our search traffic. Now, there was a big increase in terms of organic search traffic over the period we've been running this. That was one of the things we were trying to get to definitely.

And yes, one of the other things we did was did almost like a mini brand tracker, I suppose, for awareness, as you And that definitely, again, showed an uplift in there.

Individual pieces as well have performed well. So we've had, know, like we said, with the Sky TV example, we had that. We've had with the stock stories where we've published them in different places, we've had really good individual performances on different publishers' sites with those as well.

You've gone through quite a process with this, and I think that it feels to me that you're quite advanced with the way that you approach digital activation towards retail investors. What advice would you share with other asset managers that are maybe not as advanced in their thinking? What words of wisdom would you give to those?

I I think just to take a step in resources, budgets are finite to an element, to to a sense, and so that there are lots more things that we would like to do. So, you know, at the end of the day, we're doing these things to grow, and growth brings revenue with it. So, you know, I don't think we should ever be looking to do any of these things just because we fancy doing them because they're they're nice and fun. We're doing them for an objective, which is to improve revenue flows and to, you know, to grow.

Yeah. So I I think it's, you know, it's it's it's very possible just, you know, to start to move into it. I think it, yes, it can be daunting. But I think once you start to do some of these elements, there's a clarity that comes with it as well.

I suppose just the the frustrating element is you see you see the the the myriad of different things you could be doing as well or want to do. And and, you know, sometimes maybe that stack looks a lot larger than they they have already done the stack. Yeah. But, you know, that's life as well.

So what additional elements would those be that sits in that other list of would like to dos?

A big one for us is social.

We've dipped our toe. I would say with social, we haven't pushed in as far as maybe we would like. Again, that's, you know, that's been a case for us of working out where the resource is best placed and the money is best spent at the moment. But we've definitely got an ambition to do more in terms of social.

And again, looping back to some of the stuff we were saying earlier, when you think about that audience spectrum and you think about the new modalities of the ways people are consuming information, you know, that there is a shift in that direction as well and definitely needs to be part of the of the piece. So it's something we're think you know, trying to think about more and more. But all of these things, you know, take take effort, take resource, take take money. You will have that element where there will be things like that, whether it's social, whether it's video, whether it's, you know, podcast, whatever it is, there will be things that maybe you've seen or heard other people do and think, you know, I'd love to do that.

And there's probably always a judgment call on whether you can actually get there quickly, soon, or whether it's going to take a little bit more time to get that on the plate.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Ollie, for sharing the story of Allianz Investment Trust and the shift to digital campaign to retail audiences.

You may have noticed we have a bookcase behind us, full of little reminders of different guests that we have on the show.

Anything that you can share that we can put up to remind us that We will definitely raid our goody cupboard for something for you Fantastic.

And and and get you something to put on there as well. Yeah. And taking a quick look to see who, you know, who's got something really flashy, and we'll we'll make sure we we get something flashier.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

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 hub agency dot co dot u k. Thank you, and see you next time.

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