Ep 38: The Benefits of Being White in Inclusive Marketing with Jon Payne
Shownotes
In this episode, Joyann is joined by Jon Payne. Together they discuss the perspective and benefits of being white in inclusive marketing, along with other topics such as web accessibility and the impact of AI on SEO. Jon also shares stories of resistance to inclusive marketing from the past and they discuss how to combat this problem.
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You can find the transcript here.
Useful links:
W3C Accessibility Standards Overview
Transcript
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:22:12
Joyann Boyce
Welcome and welcome back to the Marketing Made Inclusive podcast. I am your host, Joyann Boyce. And today we are joined by, I feel like everyone's my longtime friend, but John actually is. Since I started the business, seen the sprouts of the of an agency and it's a blossom into many things, but John has been a huge inspiration to me.
00:00:22:14 - 00:00:25:07
Joyann Boyce
John. Hi.
00:00:25:09 - 00:00:37:17
Jon Payne
Hello, Joy. Joyann, sorry, I always do that. You originally. So inspirational that I can't even say your name right.
00:00:38:14 - 00:00:41:18
Jon Payne
That’s a lovely set of things to say. My goodness, how sweet.
00:00:41:20 - 00:00:55:14
Joyann Boyce
Yes, you're the first. Okay. This is going to, it's, this adds a little context of why I also admire you, because you are the first white man in marketing, to be honest with me.
00:00:55:16 - 00:00:58:00
Jon Payne
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay.
00:00:58:02 - 00:01:11:01
Joyann Boyce
And in a very, like, straight talking, we spoke I think our first conversations were always about marketing. But anyways, let the people know who you are, what you do, and tell them a little bit about you.
00:01:11:03 - 00:01:31:13
Jon Payne
Okay. My name's Jon Payne. I well, the top of my list on my CV now is friend of Joyann Boyce, that's, that's huge. And it might even put the year, might on my LinkedIn profile, years active. It must be like eight or something, it might be more. How long have you been in business?
00:01:31:15 - 00:01:38:07
Joyann Boyce
No, it's coming up to. It's 2017, so yeah, it's been a minute. But then COVID years are weird years.
00:01:38:08 - 00:02:12:03
Jon Payne
Yeah, yeah, that's true. oh, they were weird. Yeah. So but yeah before being friend of Joyann Boyce, I founded with my wife, a company called Noisy Little Monkey, which was a SEO and marketing automation company. And we've recently exited that business, I believe is how you say it. Yeah, we are, exactly. We haven't got enough money to retire, so I will be doing other stuff in future.
00:02:12:09 - 00:02:47:09
Jon Payne
I'm not quite sure what, but yeah, probably around ethical growth in business because yeah, that was the thing that, that really was the fun bit of doing what we did I think, was, you know, doing all the marketing and stuff, but doing it like, trying to run a business profitably, but then also there is ethical. And lots of people came to us and were friendly with us because of that kind of stuff and throwing ourselves into challenging environments.
00:02:47:11 - 00:03:04:05
Jon Payne
So yeah, we'll probably be we'll probably do something about that because Nick’s really good at coaching teams and helping leaders figure out where they want to go. And I'm good at sales and marketing for founders really. So, yeah, and that's it.
00:03:04:05 - 00:03:07:06
Joyann Boyce
You missed two other things. You ran the HubSpot group.
00:03:07:08 - 00:03:07:22
Jon Payne
We did. We ran two.
00:03:07:22 - 00:03:13:24
Joyann Boyce
And you ran the conference. There were other things you've been doing, Jon.
00:03:13:24 - 00:03:43:17
Jon Payne
Yeah, that’s true, that’s true. So, yeah, we, we ran the Bristol HubSpot Group and then we ran the worldwide HubSpot group for sales enablement where, so yeah, which would mean that people from all over would get up early to listen to me and Katie Roberts of Atomic Smash. Excellent WordPress web developers in Bristol. Cause she and I would run that together. People would get up in like the other side of Canada at like four in the morning.
00:03:43:17 - 00:04:03:08
Jon Payne
So they got to ask a question about sales enablement that either me and Katie or Katie and Andy, one of your previous guests, would answer. And we also ran digital gaggle. Not quite sure what we're going to do with that. Um, we have some great speakers there. One, Joyann Boyce was kind enough to grace us with her presence once.
00:04:03:10 - 00:04:09:03
Jon Payne
And, do, I think, way back then, that was, you were kind of a bit you were a bit nervous about that talk.
00:04:09:04 - 00:04:14:19
Joyann Boyce
Nervous. That was also my first inclusive marketing style talk ever.
00:04:14:21 - 00:04:34:02
Jon Payne
And it was banging, weren’t it? Tears, you absolutely, there wasn't a, there wasn't dry eyes in the house, but only from people who were made of stone. Yeah, it was really good. It's really good and really useful and really inspirational. So I think we'll probably do something with Digital Gaggle unless someone wants to give me a ridiculous amount of money for it.
00:04:34:04 - 00:04:58:07
Jon Payne
But at what will probably, I dunno, Digital Gaggle will probably come back in some form and be more probably about I don't know whether it comes back. It's something that's more about ethical business growth or whether it is really focused on marketing and sales. But it was never, and it was always 50% how to be not an asshole in business or not.
00:04:58:07 - 00:05:02:23
Jon Payne
an asshole in this or that, so that should have been strapline.
00:05:03:00 - 00:05:08:01
Joyann Boyce
It's not a marketing conference about not being an asshole in marketing.
00:05:08:03 - 00:05:12:21
Jon Payne
Yeah. Wow, we should have built ii as that, it would have been it would have been massive by now.
00:05:12:23 - 00:05:18:19
Joyann Boyce
Because I remember, I don't want to mix it up, but I do think you had Steve Bartlett one year right?
00:05:18:20 - 00:05:52:04
Jon Payne
We did, Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He was, he was an incredible speaker, even way back then. His ability to control a room was phenomenal. He walked on. He basically, Joy, he rolled out of the taxi not because he was pissed. He's just, he's the guy was always moving, probably still is, rolled out of a taxi that was still moving with a bloke with a video camera following him and I was like that, oh, hello, I'm Jon and he was like that.
00:05:52:08 - 00:06:19:19
Jon Payne
Yeah. I'm Stephen. And I was like who’s this guy, like pointing behind him and he said, That's my videographer and we, recording every day. That's what I do. And I'm like that, oh. And in my head it was just like alarm bells. This man's a lunatic. And then he kind of rolled up on stage after causing us considerable problems because he didn't tell us he had a brand new Mac and we'd said, tell us if you got a brand new Mac, because we haven't got an adapter.
00:06:19:21 - 00:06:41:12
Jon Payne
Lovely guy ran to his car in the car park to get an adapter for not at that point famous Stephen Bartlett, not at that famous Stephen Bartlett, anyway, got him all set up. All of this chaos that ensued he was there like, just like rock star behaviour. And I kind of love that, particularly because he was so young. It was like, of course you should behave like this.
00:06:41:18 - 00:06:55:15
Jon Payne
If you're a rock star of business at this age, you should behave a bit like a rock star. And then he just walked up the, and he went. I mean, I can't do it for as long as he did.
00:06:55:17 - 00:06:58:01
Joyann Boyce
Like, seriously, just silence?
00:06:58:04 - 00:07:14:11
Jon Payne
Silence for a minute. I timed it as he broke briefly and I thought, oh, he's going for silence. And I looked at my watch and just looked at the seconds and he was silence for, for about 58 seconds in front of 200 people. And not a, you couldn't have had a pin. You could have had a pin drop.
00:07:14:11 - 00:07:26:13
Jon Payne
It was silent in there. And then he went, I'm Stephen Bartlett, or something like that. No, he didn't even start like that. He just started off on my mum told me not to do x or whatever, went into his story.
00:07:26:13 - 00:07:29:03
Joyann Boyce
Yeah, Yeah, that story. He just, kept that for a while.
00:07:29:05 - 00:07:56:08
Jon Payne
Yeah. Yeah, I actually don't. I don't really agree with the ethics of what Social Chain did, they nicked? I mean, it's like what UNILAD do and all that people, those people now, they, in my opinion, thinking both of us that might get sued because this is your podcast, so I'll say in my opinion. They nick content from other people, put some nice graphics on the front and then use it to grow their audience.
00:07:56:08 - 00:08:03:09
Jon Payne
And I don't like the stealing of content from other creators in my opinion. I'm not saying they definitely do that.
00:08:03:11 - 00:08:24:04
Joyann Boyce
It's like it was a wild time back in those days. The social, I feel like social media has matured a little bit, it’s calmed down. Now everyone’s doing the AI things not really doing anything wild with social. But back in the Social Chain and then the way people used to have to send them like Lego houses to apply for jobs and stuff.
00:08:24:04 - 00:08:28:02
Jon Payne
Yeah, yeah.
00:08:28:04 - 00:08:30:03
Joyann Boyce
But Stephen's doing different things nowadays.
00:08:30:09 - 00:08:32:23
Joyann Boyce
He's a little bit well known now.
00:08:33:00 - 00:08:52:09
Jon Payne
Yeah. It was going, I was going to say, he's done alright for himself. I mean, I think we were quite proud of ourselves for about 12 months. The video of him doing Digital Gaggle was the most popular one on his YouTube channel, and we're just amazed. He tried to go without saying goodbye to Claire Dibben, our marketing manager, and he now works at Carescribe
00:08:52:10 - 00:09:13:13
Jon Payne
Whose, she’d be worth a conversation. Actually, they do amazing things. But yeah, she, he tried to go without saying goodbye, so and Clare quite aggressively chased him down the street and put her foot in the taxi door as he was trying to close it so that she could give him his bottle of wine and his thank you card in the most passive aggressive way possible.
00:09:16:00 - 00:09:18:24
Joyann Boyce
Just like, you will be thankful for speaking here. Yes.
00:09:18:24 - 00:09:35:07
Jon Payne
Yeah, yeah, yeah. She. She gave him the telling off. You say thank you to people and you say goodbye to people, Steve. And that's how you should be. And I think he just was like going off. He was already somewhere else in his head. But he did say thank you and good bye.
00:09:35:09 - 00:09:37:10
Joyann Boyce
We've already got on the stories, but let me come back.
00:09:38:22 - 00:09:58:17
Joyann Boyce
Back no, it’s amazing because all of the things you've done, you've had such a long career. But I'm curious to know, what are the questions? You're still young, Jon. You're still young. Anyways, one of the questions I would love to ask is what does inclusive marketing mean to you?
00:09:58:19 - 00:10:56:04
Jon Payne
If you're listening to this Joy has just asked an old, white, bald dude what inclusive marketing means to him. And obviously it means bloody headache, Joy. All that rubbish I have to do now. No, it doesn't mean that. It's a really good question because it's so broad isn't it. I think if I put on my old hat of running a digital marketing agency, inclusive marketing meant to me that, still means to me, although I'm not doing so much marketing right now, means that you as much as possible, don't exclude people from resonating with your message.
00:10:56:06 - 00:11:10:19
Jon Payne
And so a really good example of that, like part of the reason I really enjoyed Joy hanging out with you when we talk about business, the reason I really enjoyed hanging out with you is we're possibly drunk and laughing hysterically.
00:11:11:14 - 00:11:42:09
Jon Payne
But when we're talking about business and stuff like that, you, you remind me of the stuff that I easily forget because I'm in the the, the, the bubble of being an old white dude and everything's already representative of me and my gang. And so, you know, reminding me that, you know, is it your story of the, when you came to the UK was the first time you realised that you were Black?
00:11:42:11 - 00:12:14:20
Jon Payne
And that was like that. When you said, when you said that to me, of course I'd heard similar things about how I don't see myself represented in all of that kind of stuff, but the first time realising a difference must have been, you know, well clearly it had an impact. And look at you. But, but yeah so that often resonates with me is, is okay, well how can we make sure that, that if we are using visuals or if we are if we're using visuals, that we are representing lots of different aspects of what we see in the world around us.
00:12:14:22 - 00:12:44:22
Jon Payne
And certainly when I'm thinking about, when we're working in, with clients in Bristol, which is a lovely diverse city is well, I set myself mini goals and I'll talk to the client about them. Don't ever write them down because we end up having to, you know, go through legal and all of that kind of stuff. But I would like to I like to go, well, look, if, if, if only five people in your city is Black or at the person of colour, if that's the, if that's a phrase that's okay.
00:12:44:24 - 00:12:57:03
Jon Payne
What if we got ten people in this advert and they're all white? And in fact, why is only one is only one of them a woman? Okay, so can we. And of course they then go, well I, we don't have any people who work.
00:12:57:05 - 00:12:59:08
Joyann Boyce
Oh really. What a surprise.
00:12:59:10 - 00:13:03:06
Jon Payne
You know, maybe it's because everything you do is, you know, vanilla.
00:13:03:08 - 00:13:13:13
Joyann Boyce
Feeds into that cycle. How does that work with so because I know the clients that you've worked with in the past tend to be lack of a better analogy, suit and ties, type of environment.
00:13:13:15 - 00:13:14:06
Jon Payne
Yeah.
00:13:14:08 - 00:13:26:12
Joyann Boyce
How does it, being the agency, coming from the outside, bringing that and being as you've described, yourself a white, bald man raising that as well because I think there's this expectation that.
00:13:27:14 - 00:13:33:24
Joyann Boyce
It’s not the person that looks like them that's going to raise it to them. How does that conversation happen?
00:13:34:01 - 00:14:08:18
Jon Payne
Actually I had a really interesting conversation with Andy Jarvis about this, he of Xiaomi marketing or Xiaomi marketing, I don't know how you say it. Andy, just put a pronunciation guide on your website, please. But anyway, because I was like someone asked me to do an inclusive, talk about inclusivity to a what do you call them, a steering committee for a like an association or a membership organisation.
00:14:08:18 - 00:14:29:15
Jon Payne
So it's like that, not the Chartered Institute of Accountants, but it was like, okay, they, they have, the Chartered Institute runs the membership stuff and for all of the accountants it was like that. I can't remember what the organisation was for. And I was like that I, I don't think you need me coming along to speak about inclusivity because I haven't lived this.
00:14:29:17 - 00:14:57:01
Jon Payne
I haven't lived being excluded. I'm able bodied, straight. You know, I don't have dyslexia or anything. You know, my biggest problem is all of those things. Actually, I'm just so, so, so typical. If you open up a marketing brochure and it's not a problem at all. But yes, I was like I don't think that's good. And I was talking to Andy about it and he said, no, I think it is good.
00:14:57:03 - 00:15:41:13
Jon Payne
And he touched on the point that maybe I hadn't considered is I'm quite safe. I mean, I'm not obviously I'm going to go off like a fucking hand grenade at some point, but I'm quite a safe person. If you're a suit and tie, older white dude who's never met anybody in a wheelchair or, you know, struggles with people who are of different genders, different, different colours, different cultures, all of that kind of stuff, because you're, you know, you've come out of your Cotswolds town and there's four of you there and you're all related to each other.
00:15:41:15 - 00:15:46:02
Jon Payne
And yeah, yeah.
00:15:46:04 - 00:15:54:02
Joyann Boyce
Find another way to offend, like you avoided so many minefields just now, but just found a way, I apologise to the people of the Cotswolds.
00:15:56:00 - 00:15:57:20
Jon Payne
Offend the majority, Joyann. That’s, that’s the goal.
00:16:01:18 - 00:16:34:05
Jon Payne
Offend the majority and, but yeah, if you, if you're that kind of person it's probably a bit easier coming from someone who looks and sounds like, although I sound much more working class than most of those people. Then you know, perhaps I'm, I've already got my defences up when someone like you walks in the room and goes, I'm here to talk to you and you don't do this because obviously you're so adept at coping with those ridiculous barriers that people are putting up.
00:16:34:07 - 00:16:53:04
Jon Payne
But yeah, I don't think the barriers go up when I start talking about it until they realise that actually I'm, I'm quite pro this inclusivity stuff and I do think you should make some changes and we’re. You're not going to go out of the room today until you've figured out what change is going to make. But, yeah.
00:16:53:06 - 00:17:18:24
Jon Payne
So yeah, I feel often, I used to have a certain amount of I've got shame issues about lots of things. So but, but specifically being the bloke that would be rolled out, the bloke that would be rolled out to do a talk. Well, what a surprise, it's another white guy on the stage. But now I realise, actually, that maybe I'm the tip of the spear that can.
00:17:19:01 - 00:17:31:05
Jon Payne
That can, you know, make the crack a little bit bigger so that other people can, can follow through. So it's not quite standing on the shoulders of giants. I suppose it's more like following a termite.
00:17:31:07 - 00:17:34:16
Joyann Boyce
I think it's even like a sleeper agent in the.
00:17:34:16 - 00:17:35:04
Jon Payne
Yeah.
00:17:35:06 - 00:17:55:02
Joyann Boyce
In the marketing sense, because I can see for many reasons an agency, a CMO thinking, you know, if I go with this agency led by Jon, he'll just agree with everything I said. And this, because the other thing they like to do and I've and I'm sorry if generalising, a lot of CMO's is accuse everything on the new generation.
00:17:55:04 - 00:18:07:01
Joyann Boyce
They love to be like, oh, it's the new generation that are doing this or that. They're making us use inclusive language to do that. So I can see them approaching you and you're like, actually all that stuff they're saying I'm going to implement anyways.
00:18:07:03 - 00:18:32:13
Jon Payne
Yeah, well, and also because you're able to point to often anecdotal evidence, but also decent studies that you've shared in the past where you can go, look, we engage with a wider community and be, and are more inclusive. We will make more money. And even the most. Yeah, you have to at that point, you know if they're going to push back, they're an ist of some kind.
00:18:32:15 - 00:18:38:22
Joyann Boyce
And have you ever had a client or a potential client pushback?
00:18:38:24 - 00:18:50:03
Jon Payne
Yeah, yeah, we did. We had one and we fired them. Unfortunately, because they were very wealthy.
00:18:50:05 - 00:18:53:11
Joyann Boyce
Wait, wait. They, so, what staged.
00:18:54:11 - 00:18:59:18
Jon Payne
They’d been a client for about two or three years. I'm a chunky retainer, so I'm.
00:18:59:18 - 00:19:00:21
Joyann Boyce
Already a client.
00:19:00:21 - 00:19:26:06
Jon Payne
Yeah. And so this was the issue that first came up and everybody who's heard me tell the story in the past knows the client, but I'm not going to mention on here because they've actually just been sold and the guy who's an asshole is leaving, although he is leaving with approximately 22 million more quid than he started with, which is sad, but there we are, assholes tend to prosper it seems.
00:19:26:08 - 00:20:07:02
Jon Payne
But yeah, so we were working with them and they had multinational websites so they had different, and if they came to us originally because they had a problem that they couldn't rank for their, for their main service that they offered. And so we helped them rebuild their website with a with a, with another agency because we just did the SEO in the kind of framework stuff and some and the, another agency built that website and we, we, we made it multilingual so that they had, we did it in a, in a really search engine optimised friendly way with all of these different languages and we made it because it was WordPress so like it just
00:20:07:02 - 00:20:29:22
Jon Payne
add on more languages and, and it would it would handle that Canonicals and the outlining tags and all of that and every time they added on a new WordPress site they were melting WordPress. So and I had a quarterly review with the senior team and I'd already brought this up with the marketing team who'd said, oh, well, yeah, we can't change that.
00:20:29:24 - 00:20:55:10
Jon Payne
That's the decision from let's call him Dave, let's call him John because he's a white guy in marketing and we're all called John. And so we've talked to John about this and yeah, no, he doesn't think it's a problem. And my problem that I had was they had, you could go, you could look at their different offices so you could look at Houston, Texas, you could look at Boston, Massachusetts.
00:20:55:10 - 00:21:25:10
Jon Payne
And I can't say that. Yeah, that’ll do. But my mum used to say massive two shits and now I can't say anything else. I was trying to edit that and I've said it anyway. Massive two shits. London, England and Leon, France, Africa. And I'm like that. So wait a minute, we've got all of these I can do actually by city in every other part of the world.
00:21:25:12 - 00:21:51:21
Jon Payne
But you know, in Africa, where are you? And they're like, Nairobi, and I'm like that Well, then surely that's not right in Kenya, right? Yeah, that's what you should have. Well, no, because we serve the whole of Africa. But you don't, so you barely even serve the whole of France from Leon. Africa is regardless of what your map tells you, Africa is way bigger.
00:21:51:23 - 00:22:06:05
Jon Payne
I'm like that, why don’t, and also make it much more targeted for the people you want to serve in the community of Nairobi because that, will you'll get loads of visitors from there rather than having to go to Chad.
00:22:06:07 - 00:22:11:06
Joyann Boyce
And filter it out and locations and all that. So it's a very logical recommendation.
00:22:11:07 - 00:22:40:17
Jon Payne
Yeah, but yeah, and I was like that also just the optics of that really suck. They're really, really imperialist and gross, and he was like that, no, I don't need to change it because for me we're targeting all of Africa and we to-ed and fro-ed and I was like that you're not targeting all of Africa. You know, you're not targeting either of the Sudans because you know, you they're not desperate for your products there right now.
00:22:40:17 - 00:23:06:06
Jon Payne
There was a war, you know, fairly hefty war going on. Anyway, so it came to them having the next big chunk of work. And I said, well, we’ll because you want to go out to tender, we'll use a retainer to help you write the tender and tip to anybody who runs a marketing business. Always use your retainer to help them write the tender, because then you'll win the tender.
00:23:06:08 - 00:23:27:24
Jon Payne
And but this was one we just we intended not to apply for. So we wrote the tender and they phoned us up like three days before the end of their and they went oh we haven't had your, your, your tender. And then I was like oh we're not tender tendering for it. You're going to absolutely screw up the implementation that we've described and you can come back to us when, when it all goes wrong.
00:23:27:24 - 00:23:28:16
Joyann Boyce
When you’re ready to change.
00:23:28:18 - 00:23:46:23
Jon Payne
And when you're ready to change, when you're ready to make those changes. They came back to us when they made the changes and they screwed up everything for about a year. But yeah, and by that point the website did say Nairobi, Kenya. I think they opened up another African office. I think they were in Lagos as well, and it was like, oh, well done.
00:23:47:00 - 00:23:52:23
Joyann Boyce
Funny that. Now you want to be specific.
00:23:53:00 - 00:24:06:16
Jon Payne
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So we didn't, I don't think we told them that's why we were firing them. But it was definitely they knew that well, I just have to stand up row with that managing director and founder, so.
00:24:09:05 - 00:24:30:03
Joyann Boyce
Fair, fair. And I think that is some of the elements of being a, I can't not use the term now, because it’s in my head, a sleeper agent, where you’re able to do those things. Able to push back on those things. Whereas in certain experiences I always say sometimes when I work with teams and companies, I feel like they bring me in to say the things that they wanted to say, but they can't.
00:24:30:05 - 00:24:31:04
Jon Payne
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:24:31:04 - 00:24:44:06
Joyann Boyce
Because I’m the external person. I go in, I say these things and I can leave because they've heard it. But when they're saying it internally or in-house, they're like, oh no, don't worry, that's just your opinion. Or it's just your feeling like, they want to push it aside.
00:24:44:06 - 00:24:49:03
Jon Payne
Or it's just you being a millennial or whatever. The new one is Generation, Gen-Z or whatever.
00:24:49:03 - 00:24:56:22
Joyann Boyce
Or Gen Z, Gen, then Gen Alpha, which I find a bit. Gen Alpha is after Gen Z.
00:24:56:24 - 00:24:58:19
Jon Payne
How old are those people?
00:24:58:21 - 00:25:00:04
Joyann Boyce
I think they're like ten.
00:25:00:06 - 00:25:02:16
Jon Payne
Oh okay, so they're nearly in charge.
00:25:02:18 - 00:25:04:11
Joyann Boyce
Almost. Yeah.
00:25:05:06 - 00:25:11:11
Joyann Boyce
I'm, I'm becoming, you know. No, no, I'm, I'm still a millennial. Never mind.
00:25:11:13 - 00:25:17:04
Jon Payne
Yeah, I'm Gen X, I hate all of you other generations. That's my job.
00:25:17:06 - 00:25:18:19
Joyann Boyce
You do it well, you do.
00:25:20:16 - 00:25:41:22
Joyann Boyce
So, okay so that's really fascinating to take that stance with a client and to essentially let them go. And based on the fact that they're not willing to change. And the other element I love about that story, it's such a practical outside of the inclusive marketing and the general, you know, Africa is continent, not place.
00:25:41:24 - 00:25:42:14
Jon Payne
Yeah.
00:25:42:16 - 00:26:01:20
Joyann Boyce
There's a general like that was SEO advice that was. And that's what I love about inclusive marketing. It's like yes, we have the elements of diversity and inclusion in that base wrapped in practicalities. It's wrapped in this will one, make your website reach more people, make you more money. It’s still wrapped in marketing.
00:26:01:22 - 00:26:28:09
Jon Payne
Yeah, yeah and I think in fact when you were saying that I feel there's a lot of other clients that we just didn't win because we wouldn't say. Someone once said to me, don't ship shit. We don't ship shit. We only ship quality. And I thought, okay, I like that. And so we always, for an SEO perspective, I and the rest of the team always felt, well, if it's if it isn't accessible online, then it's not good for us.
00:26:28:10 - 00:26:52:20
Jon Payne
So, you know, it's not the be all and end all. There's plenty of inaccessible sites that perform really well. But actually we know that accessibility, it's normally it gives it a bit of an uplift, but also it just makes the web a better place. Like, yeah, the amount of times I said to people, just put all text on your images because tomorrow you'll rank better because you've got a million images and it just makes the web a better place.
00:26:52:20 - 00:27:09:19
Jon Payne
And often they go, oh, let's, let's do it for that. Okay. We’re gonna, which is, which is always lovely, but yeah, we get so and we would turn down business from people who would say, well, we, we don't want to build it like that. We, we still want your SEO, but we're just not going to build an accessible website.
00:27:09:19 - 00:27:14:15
Jon Payne
And we'd say, well that's, that's step one for us. So then no work.
00:27:14:17 - 00:27:23:06
Joyann Boyce
So how did you guys incorporate that accessibility element into the building of the site and like what did that process look like?
00:27:23:08 - 00:28:11:07
Jon Payne
So from a, initially when it was just me, we would follow W3C guidelines. God that was years ago really a which were again another Bristol awesome person. Leoni Watson She was a software developer and suffered from diabetes, didn't treat the diabetes well. She would say this, it's not me just judging the lovely Leoni. Didn't, didn't treat the diabetes well and went blind as a result, while she was learning to code and, and was very angry about stuff.
00:28:11:09 - 00:28:47:21
Jon Payne
And eventually she's not so angry anymore, which is probably good for her. But I really loved her angry because she was very, she would be very vociferous about and W3C stuff. And she worked with Tim Berners-Lee on the original W3C stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it so we would, we would do W3C compliance on everything cascading style sheets and HTML and then the more accessibility you could build in that was beyond that.
00:28:47:21 - 00:29:15:21
Jon Payne
So like, you know, tap order on a keyboard for people who weren't able necessarily to use mouse or, or trackpads, being able to make the text larger and smaller, I mean, typically now that's done, you can do that within the browser. So most people have that set or being able to make, you know, make all of the text white on black because that's easier for you to read.
00:29:15:23 - 00:29:34:19
Jon Payne
And like it started off with W3C and then it just got more and more progressive and then eventually to the point where you're testing colours for contrast because colour blindness and dyslexia and all of this kind of stuff. And started out with me going, oh, this is a, this is good for search and it's also will make the web a better place.
00:29:34:19 - 00:29:59:18
Jon Payne
These are good things. And then Steve Mitchell, our head of SEO, carried it on. And then and Harriet Locke, who was working at Monkey for two or three years, came along and went, we do all of this stuff as an SEO audit, but we don't do a full accessibility audit as part of it. And we're not, we weren't, we weren't an accessibility company.
00:29:59:20 - 00:30:21:18
Jon Payne
So it was silly for us to say, well, we're going to do a full accessibility audit, but we could do a pretty in-depth one. So we would say, and Harriet brought in the right, well, there you have an SEO audit and as part of that is an accessibility audit. And you know, that has as much of a performance like, oh, text and cascading sales sheets and stuff like that.
00:30:21:20 - 00:30:42:18
Jon Payne
Then it had its own big section in our audit and we would do that for every client. Every client got an audit that was like, gosh, sometimes hundreds of pages long on things that they should change. And accessibility was probably 25 pages of it and it would normally be in the top ten recommendations. It would be in the top five every time, because typically people just don't. They don’t pay attention to it.
00:30:42:20 - 00:30:47:01
Joyann Boyce
They don't do it. They just upload a picture and just go on.
00:30:47:03 - 00:30:58:16
Jon Payne
Yeah, exactly. Like, like these are our corporate colours. And then we go, oh, your corporate colours are terrible for people with dyslexia, stop putting that blue on a grey background.
00:30:58:18 - 00:31:03:24
Joyann Boyce
Yeah. I always forget your suit and tie clients, they do not inspire me.
00:31:04:01 - 00:31:06:00
Joyann Boyce
No.
00:31:06:02 - 00:31:35:01
Jon Payne
But the nice thing was, God, I'm really going on. But someone, Jamie Riddell, who was one of the early pioneers of SEO and told me once that he went for clients that were rich, famous or inspired because the inspired ones often don't have much money, but they're the ones that you can do really cool stuff with the famous ones, you really need some logos on your website.
00:31:35:07 - 00:31:51:20
Jon Payne
Some people go, oh yeah, I've heard of those people, and the rich ones pay for the work that you do for the inspired ones and the famous ones. You do, you have to do a discount to get their name on your website. And so yeah, the suit and tie clients for the, were the worst, but they paid for us to do good stuff.
00:31:51:22 - 00:31:54:21
Jon Payne
For the inspirational part.
00:31:54:21 - 00:31:58:14
Joyann Boyce
With the accessibility audit did you upsell it, or was you just include it or like.
00:31:58:16 - 00:31:59:13
Jon Payne
It's just included.
00:31:59:13 - 00:32:15:21
Joyann Boyce
It was just included. So it wasn't that upsale cost because that's really interesting because there was a obs, because there are companies out there that just do accessibility units. And sell that as a service. So why did you decide not to have as an add on?
00:32:15:23 - 00:32:48:09
Jon Payne
Because otherwise people wouldn't have paid for it. You know, sometimes you just got to force it on and we would also say to them, you know, there are companies that will do a proper version of this accessibility audit that's like our SEO audit and it's hundreds of pages long. You know, they'll have real human stage stuff. This is a lightweight, but it wasn't a lightweight version of it, but we would describe it as a lightweight version of it, because what we didn't want to do is go, well, don't go to, I can’t remember the name of any of the agencies that do it now, but don’t go to X Agency who can do this for you.
00:32:48:11 - 00:33:15:12
Jon Payne
You know, take this as inspiration and go to them once you fix these things and then go and do it because otherwise they're going to waste their time and all of this shit that just is good manners, you know, it's, it's, you know. So yeah, but yeah, if we said to people, oh, and there's more, more money for the accessibility, people have gone, oh no, I just want better rankings because people look at finance first obviously.
00:33:15:14 - 00:33:27:08
Joyann Boyce
But that must inspire you like, company culture in terms of people coming in to the team over the years that you've been hiring, that element of no, we just do this because it should be done.
00:33:27:10 - 00:33:28:04
Jon Payne
Yeah.
00:33:28:06 - 00:33:32:06
Joyann Boyce
Must have influenced like how people approached your work overall.
00:33:32:08 - 00:34:01:01
Jon Payne
I think so, yeah, I think so. I think yeah. I think looking back on it now and looking back on the, the pressure that we put ourselves and everybody else under during the pandemic when business was hard to come by, maybe we could have framed that differently because it wasn't all sunshine and roses. We because there was a culture of always going the extra mile.
00:34:01:03 - 00:34:27:22
Jon Payne
And so many businesses pay lip service to that. But we like, to get, the Noisy Little Monkey team really did go the extra mile pretty much all the time, and fortunately that's quite difficult to switch off. And so in truth, we probably went too far too many times, which made our profitability not so, not so good and put our team under more pressure than they needed to be.
00:34:28:02 - 00:34:50:07
Jon Payne
So if there was any, any lessons that I would learn from something like that, it's like, yeah, that culture of going do this because it's right, tell them this because it's the truth, you know that, you, sugarcoat it because you're a nice human being, but don't sugarcoat it to the point where they don't make a change, you know, fight your freaking corner.
00:34:50:09 - 00:35:15:06
Jon Payne
And if you need me to come in and throw chairs around in the boardroom, brilliant. That's what I'll do. And I yeah, I think probably at that. So at times we, we by doing that put our staff under more pressure than we would have wanted to because they felt that they had to keep doing that. When actually, you know, you could just go, John, can you go and shout at these people, please?
00:35:15:08 - 00:35:27:12
Jon Payne
But yeah, yeah. So that we could have got the balance better towards the end. I think that was part of the reason I wanted to get out as we were just everybody was working their socks off and it's like, wait a minute, not everybody works like this.
00:35:27:16 - 00:35:31:10
Joyann Boyce
Yeah, this is a hard thing.
00:35:31:12 - 00:35:35:21
Jon Payne
Some people who have a job where they don't work really hard, really intensely, all day, every day.
00:35:36:01 - 00:36:02:22
Joyann Boyce
No, it’s honestly is difficult and that if that's the culture that you've been in, even from my experience going into organisations and trying to push for change and you're constantly every clear marketing decision you're making is being pushback like a diversity inclusion decision, even they’re one in the same way we all know when budgets get cut its diversity inclusion, then it's marketing at a to areas that big organisations do.
00:36:02:24 - 00:36:29:04
Joyann Boyce
During Covid. I can see how that could impact and then everyone's wellbeing as well being impact on top of, it's one thing when you have passion for something and everything else in your world is okay, you can go for full passion. But when the world is essentially on fire and then your job where you're passionate, people are constantly pushing back at the right way to do things or the most ethical way to do things.
00:36:29:06 - 00:36:30:21
Joyann Boyce
I can see those two colliding.
00:36:30:23 - 00:36:33:24
Jon Payne
Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it, actually. Yeah.
00:36:34:00 - 00:36:42:06
Joyann Boyce
I can see those two colliding. I still think. Yeah, you have the three one's famous suit and ties. And then passionate.
00:36:42:08 - 00:37:09:18
Jon Payne
Yeah. Passionate and inspiring. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that if you're working in the agency world without that, without the inspiring ones, it's just cranking the handle to sell more shit in the world that doesn't need that. We'd say that a lot to our clients. This just feels like myself, like shit the world doesn't need. Let's try and make the world a better place while we're selling.
00:37:09:18 - 00:37:28:24
Jon Payne
Whatever it is you sell. Oh, you sell forklifts. Okay. Forklifts and forklift accessories. Okay, well, how can we do that? How can we make a small change while we help you sell more forklifts? And, gosh, I shouldn't have said forklifts because we did have a client that sold that, and they weren't awful.
00:37:29:01 - 00:37:39:19
Joyann Boyce
I don't even know how you would make forklift sales inclusive. That's the other thing I always thing, I'm curious about your thoughts in a capitalist society, inclusive marketing will still be capitalist.
00:37:39:21 - 00:37:41:01
Jon Payne
Yeah.
00:37:41:03 - 00:37:48:22
Joyann Boyce
So we can make forklifts inclusive and representative and you know, all the stuff, but it still is selling forklifts.
00:37:49:02 - 00:37:53:10
Jon Payne
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
00:37:53:11 - 00:37:56:12
Joyann Boyce
Oh, gosh. How like.
00:37:56:14 - 00:37:58:19
Jon Payne
Well, like.
00:37:58:21 - 00:38:04:20
Joyann Boyce
Design of shots of the forklift angles.
00:38:04:22 - 00:38:24:19
Jon Payne
Yeah. I mean, I mean, I, I mean, that's why I love working in marketing and sales is because I get fascinated by pretty much whatever is the new thing that someone showing me. So yeah, someone showing me the new model of a forklift that can do, you know, can move pallets to a 37 degree angle rather than a 24 degree angle.
00:38:24:19 - 00:38:28:01
Jon Payne
And it doesn't need any more weight on the back to do that job. I’m like flipping heck.
00:38:29:13 - 00:38:35:17
Jon Payne
That's brilliant. Can we get the, the, the 50 year old white driver off.
00:38:35:19 - 00:38:36:19
Joyann Boyce
Just force someone out.
00:38:36:21 - 00:39:08:23
Jon Payne
Stick a woman in? Oh, I tell you, do you want, I've got another terrible inclusivity story. Okay. I was, we were working with an engineering company. We did we absolutely fixed them by having fixed their male chauvinist issues, by having their account manager as an Asian, not as an Asian. She was an Asian woman, who was vegan, actually.
00:39:08:23 - 00:39:11:12
Jon Payne
So that really, really got like.
00:39:11:14 - 00:39:11:18
Joyann Boyce
Bunch of intersections. Okay.
00:39:11:21 - 00:39:27:05
Jon Payne
Yeah, exactly. And obviously, once presented with a human being that was of a different culture and the woman, they were like that, oh, this is like talking to a normal human being. Yes, we’re all the same.
00:39:30:21 - 00:40:02:12
Jon Payne
But anyway, before that we said what we they sold I need to be careful, plant, so yellow plant specifically so diggers and cranes and stuff like that and they, they had they, they covered the whole country. They had a very specific market and we helped them with a rebrand, staff engagement, using social media because their staff just didn't like it all over the country and diggers.
00:40:02:18 - 00:40:04:16
Jon Payne
So we were getting them on Facebook and all that kind of stuff.
00:40:04:16 - 00:40:25:24
Jon Payne
And we said, one of the problems is, well, one of the problems we feel is every photo you've got, you know, it's a guy who's covered in tats, which is fine. A lot of them were, you know, covered in tats guys in the in the cab of this whatever thing it is you're trying to flog in the JCB or whatever.
00:40:26:03 - 00:40:50:16
Jon Payne
Wasn't JCB used, but it was stuff like that and they were like that, yeah. We’re like that, what would be really cool is if we got some people of colour and some women in those shots because, you know, they're, women work on building sites, lads. And, and, you know, there are plenty of people of colour who work on building sites, you know this isn't a great big leap and they like that.
00:40:50:16 - 00:41:20:16
Jon Payne
Oh right. Yeah. Okay. And then in the board meeting about a half an hour later, the chairman said, I've got an idea for women in. In our photographs. Why don't we get one in a bikini in the bucket of the thing? And like, everybody laughed and yeah, I laughed because I was like, well, this is ridiculous. And if I don't laugh, they're going to take me outside and bully me.
00:41:23:00 - 00:41:32:24
Jon Payne
And then I was like this, dude, I really don't think, we can't do that and, and so that yeah I appreciate your trying, we had another.
00:41:33:01 - 00:41:40:13
Joyann Boyce
To that point though that is an example of an attempt at inclusive marketing but just really fucking bad.
00:41:40:15 - 00:41:42:08
Jon Payne
Yep it's a swing and a miss.
00:41:42:10 - 00:41:51:08
Joyann Boyce
Like, I do say that you can't implement inclusive boxing without a diverse company, but it sounds like that would be what you come up with.
00:41:51:10 - 00:42:08:17
Jon Payne
Well, to their credit, their, their HR Manager, they realised they had a problem with it. When we had, we had a couple of conversations like that, one where I absolutely lost my shit, I'm not going to go into it, but yeah, I hate to use the phrase you've got fucking daughters and that's how you're speaking about people in your employ and.
00:42:08:19 - 00:42:13:05
Jon Payne
Yeah, yeah oh, man, I kind of forgot how many arguments I had with people.
00:42:13:05 - 00:42:31:16
Joyann Boyce
Seems like you've been doing a lot of arguing. These are not the things I hear, and this is why I love talking to you, Jon, because I hear the things that happen when I'm not in the room. Because I know as soon as I step in the room, one of two things will happen, particularly with older white men. They tell me they have a daughter.
00:42:32:09 - 00:42:33:24
Joyann Boyce
Or they will tell me they grew up working class.
00:42:35:19 - 00:43:01:09
Joyann Boyce
I can bet money on it. And then they will then just nod along to everything I talk about with inclusive marketing. And I'm like, I want to know how you really feel. I want to know what campaign will you create that and then we can work backwards. Tell me you're going to create a campaign where you put a woman in a bikini to sell a tractor so we can figure out why you thought that was a good idea and deconstruct it to make it a good marketing plan.
00:43:02:19 - 00:43:05:22
Jon Payne
That would be really cool. Yeah. The trouble is, they'd never present it to you.
00:43:05:23 - 00:43:07:05
Joyann Boyce
They would never say it.
00:43:07:07 - 00:43:31:05
Jon Payne
They'd be like that, this isn’t one we need to show her. We know we're going to go with this one. Option B, but we need to show our optionality because someone made us pipe for an inclusivity thing. But yeah, the company I'm talking about, I was talking about, their H.R. manager is, H.R. director, she's female and of Asian Heritage, which was, which is a huge turnaround from where they were.
00:43:31:10 - 00:43:43:17
Jon Payne
And I don't think I made that change. I think, like there were a lot of external factors, but yeah, I was, yeah, probably need to give them some props after, I'm glad I didn't mention their names and yeah, yeah.
00:43:43:19 - 00:43:49:24
Joyann Boyce
Part of me will want to search on the ASA website to see if they had anything pulled in the past couple of years. But you know.
00:43:50:01 - 00:44:13:07
Jon Payne
Yeah. No they definitely didn't. They definitely didn't. The closest thing we did was for them that would have done that was our idea and it was, I don’t know how good this is. But it was a really, really good reference to cocaine. And they were like that, that is incredible work. And not only was it banner adverts, they made it bumper stickers.
00:44:13:09 - 00:44:16:17
Jon Payne
It was brilliant work. Yeah.
00:44:16:19 - 00:44:21:02
Joyann Boyce
This is definitely our most non child friendly episode.
00:44:21:04 - 00:44:22:18
Joyann Boyce
Oh, no.
00:44:22:20 - 00:44:30:04
Joyann Boyce
Not that that is our target market at all. But if you are listening to this podcast with your kids around while you're working don’t.
00:44:30:06 - 00:44:40:06
Jon Payne
It wasn't glorifying the taking of drugs. It was referring to them, oh gosh, now I'm just going to stop digging this whole.
00:44:40:06 - 00:45:00:21
Joyann Boyce
No, you touched on an element of what I love about marketing. The rabbit holes we get to go into as marketeers and just like learn about all these areas and all these things that you wouldn't, you wouldn't think to Google search because it wouldn't cross your mind to want to even watch a documentary. But I wouldn't want to keep a documentary about diggers.
00:45:00:21 - 00:45:09:13
Joyann Boyce
But I will try and create think of a creative campaign. I am thinking of creative campaigns right now. I can’t help it. But it's such a fun job.
00:45:09:15 - 00:45:25:21
Jon Payne
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That is that, that the tragedy and joy of it is that if you're into it, you immediately think, oh you know what, you could do X and it would help sell those things. Yeah. Yeah.
00:45:25:23 - 00:45:42:17
Joyann Boyce
Another quick area I wanted you, it might be quick it might not be. I know you dabble in AI and mean some of the areas. What are your thoughts on how it's impacting the marketing sector if you specifically SEO maybe, but in general.
00:45:42:19 - 00:45:44:11
Jon Payne
Yeah, I.
00:45:44:11 - 00:45:47:05
Jon Payne
There's some things I really like about it is that.
00:45:49:06 - 00:46:20:22
Jon Payne
isn't an SEO thing but I wanted an image for a post that Noisy Little Monkey put out in the last year and the image didn't exist. So I got AI to deliver it to me and the prompt was along the lines of a Black woman with a smiling, uplifted face and eyes closed and pink hair.
00:46:20:24 - 00:46:38:03
Jon Payne
And I got like four or five versions of them. You could not tell that this wasn't so because we just didn't. I didn't have a photo that represents represent what I wanted and all of, of course, unless you go to your image library, all of the image libraries, I mean, they're better now, but they were also oh, and I wanted it on a pink background.
00:46:38:05 - 00:47:02:12
Jon Payne
That's that was the other thing. All of the images, you know, unless they’re. I mean they used to be the meme of it was just lady's laughing at salad. Right. That was were all stock photos. Yeah. And now it's you know an Asian woman with a clipboard and oh you know, multiracial people sat around a laptop that's clearly not in.
00:47:02:14 - 00:47:06:00
Joyann Boyce
The fist bumps where it's just a shade of hands.
00:47:06:11 - 00:47:09:12
Jon Payne
Particularly when they're in that shape with a star. No one fist bumps like that.
00:47:12:19 - 00:47:29:24
Joyann Boyce
That’s my favourite worst one. Oh, there's one. And I do love them, but they have some good images. But people continuously use this image of a Black woman holding a laptop outside a server room. And I'm like, no one in tech will stand next to a server room holding the laptop like that to type.
00:47:30:01 - 00:47:56:06
Jon Payne
Yeah, yeah, Yes. So that was the only ones I could find. And I wanted something vaguely artsy and Midjourney made it for me after a few attempts and it was beautiful. And you couldn't tell it wasn't a real person. I mean, because I said no hands, because, you know, as soon as you let it show hands, then there's this weirdness.
00:47:56:11 - 00:48:21:06
Jon Payne
But. But, you know, it was a it was a neck up shot. Really lovely. So I really it for that. I like it for that you can use it to create imagery that perhaps, to support stories that perhaps otherwise you wouldn't be able to do. You have to be kind of like me I guess in being like reasonably blunt about what you want.
00:48:21:08 - 00:48:41:12
Jon Payne
Because I think you know and I think, you know, I do feel a little bit of terror going, I asked for it to be a Black woman when I'm you know, putting it out there. Because like, it feels like I'm, you know, othering somehow. And I'm obviously I'm having to, to a certain extent to get what I need or what I want to look inclusive.
00:48:41:12 - 00:49:10:12
Jon Payne
So, yeah, there's still a little bit of worry about it. So I think people would be somewhat scared of doing that sometimes. But yeah, I've used it for, I love that because you can find, you can, or you can create inclusive imagery where none exists yet. And thankfully, you know, if you've got budget, you can simply do that by employing a, an inclusive range of models and all of that kind of stuff.
00:49:10:12 - 00:49:31:24
Jon Payne
And that's becoming a, you know, almost, you know, I want to say fashionable and, you know, and that's great, right? That's really cool. And, you know, most of that fashionable stuff is just people paying lip service to it because they're going to get a kicking. But who fucking cares if it makes a change? You know, if this is where we stay.
00:49:32:01 - 00:49:32:19
Jon Payne
Great.
00:49:32:21 - 00:49:40:14
Joyann Boyce
As long as we get the thing started, I don't mind the cheesy stock photos as long as we eventually make some good ones.
00:49:40:14 - 00:49:51:18
Jon Payne
Yeah. As long as people with budget stop start putting diverse people in there in the photos. Sorry, go on, I was getting excited.
00:49:52:03 - 00:50:01:20
Joyann Boyce
I was curious on the, the fear of being direct in the prompt. So when you were searching for stock photos, were you not using the same direct like Black woman?
00:50:01:22 - 00:50:25:19
Jon Payne
Yeah. And then yeah. So yeah, I was, I was specifically asking for different cultures or different coloured skin and it's just getting nothing apart from Asian lady with clipboard and Black woman standing outside of sever room. I didn’t search for that, I searched for guitar. No. Yeah, so. Yeah, yeah. It just feels a bit it feels a bit alien when you're typing.
00:50:25:19 - 00:50:53:22
Jon Payne
It feels a bit like transgressive in some small way. But yeah, so, and then, from an SEO standpoint, I think it will enable more people to get from a blank page to content as it becomes more and more widely used. And I think that there's a couple of things that I would suggest to people when they’re, or recommend to people and have recommended to people.
00:50:53:22 - 00:51:14:23
Jon Payne
One is that you aren't going to be giving an opinion of your own because Chat GPT is okay, it's just had an update but is still using old opinions and it's finding someone else's. And if you use Bard or whatever to, to create that stuff which is what my other go to, well that's just using the internet to tell you to, to inform it.
00:51:14:23 - 00:51:36:00
Jon Payne
So you never you're not going to give it your opinion. So yeah, okay. It might be good for how to use, but you know, most people are producing content that, you know, they've got a unique way to do things, they've got. So I think it's really good to get you from the blank page, but you absolutely must put your brand, your personality on it otherwise and your unique take on things otherwise.
00:51:36:02 - 00:51:43:08
Jon Payne
I don't think it's going to serve you in the way that you hope it serves you. It might get lots of traffic, but it won't turn into conversions.
00:51:43:14 - 00:51:55:17
Joyann Boyce
Will it? Because I have heard and I was curious to know, I have heard thoughts on Google down ranking anything that's thought to be written by AI on a web page. I don't know how true that is.
00:51:55:19 - 00:52:14:06
Jon Payne
It's going to get better at spotting it, but at the moment I don't think you can spot it. So, I haven't really been listening for the last two or three months. I'm off of Twitter. It's like being unshackled from a maniacs. Oh yeah, sorry I came it before it was X.
00:52:16:01 - 00:52:36:08
Jon Payne
I'm still on it, but I just don't use it. And it's been a joy. So I haven't really been listening in to those SEO conversations. But the last thing I heard from John Miller, who's one of the Google search liaison guys, he was saying at the moment, we would recommend that you don't simply use it, but there's, there's no penalty if you do.
00:52:36:10 - 00:53:01:07
Jon Payne
And I think that's probably because they can't tell what’s AI written and what's not, it can tell what’s not accurate because it's got a library of all of the knowledge on the Internet. So it can tell if it's inaccurate, but I don't think it can necessarily tell. And I was speaking to a guy I can't remember his name, but he runs a successful SEO agency bit pilot high and sell it cheap.
00:53:01:07 - 00:53:25:19
Jon Payne
So it's probably a good idea. I can't remember his name and he was saying that they’re doing tests and, and they feed chat back into itself and say which of these is written by chat GBT and give it four or five articles that it wrote in the same conversation thread and, and it's only spotting about one in five or one in ten that may have been written by AI.
00:53:25:21 - 00:53:46:07
Jon Payne
And they're not change it like they're starting a conversation up here going probably ten articles on X they feed those articles back in in the next thing and say which ones are written by AI. So I don't think it's very easy to spot, the thing, but Google will get better at spotting it because it uses, it trains its algorithms using humans all over the world.
00:53:46:07 - 00:54:21:09
Jon Payne
So, so if you, you and I can spot AI written stuff very quickly. So it's going to it's going to we're going to help it learn. But one of the things that Steve Mitchell Noisy Little Monkey's head of SEO, as was now over friends at SPI degree as their head of SEO. One of his things and what I called his God prompt was when you've written something with Chat GPT or Bard, feed it back in and say, what in this document has the footprint that it was written by AI and it's really good at spotting that.
00:54:21:11 - 00:54:41:06
Jon Payne
And it says these things, these look like generalisation. It's a bit too overenthusiastic and the language is a bit clunky here. And so then he says rewrite it so that it doesn't, rewrite those portions so they don't report they’ve been written by AI. that is so good that I've used that on a couple of legal contracts when I've rewritten court clauses.
00:54:41:08 - 00:54:44:16
Joyann Boyce
And that's an interesting problem. I haven't heard that one before.
00:54:44:21 - 00:54:46:12
Jon Payne
Yeah, it's really good.
00:54:46:14 - 00:54:53:12
Joyann Boyce
It can tell the tone and the tone of voice. It can. And I'm calling it an AI tone of voice, which is like.
00:54:53:18 - 00:55:09:05
Joyann Boyce
A super excited puppy that will jump at air. Like if it sees a sparkle, it's like, like every word. Every word has like three words to say how excited it is about that word, it’s the AI tone of voice.
00:55:09:07 - 00:55:09:14
Jon Payne
Yeah.
00:55:09:14 - 00:55:19:11
Joyann Boyce
Okay. Yeah, that's interesting. On the AI aspect comes from one of my favourite segments of the podcast is going to make an inclusive campaign.
00:55:19:13 - 00:55:20:05
Jon Payne
Okay.
00:55:20:07 - 00:55:28:24
Joyann Boyce
So recently, somewhat recently, our favourite platform, HubSpot, have integrated AI into HubSpot.
00:55:29:01 - 00:55:29:21
Jon Payne
Yeah.
00:55:29:23 - 00:55:33:00
Joyann Boyce
You can make an inclusive campaign talking about that.
00:55:33:02 - 00:55:33:23
Jon Payne
Okay.
00:55:34:00 - 00:55:39:21
Joyann Boyce
Or I can see that you are a book lover.
00:55:39:23 - 00:55:42:18
Jon Payne
No, my wife’s a book lover.
00:55:42:20 - 00:55:45:18
Joyann Boyce
Snap, I was going to take the credit for that.
00:55:46:18 - 00:55:48:11
Jon Payne
Sorry.
00:55:48:13 - 00:55:54:02
Joyann Boyce
Or we could make a campaign to make TikTok trendy for Gen-X.
00:55:54:04 - 00:56:01:16
Joyann Boyce
Still inclusive representation.
00:56:01:16 - 00:56:20:01
Jon Payne
Well, hang on a second. I've, most of my friends who getting on TikTok are like that, you know what it's just girls with their boobs nearly out. Uhuh. I wonder why that is. You know, if you dwell on a video, Dave, it's going to bring you more videos like that. Oh. Sorry.
00:56:20:03 - 00:56:28:15
Joyann Boyce
Those are your choices. We could explore making an inclusive campaign for either one.
00:56:28:17 - 00:56:57:11
Jon Payne
Well, HubSpot feels like it's easy because they're really trying online and, you know, founded by a guy of Asian heritage of 50% founded by and oh, gosh, I can't remember his name, but then I can't remember the other guy's name. And. Yeah, but how do you make AI okay. Yeah, I like the HubSpot one actually, because it's AI.
00:56:57:16 - 00:56:58:05
Jon Payne
Okay. Yeah.
00:56:58:10 - 00:57:09:05
Joyann Boyce
Okay. Because is, HubSpot is really good in terms of their brand voice and so forth. Think about the target market is a marketer who's never of HubSpot.
00:57:09:07 - 00:57:11:05
Jon Payne
Okay, cool.
00:57:11:07 - 00:57:18:13
Joyann Boyce
Video 30 seconds non skippable ad on YouTube.
00:57:18:15 - 00:57:21:03
Jon Payne
Oh, this is great.
00:57:21:05 - 00:57:30:15
Joyann Boyce
What campaign are you pulling together to represent HubSpot AI and make it feel inclusive?
00:57:30:17 - 00:57:49:21
Jon Payne
I think the hook is that you get to write emails or blogs and probably emails because it can do that. I don't think I'm, I'm going doing the normal marketing thing if we make it so that it makes the whole strategy.
00:57:49:23 - 00:57:51:20
Joyann Boyce
It can make a pie in the 80 seconds.
00:57:51:23 - 00:57:54:07
Joyann Boyce
We’ll figure that out that later.
00:57:54:09 - 00:58:17:15
Jon Payne
But yeah, yeah, that's something for the product team to worry about. But yeah, so you can get it to write. So I'd have the thing be like a screen of tell me what subject to write, tell me, tell me what you want to write about and I'll give you a subject line and I'll write the email for you and I'll translate it into several different languages.
00:58:17:15 - 00:58:31:14
Jon Payne
That would be a plug I, so let's not say that because that. But you could do that because that's available with another plug in on HubSpot. So I think that might be the way to, to that's the hook I think.
00:58:31:16 - 00:58:32:23
Joyann Boyce
Okay.
00:58:33:00 - 00:58:41:08
Jon Payne
Making it inclusive, I like the idea of.
00:58:41:08 - 00:59:10:12
Jon Payne
HubSpot already really good at using people from all different heritages in their imagery, what I think their not, so that's great. Okay, sound like I'm about to knock it, but I'm not so, that, Dharmesh, that's the founder of HubSpot and a lovely guy.
00:59:10:14 - 00:59:12:13
Joyann Boyce
Are we putting him in the commercial?
00:59:12:15 - 00:59:29:13
Jon Payne
We could, we could, I mean he's, but yeah, he doesn't do anything apart from that big talks. I've got a photo of me with him somewhere, he's a billionaire and I was, the only person I've ever taken a selfie with. Like I've walked past other famous people. But I was like that, wow that's Dharmesh.
00:59:29:15 - 00:59:37:05
Joyann Boyce
You're such a nerd.
00:59:37:07 - 00:59:40:15
Jon Payne
Too really nerdy people, horrified at what’s happened. It's great. Anyway, so.
00:59:40:15 - 00:59:44:22
Joyann Boyce
So, starting the ad on a shot of someone's email.
00:59:44:24 - 00:59:45:19
Jon Payne
Yeah.
00:59:45:21 - 00:59:49:22
Joyann Boyce
And they’re integrating, they're engaging with HubSpot AI.
00:59:52:11 - 01:00:23:12
Jon Payne
Yeah. Yeah. And then pull back there and let's have them sat up their site. Then we have them do a rewrite that says, rewrite this to use less abbreviations and more clear language because it's an AI. So you can ask it to do that because some people struggle with abbreviations, certainly. And I know my nephew is profoundly dyslexic, just is appalling at that stuff.
01:00:23:12 - 01:00:52:00
Jon Payne
So making stuff simple for people who struggle with that, then I think I'd probably. So yeah, use less abbreviations, make it simpler language, make a country you need that that kind of marketing stuff, so use our brand colours but use them in a way that is accessible and inclusive. So you can ask also get to do those three things.
01:00:52:02 - 01:01:04:19
Jon Payne
And I think I, I mean, this is really hackneyed, but I think I'd have that pullback and you've got people of different.
01:01:04:19 - 01:01:33:01
Jon Payne
Disabilities, of people with different disabilities and being part of the marketing crew because not that it doesn't have to just be like the person in a wheelchair, but I think that's one of the things that, that most, most businesses are missing is that okay, we do we doing really well with people of colour and we're doing much better with an accessibility
01:01:33:03 - 01:01:53:23
Jon Payne
But we pay a lot of lip service to people with disabilities and that we're inclusive, but we, there isn't. That's really still, yeah, it's still quite a way back. So yeah, having a complete intersectional set of people.
01:01:54:00 - 01:01:55:05
Joyann Boyce
I think I see it.
01:01:55:07 - 01:01:57:06
Jon Payne
High fiving or whatever.
01:01:57:08 - 01:01:58:24
Joyann Boyce
I mean, okay, now.
01:01:59:01 - 01:01:59:22
Jon Payne
What about if they’re all?
01:01:59:22 - 01:02:02:15
Joyann Boyce
I see it. They’re not fist bumping either.
01:02:03:00 - 01:02:04:06
Jon Payne
In a star shape.
01:02:04:08 - 01:02:31:08
Joyann Boyce
So. The, the shot opens with a very icky, horrible really like old school email campaign that just looks everything wrong. And then you see someone's hand on the keyboard and it could be a woman's hands, let's say nails done, fair skin tone, typing away and typing to a HubSpot AI to improve it sends it. So the camera pulls out and it's smile on her face.
01:02:31:10 - 01:03:01:14
Joyann Boyce
We see her, then we see the email go and it goes to someone else in the marketing team who also uses HubSpot. They have just finished sign languaging to someone else on the team. They look at it and then they type and say, oh, the colour contrast is off and it edits it and then we see that email become inclusive as it's pinging around different people, interacting with the AI slash, making the thing more inclusive.
01:03:01:17 - 01:03:02:02
Jon Payne
Yeah.
01:03:02:02 - 01:03:04:12
Joyann Boyce
So you get the people and you get the AI.
01:03:04:16 - 01:03:08:19
Jon Payne
Yeah. That's a much better idea. Let's do that one.
01:03:08:21 - 01:03:11:07
Joyann Boyce
HubSpot, if you want.
01:03:11:09 - 01:03:14:08
Joyann Boyce
No, but I think that's a good one because I think.
01:03:15:17 - 01:03:23:23
Joyann Boyce
The representation of non-visible disabilities is something that we don't see in marketing for marketeers.
01:03:24:00 - 01:03:24:12
Jon Payne
Yeah.
01:03:24:14 - 01:03:35:22
Joyann Boyce
Because there's marketing for the general public, but marketing for marketeers like yeah, we never see that is the woman in the wheelchair, is like the very blatant generic stuff.
01:03:35:22 - 01:03:36:19
Jon Payne
Yeah.
01:03:36:21 - 01:03:41:07
Joyann Boyce
Someone who is hard of hearing can do marketing. It's not far fetched thing.
01:03:41:09 - 01:03:43:03
Jon Payne
Yeah. Yeah.
01:03:43:05 - 01:03:49:13
Joyann Boyce
Okay. Ooh, I'm, I haven't tried HubSpot AI yet. I might I’ve just sold myself.
01:03:49:15 - 01:03:51:17
Joyann Boyce
Don't even know if you can do those things.
01:03:51:19 - 01:04:07:13
Jon Payne
Well so it does. Yeah. No it uses Chat GPT so it would do a lot of the those things. It is a bit more restricted but yeah. Dharmesh made it, so it's good. It's like early HubSpot. It's like oh this is, this is the good stuff.
01:04:07:15 - 01:04:12:14
Joyann Boyce
I am officially declaring you, if didn't know before a marketing nerd.
01:04:12:16 - 01:04:14:04
Jon Payne
Yeah definitely that.
01:04:14:06 - 01:04:16:11
Joyann Boyce
Hardcore marketing nerd.
01:04:16:13 - 01:04:24:22
Jon Payne
I like turn based strategy games and marketing. You're trying to round up and I'm just nattering.
01:04:24:24 - 01:04:27:02
Joyann Boyce
I am trying to wrap up.
01:04:27:04 - 01:04:32:11
Joyann Boyce
Let the people know where they can find you on the Internet, Jon.
01:04:32:13 - 01:04:41:04
Jon Payne
Well, at the moment I can't because I'm not doing any social media. And let me tell you, friends, oh, it's joyous.
01:04:41:07 - 01:04:43:03
Joyann Boyce
Even LinkedIn?
01:04:43:05 - 01:04:59:22
Jon Payne
Oh yeah, you can find me on there. Yeah. I am. I'm on LinkedIn. Just look for Jon Payne on LinkedIn and I think if you go LinkedIn become for last Mr. M R J O N Payne P A Y N E. You'll find me.
01:04:59:22 - 01:05:21:00
Joyann Boyce
Thank you so much for joining me on the Marketing Main Inclusive podcast Jon. This has been a merry go round of a conversation, but it's been really insightful to hear your perspective on how we can make marketing more inclusive from SEO, from teams, from working with clients. We've covered so much and thank you for tuning in and listening to the Marketing Made Inclusive podcast.
01:05:21:01 - 01:05:34:01
Joyann Boyce
You can find me anywhere on the Internet at Joyann Boyce that is J O Y A N N B O Y C E. All the links mentioned will be in the show notes. Tune in next week for all things inclusive marketing.
