Joe Rampley is the Creative Brand Manager at Forest, London’s homegrown ebike company. He joins the show to talk about their new campaign.
Listen on Apple, Spotify or YouTube.
In this episode we discuss:
- Why perfection is overrated
- The insight behind Forest’s new campaign
- Why they rebranded
- How ad placement is as equally important as creative
- How you measure success when building a brand
- Why Ritson’s Mini MBA is worth the money
Joe Rampley
Joe Rampley is the Creative Brand Manager at Forest. Joe leads Forest’s Creative Team, shaping the brand’s voice across everything from campaigns to positioning. He began his career as a freelance designer and illustrator, always with a keen interest in cycling culture.
After a design internship with Deliveroo, he moved in-house and now serves as guardian of the Forest brand, overseeing all things creative for Forest.
Find Joe on LinkedIn
Recommendations
- London is our home campaign
- Mini MBA with Mark Ritson
- Mark Ritson on the Strategy Sessions
- James Hurman on the Strategy Sessions
Strategy Sessions Host – Andi Jarvis
If you have any questions or want to talk about anything that was discussed in the show, the best place to get me is on LinkedIn or Instagram.
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Episode Transcription
This transcript has been done automagically using Happy Scribe and hasn’t been checked by a real person, so there may be some hilarious mistakes where the AI can’t work out our accents – I’m sure they’re trained on just the American accent.
[01:00:00.000] – Andi J
Joe Rampley, what one thing do you wish you’d have known 10 years ago?
[01:00:05.680] – Joe R
It doesn’t need to be perfect. I think I’ve got a design background, and I think, especially for graphic designers, we’re obsessed with perfection. And I think as you grow into your career, you realise perfection can really strangle your creativity and your output. So I think as soon as you let go of that perfection and you realise your half of that detail is enough to carry a story through and maybe focus more of your time on carrying that story through and focussing on that story. Yeah, I think to get that perfection.
[01:00:39.180] – Andi J
Years ago, I used to work in a college and we had a graphic design team and they were fantastic. But the leader of that design team was a perfectionist. And the number of deadlines and the amount of friction that used to cause. And there is a level to this, right? Saying perfection doesn’t matter, doesn’t mean ship something that shit. It doesn’t mean that, but there’s a little bit sometimes like graphic designers who still believe in the art, perhaps. They’re just like, No, no, I’ve just got to… The Kerning’s point one out. And you’re like, Nobody knows. No one knows the difference between Kerning and leading anyway, so it doesn’t matter.
[01:01:17.500] – Joe R
I think as soon as you realise that your audience is so wide and it spans people that aren’t creative and maybe just want to see a message that hits and they don’t actually care as much about that. I mean, Maybe that’s coming from maybe not a fully graphic design purist. I studied graphic design and illustration, so I’m a bit more of both. But I think, yeah, don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s not worth it.
[01:01:43.820] – Andi J
I wonder if there’s voodoo dolls of Joe Rampley being stabbed by designers all across the UK at the minute going, Stop it, Joe. Stop it.
[01:01:51.300] – Joe R
Maybe.
[01:01:53.420] – Andi J
Yeah, maybe. But has that ever caused you any problems? Most people, I think, in marketing circles and who aren’t doing the design would probably be nodding along going, Yeah, perfection is overrated. Let’s just get it out. But has it ever caused you any issues? Has there been any mistakes that actually were maybe avoidable because you didn’t set the bar high enough?
[01:02:15.240] – Joe R
For sure. I think only designers realise how perfect it is or it isn’t. Actually, I’m not boasting here. I think my okay is the general public’s great. And I think that’s a perception that we have as designers. But I genuinely think when it gets down to it, I don’t think anyone notices. Maybe I’ve had a key in my career and I feel like hopefully I’m teaching that to the designers that I manage. But I think, yeah, let’s move on and get through the barrage of work that we work through. We’ve got to keep going and keep being creative. And if that stops us from reaching that creative output, then we should move on.
[01:02:59.320] – Andi J
Brilliant. Love that. Great place to start, Joe. Thank you. EyUp and welcome to the Strategy Sessions. My name is Andi Jarvis. I’m the host of the show and the Chief Strategy Officer at Eximo Marketing. Thank you for tuning in today. It means a lot to me and the team behind the Strategy Sessions. Before we go on with a guest, can I ask you to do two things for me? One, please interact with this episode. If you like it, if you hate it, I’d love you to leave a review and just let me know a few things about it. If you want to send it to me directly, my email address is in the show notes, please do just fire me a message. I love to hear what you think. But interacting with the episode does help more people find it. So it really does help. So thank you for that. The second thing I’d like to say is send it to a friend. Is there someone you drop a WhatsApp to or an iMessage to and be like, yeah, for this episode, you want to have a listen to this person? It’s great. Honestly, it’s a great way to help people discover things.
[01:03:53.010] – Andi J
So please do interact with the episode or share it with a friend if you’ve enjoyed it. And that’s about it, really. Let’s get on with the show and you get back to the guest interview. Joe Rampley, welcome to the Strategy Sessions. Do you want to give us a bit of background to who you are, where you work and what your job is?
[01:04:08.820] – Joe R
I’m Joe Rampley. I’m the creative brand manager at Forest Bikes. To give you a brief overview on Forest We are London’s homegrown Shared E-Bike, founded in 2021, and we pride ourselves on being the most sustainable and most affordable Shared E-Bike in London.
[01:04:26.420] – Andi J
Perfect. Now, the E-Bike space is exploding, I suppose, around the world, really, which has been great. I’m old enough to remember when you couldn’t hire a bike in a big city. You just had to either walk, drive, or get the tube in London, particularly. And then the Boris bikes were probably the first ones, as they were called, and came and took over everywhere, but there’s now lots of different E-bikes in there. So you’ve got thousands of bikes and stacks of rides. Give us a sense of scale of the company at the moment.
[01:04:55.080] – Joe R
Yeah. I mean, in September 2021, we launched in one borough in Islington, where we launched maybe a couple of hundred bikes. And since then, as mentioned, the appetite has just been exponential in London, but also across the world. London is an amazing example of it, though, because obviously since 2021, we now have 20,000 shared ebikes. So it really shows the scope of what it is for a city like London. And that’s not just from companies like ours, but that’s from investment into bike infrastructure, all sorts of things like So to see it grow in that way. I obviously started in 2021 with no bikes on the street. To see that grow and to see the appetite change as a bike, an avid bike rider myself, it’s been encouraging for the whole market. And also for me personally, to see it happen is quite overwhelming, but quite enjoyable to watch.
[01:05:51.880] – Andi J
What I’m hearing is the success of Forest coincides perfectly with when you joined, so it’s all down to you, I think. Is that correct?
[01:06:00.000] – Joe R
Basically, yeah.
[01:06:02.700] – Andi J
I thought so, too. You can use this podcast in your review as well. Andi says, During your periods. So you’re now operating across London, not just you’ve expanded from Islington and you’re everywhere. And you’ve done an interesting new campaign, which is what? What were you here to talk about? But I want to start right at the beginning of this campaign. So before we jump into telling people what the campaign is, I want to know what the insight was. You are a company. You’ve expanded across London. You’ve got a competitive set, really. There’s a number of other providers in the market. So what was the problem that you were trying to solve that ended up with this campaign?
[01:06:45.020] – Joe R
An interesting thing we discovered, we basically do third-party surveying. We do it biannually. Five hundred bike rental users in London basically answer brand tracking survey. I think one thing that came out of that was that Forrest is preferred over competitors. A huge proportion of people that prefer us, prefer us because we’re an ethical brand, which is quite an interesting standpoint to be as a brand in 2025 as well. And that felt like an interesting opportunity to keep building on that as a reasoning to choose us as a USP of sorts. And that brings us on to London. We are the only London-based, London-founded E-bike operator. And so that really felt like an opportunity to dial up them ethics by doing a campaign about it. And I suppose that’s the importance of Brandon in some respects, is to shout about what you do differently and to really build a brand around that. And it felt like such an obvious one to really shout about us being London-based and London-founded. And that success story over the last four years being so exponential, it made sense. And everyone was saying it. Investors were saying it. Internally, we were saying it.
[01:08:02.800] – Joe R
And we started to realise, is this something we can keep pushing as a positive for our users?
[01:08:10.720] – Andi J
So I want to go back and pick at the ethics scab for a moment. I’ve seen bits of research with a couple of my clients, and none of them are E-bike companies. But just generally, when you see it, when you look at things people use to decide, ethics is often in there, but not typically in the top For three. For fashion retailers, it’s, does it look cool on me? Is it available on delivery for when I need it? If it’s a dress for an event or something like that, what price is it? Then there’s a bit of a gap, and then you’ve got other… I refer to them as secondary factors, and ethics usually comes in there. I often point in fashion, particularly to the rise of people like, I can’t even say it properly because I’m too old, but Shein, Shine, Shein, whatever. If you look at one survey and it says millennials and Gen Z only buy from ethical brands. And then you look at the £25 billion a year company that’s flogging fast fashion. Because it places somewhere in a competitive set. Did you see something similar to that? It was maybe bike availability, price, and then ethics?
[01:09:16.720] – Andi J
Or did you see something entirely different where actually ethics was coming right at the top?
[01:09:21.760] – Joe R
You’ve hit the nail on the head for sure. People want to ride a bike that’s close to them and they want it to be affordable. But the interesting data is that when you see that subset, the one just below it in terms of ethics, the distance between us and our competitors is huge. And that distance is something that we pointed out and we spotted as being… There’s no greater distance between any all the metrics as there are between them. So for us, as marketers, we see that as an opportunity to really shine a light on that. So that’s what… You’re right in thinking that. Availability and affordability is huge.
[01:09:58.120] – Andi J
To use the the terminology from how brands grow, mental availability, physical availability. It’s easy for me to say. But if you come out of a tube station and there’s only one of your competitor bikes there, nobody’s walking 500 yards to get a bike from Forest. I’m caricaturing a little bit. But if they come out of a tube station and there’s competitor A, competitor B, Forest, they’re then into, Well, all are available. I know all the brands. This then becomes part of their decision-making choice.
[01:10:26.600] – Joe R
Sure. It’s really interesting, our market. It’s almost like we’re a chocolate bar. It’s almost like, and you could probably say that about a lot of brands, but it’s really interesting about us because vast moving consumer goods are in your face, they are on the shelf. And interestingly, shared E-bikes are the same. They need to be in the same place. You need to be able to see them in a row so you can choose between the rest. But you make a good point. Can that ethical standpoint move you to walk further? That’s up for debate. But I think in terms of growing a brand into something that you believe in and you want to back, ethics is something that we should always push because it’s at the root of forest ethics.
[01:11:07.240] – Andi J
Joe Rampley, the cycling Forest Gump there. And I mean that in a lovable way. Spending bikes like a bar of chocolate. So you never know what you’re going to get.
[01:11:16.500] – Joe R
You never know what you’re going to get.
[01:11:18.300] – Andi J
There you go. We’ll use that clip in the promo job. Fantastic. So ethics is a standout point in a market. And I did want to ask about this because there is, and I also referred to the B-word, the awful B-word at the beginning of the interview, Boris Bikes. Something like that, though, does have a… It cast a long shadow, doesn’t it? Boris Johnson hasn’t been in charge of London for a good knows how long. But when I go to London, I do still hear people occasionally refer to, Oh, we’ll get a Boris bike and go and ride there. Do you find that shows up in your research? People still use old terms for the bikes. Does it matter if they’re still choosing Forest when they get there? How do you view that long tale of a famous enough brand that doesn’t really have anything to do with the sector anymore?
[01:12:08.180] – Joe R
For sure. I think much to some people’s dismay, Boris Johnson was a very good brand man in some respects. His name is Short and Sweet, and it went really well with bike. Genuinely, if we’re talking about-It went really well with bastard as well, if you think about it.
[01:12:25.460] – Andi J
Yeah, contentious. I’m not asking you, you work in a corporation. You need to have to agree nor disagree with me on that, it’s fine, but I can say it.
[01:12:33.060] – Joe R
For sure. No, it does come up, and I think it shows an interesting thing about our sector because as we mentioned, the chocolate bar or the Coke that you pick off the shelf, you also need to remember what that product is. And that actually is really interesting about Forest, because you might know this if you’ve been in London for a longer time, maybe the past three or four years, is that when we first started, we were called Human Forest. Quite an interesting our origin story, and that we actually changed our name. About two years into, well, in 2023, we changed our name. Again, reason being, similarly to the Boris bike, a very easy to say, easy to remember terminology. And we felt that human forest after surveying, after the research, people weren’t grasping that human forest. It was a four-syllable name. It was two compound words put together. Some people said it was creepy, even. Genuine, I remember I’m going up to someone. I remember doing some sales stuff on the street once, and I told them who I worked for, and they were like, Human Forest? Sounds a bit creepy to me. And I was like, Oh, this could be a problem.
[01:13:43.540] – Joe R
But obviously the ethics behind it still sounds community-driven, but I think what we realised was that the commonality here was what people said to us in the surveying was forest, forest, forest, green forest, tree forest. All these names that people were reciting us as all had one commonality, which was forest. So it felt like a time, which is quite a bold thing to do a few years into your brand, we decided to get rid of the human, which is arduous in itself. And also, what does it mean to get rid of a human?
[01:14:19.960] – Andi J
Especially for a brand that is effectively about human movement, isn’t it? I could see, I can feel the tension in the discussions that you must have been having in-house going, We need to drop human. Forest is much more memorable. But on the other side of that, you’re like, We’re trying to be different. It’s about people movement. It’s about sustainable transport. Humans are a writ large throughout this whole proposition. Why would we get rid of it? That must have been a really interesting couple of months to be on that journey.
[01:14:51.020] – Joe R
Yeah, as someone leading the brand as well, it was an interesting… We really wanted to go down to a… I got some great brand consultancy at one point during this time. And one thing he said to me, this brand consultant, he said to me, The way your brand should communicate, the way it should be perceived is the same way in which you should be able to chat to your friend at the pub. Whatever comes from the brand should sound like it’s something that would be said over a pint. I think that’s what’s interesting about Forest, but also interesting about changing our slogan. So we went from this convoluted message about how trees and humans together capture CO2. And we went straight to the bikes that look like trees. That’s what they do. They look like trees. They’ve got brown tyres and a green frame. They’re called Forest, and their icon is a tree. It’s almost like a caricature. It’s like a cartoon. But again, that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to capture that attention of someone walking past. And if it feels a bit caricaturish, I think there’s no harm in that, especially in our market.
[01:15:58.570] – Joe R
That’s what everyone’s doing. They’re trying to hone that message, hone that image into something that sticks in your mind. So that’s where the Forest brand is right now.
[01:16:08.240] – Andi J
Your slogan definitely sounds like it was infinitely better after the rebrand anyway. That’s for sure.
[01:16:12.880] – Joe R
Yeah, it was a long… I mean, to be fair, the origin of Human Forest, the actual start of that brand was great. Community-driven, sustainability at its core. The whole inception of Human Forest at the time was make a shared ebike that doesn’t cost the Earth. So don’t emit any operational emissions. So all renewable energy powers the bikes and the vans, etc. And then affordability, try and make it as affordable as possible. So that still stays true. The human forest was true to that. But I think it was a case of just dialling everything up a bit in terms of their recognition, which proved to be successful in six months after rebranding, the recall of names that people were calling us dropped by off in six months. So initially, we surveyed 500 people. Ten names came up: green forest, tree forest, urban forest. And then literally six months later, five. So we’d immediately create that switch for people to understand the brand better.
[01:17:19.560] – Andi J
That’s amazing. Now, I said we’re going to go through this campaign. I just want to pause because you said something right at the beginning of there that you were on the streets doing some sales activity. Now, my big thing It’s 2025, so I don’t think anyone really has catchphrases anymore. But if they did, mine would be, talk to your customers. I get so frustrated with many marketers who just sit behind their screens, assuming they know their customers because they’ve had a report from a research agency or they’ve looked at some performance marketing data. Oh, no, we know our customers. Look, it’s all here. Now you don’t. How valuable was that to you to be out on the streets talking to people, listening to the problems that they had, listening to what they say when they’re hiring a bike or when they’re returning a bike and you get to chat to them? Was that valuable?
[01:18:04.620] – Joe R
Huge. It’s something we’ve always done. We’ve always tried to listen to our customers in person and obviously via surveying. But I think the in person one is really interesting with us. There’s not many… Again, this is a really interesting thing about our sector. There’s not many sectors where you can cycle into work and next to you are your customers. You can see them. You can chat to them if you want. If you’ve got the stones, you can chat to them and get to know them and ask them. You can be in the shadows and just ask them, why Forest? Why did you choose that one? You can do whatever you want in that respect if you feel comfortable in doing so. And that’s what’s mad about Forest. We as a London-founded business, we’re cycling next to our customers and we can… And that’s what’s something our CEO loves to do. He loves to have a chat to them as he’s cycling past, which is a mad concept. But it unlocks so much value.
[01:19:02.940] – Andi J
Now, I know, Joe, you are a Northerner. You’re from the north of England, wrong side of the Pennines, but we’ll let that slide. Londoners are famous for their love of people having unprompted conversations with them. When I do come to London, I often strike up conversations with people on the tube, if I’m honest, just because I know it freaks them out. They’re like, Why is this serial killer talking to me? Do you ever get those looks from people? They’re like, Hi, I’m Joel from Forest. I’m just wondering why you picked that bike, and you just get an 08: 00 AM London greeting. What?
[01:19:34.480] – Joe R
It’s always going to happen. It’s always going to happen. You just got to do it 10 times. Our whole social strategy, it was pretty much our whole social strategy was wrap a camera to a forest bike, have our social media content creator go and speak to our customers and make content, chat to them, ask them about things. If, double.. Double it or give it to the next person. All these ways in which we can just chat to our users and have a laugh with them. And what that does also in terms of a social strategy is it says, Oh, our customers are our voice or image. It humanises it. We’re talking about, obviously, letting go of that human word. But I think to add the human again, to add the customer into the brand as much as possible is the best thing you can do. And that actually brings us on potentially to the London is Our Home campaign, because that’s what we did.
[01:20:31.400] – Andi J
So firstly, Joe, I love the brand already, more than any other brand I’ve ever had on the podcast by the sounds of it because of the way you operate. Secondly, any jobs going? Certainly, I’m dead interested in being part of that. No, I’m kidding. So come back to the campaign. You got this insight, which we’ve already talked about. And then let’s flow that through. See, you find this insight that your ethics are one of the things that stand you apart. How does that filter into the strategy development process for you, leading that to, all right, okay, What are we trying to achieve? What were the objectives that you needed to hit? And how did your strategy process work at that point?
[01:21:07.680] – Joe R
I think once we realised that ethics is a big part of our brand and we want to keep pushing it, I think preference is something that we obviously want to move the dial on. The potential for our market is so large. It’s huge. If you just take how many people use the tube as an example of what-
[01:21:31.000] – Andi J
Is it 2 million passenger journeys a day or something like that on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday?
[01:21:33.150] – Joe R
There’s not enough bikes to even… Do you know what I mean? But it shows the scale of it. But I think once we realised that that was our goal, to basically create awareness as to Forest being London founded and being a London It’s a Steph story. And the fact that we’re banking slightly on customers wanting to back the London founded one. We’re asking customers for the David and Goliath backing here, if you know what I mean? Because, yeah, we are pretty small, if you think about it, in the market. We’re in one city, and we’re a really successful business in that one city, but our competitors are in 250. So it really puts into perspective where we’re at and how much of a success we’ve already been by the fact that we’re the second biggest player in arguably the biggest micromobility market in the world. It’s a crazy place to be in a weird way. And it felt like now is the time to really push that message. So I think success is awareness of being the fact that we’re London-based, a London-based company. And also, can we change that preference style? Now we know the insight that people prefer us over ethics.
[01:22:48.660] – Joe R
If we talk more about ethics, can we start that word of mouth up with spiral?
[01:22:55.140] – Andi J
Just in terms of the practicalities of how it works, in terms of hiring a forest bike, are Are you available on other platforms? I know, for example, other bikes you can hire on Uber, for example, as they’re trying to get their tentacles into every transportation form. Or do you have to have the Forest app? Can you download it? Can you just scan and go without? How do people choose you? Are you looking for app downloads maybe as a key metric or is it just rides? Is that all you’re looking for?
[01:23:22.680] – Joe R
Yeah, I think we are on other aggregators, like free now, for example. But I think app downloads is a huge one for us. You need the Forest app to rent a bike, even though you can rent a bike in other means. Forest is the key way we want people to rent a bike because that Renting a forest bike on a forest app creates so much more loyalty, if you think about it. You can get all the offers, you can get all the benefits, CRM, etc. So that is the key metric here. But there’s something interesting about the bike and the loyalty. So the bike might get you to download the app. But what does the app do? It keeps you in. It keeps you flowing. It keeps you engaged. And so we actually think of the bike not just as that brand tool, but also as an acquisition tool.
[01:24:15.160] – Andi J
And when you’re looking at this, before we explain what the campaign is, in terms of the strategy and what outputs you’re trying to get to, is this purely focused on new customer recruitment and new app downloads, or reactivating people who’ve downloaded the app but not using My gut feel tells me in your industry, you’ve probably got a hardcore, an 80/20 rule, maybe even a 90/10 rule, where there’s a big chunk of people who are responsible for a lot of rides. They’ll be on a forest bike maybe three, four times a day or at least twice a day, two from work every single day. And they’ll probably shine out in the data as the 20 % who generate 80 %. Is that the case? And were you looking at reaching them as well, or was it all about new customer acquisition reactivating people who’ve got the app but not do it, that thing?
[01:25:03.720] – Joe R
The interesting thing about this strategy is it is overarching. It encompasses the whole brand. And that’s why actually we spoke about the slogan being the Bites that look like trees. The slogan is actually potentially moving away from that again and being London’s homegrown shared bike, this homegrown nature being an acquisition tool and a retention tool and a loyalty tool, wanting to support the London-grown one. And I think that’s where, to answer your point, Andi, it’s for everyone. This is the new standpoint of Forest. This is the new north. It’s the London-based one.
[01:25:42.440] – Andi J
Perfect. So we’ve teased this enough, right? So let’s talk about the campaign. I’m assuming there’s a page on your website we can put in the show notes to direct people to, so they can go and have a look at it. Obviously, when you’re talking about campaigns, it’s great to hear about them, but if you can click a link and just go and have a look at it while you’re talking about it, makes it much easier to visualise it. But I think the interesting thing about this campaign isn’t the creative execution. It’s the media buy that’s actually quite interesting. But let’s talk about the creative execution first.
[01:26:13.160] – Joe R
As mentioned, we really wanted to start pushing that London-based message, potentially with a new slogan, London’s Homegrown E-Bike. But then we needed a campaign to kick this all off. And we came up with a campaign name, which was London is Our Home. Why that name? Because it’s a statement that is shared… Pardon the pun, shared E-Bikes. It’s shared with our users because they live in London. It’s their home. They commute there, they go out for dinner there, they go to shows there, they hang out with mates there. But London is our home as well as Forest Employees and as Forest as a company and brand, because we cycle next to you every day. We fix our bikes here. We work here. And so this commonality, this shared statement felt a perfect kickoff for this repositioning of the brand into something that’s been really proud of being from London. And that was the kick-off. So London is our home. We definitely wanted our riders to be a big part of this because, again, as mentioned, London is our home. Sure, it’s Forest’s home, but it’s also our riders’ home. And that gave us the impetus to do a call out.
[01:27:26.020] – Joe R
Basically, let’s interview, let’s chat, let’s celebrate our riders in all of the boroughs that we operate in. So we operate in 18 boroughs as of now. So let’s get a representative of each borough. So let’s do some CRM. Do you want to be the face of Forest? Answer some questions, etc. And we’ll give you a month of free rides, or maybe it was three months. A lot of free rides, basically, for your effort, as these are just the general public at the end of the day. So we did a call All out, 500 people applied to be a part of this. We whittled that down to one per borough. So we had 18 people that all represented a little key part of Hounslow or a key part of Wandsworth. All of these little stories that might be why they’re so proud of being from there or what makes it so special that they live on the corner and they chat to their neighbour. And all these little stories started coming out, which was quite amazing to see, all these little twinkles of stories about just what home to them. So, yeah, that’s where we got to.
[01:28:33.160] – Joe R
So what we did over a period of four days is we photographed them and interviewed them. But the tricky part of it in terms of production here is we photographed them in their boroughs. So we went to their boroughs over four days. I grabbed an electric van from work and I drove it around for four days across the boroughs. We had a map of London where we draw out everywhere we were going to hit hit up over the period of four days. And by the end of it, what we had was a suite of imagery, a community series of our riders. And what was great about seeing that in its entirety is you can see the breadth of London. So you can see the differences of London changing. But then you can also see the personalities change, the ethnicities change. It feels like a celebration of what makes London amazing in its breadth and entirety and And so that’s what was amazing about doing that, weirdly. As a brand, doing something as a brand can sometimes feel quite shallow in some respects as a marketer. And this was a switcheroo. I think this felt like something that felt it had meaning to some respect because we heard some stories like Liza in Kensington and Chelsea told us about the fact that her neighbour, she used to bump into her neighbour quite a lot, an older neighbour, and she was a harpist.
[01:30:00.000] – Joe R
And she does shows. She’s a harpist and has shows. And her neighbour also was a harpist as a child. And eventually, they built up this rapport. And her neighbour would then go and see her, go and watch her play harp. And so we found these little stories about London, which is quite amazing to uncover through a brand campaign. Do you know what I mean? This shouldn’t feel this emotional. This should be a person ride bike. But it’s not. It’s what makes London home. So that’s where we got to.
[01:30:32.400] – Andi J
If you’d have told me we found somebody who played a harp, I could have probably guessed it was Kensington and Chelsea. I don’t know. I’ve never lived in London, but I genuinely and deeply love the city. I think it’s the greatest city in the world for all the reasons you’ve just outlined. I mean, it sounds to me like you’ve tapped right into what it means to be about London. It’s the people that make it different. London’s a big, sprawling, messy place. It’s beautiful in some places, it’s ugly in other places. It’s got its challenges, of course, it’s problems. It’s a problem. It’s a problem in every city in the world, right? But the people in London are just fantastic, other than the fact they don’t want you talking to them on the tube. I’ll never get over that.
[01:31:15.360] – Joe R
But I do genuinely love it. Just keep chatting to them, Andi. Just do it 10 times.
[01:31:19.200] – Andi J
I do. I genuinely think I’m going to get arrested at some point. Somebody will be like, this is this weird northern fellow talking to us. But I do. I have a genuine and deep affection for London. Every time I have to go for a meeting down there, Every time I’ve got something going on with a client, I’m like, Oh, this is great. I love going and hanging out in London for a day. Different boroughs feel different. And being able to tap that energy for your brand must be exciting. It must be a privilege. It must be wonderful. But It sounds like you’ve done it in a way that none of your competitors could do because they’re not organically London. So you’ve done this amazing bit of creative. I’m assuming it’s amazing. You said at the beginning, you’re maybe not a perfectionist anymore, but you’ve got a good eye, right? But the media buy is interesting. This is the core of the campaign, right? So what did you do with the media? Did you just go standard London? Let’s put some ads on the tube. We’ll stick some billboards up. We’ll probably put a wrap around on the Metro or one of the free newspaper giveaways.
[01:32:16.700] – Andi J
What was your media buy for this?
[01:32:18.320] – Joe R
It sets it up quite nicely because as mentioned, this is all about London. This is celebrating the people, the stories. This is London’s homegrown shared E-bike. But what do we do with the media? Where do we put it at the end of the day, distribution is a huge part of marketing, as you know. Where do we put that? Do we do something as expansive and potentially dry as putting it all over tubes or bus stops? And that’s where we came to an interesting position because one thing that we noticed about all of this is that we’re celebrating Londoners. And that brings us on to the, where do we put these creatives? We had 18 creatives, all specifically honed for each borough. So Hounslow’s creative was Joe from Hounslow in Isleworth by the river, chatting about all sorts of things that make Hounslow feel like home to him. Now, what better opportunity to put that creative into a shop window. Why? I hear you ask. Because independent shop windows are also the heartbeat of London, right? They power community. They power gatherings. They power all this feeling of community, and they enrich communities as well as everything else that we’ve spoken about, memories, stories, people.
[01:33:37.040] – Joe R
So the intention here was to take our ad spend a different way this time and not ditch the traditional out-of-home forever, but for this campaign, let’s think about another way in which we can funnel that ad spend. We’re in a privileged position where we have ad spend, we can spend money. And so why not put that into local businesses in them very boroughs? So That’s what we did. We basically formulated a huge bank of a map of independent shops, local shops, local cafés that wanted to give up some of their window space for an ad. And that sounds quite salesy to some respect, right? You’re going to take independent window space and make it an ad. But I think what our strong suit we had here was The image was a portrait of someone from Hounslow or from Wandsworth. And in their caption, because we had a caption, a little quote from them, they would mention the fact that they help out in their community garden because that’s what community feels like to them. So we had this strong suit in our arse when we approach these independents. Look, this story is something we want you to back Wandsworth.
[01:34:57.080] – Joe R
We want you to represent Wandsworth in this campaign. We’ll give you our ad spend. And in return, we’ll put a poster in your window. And we got 32 vendors in the end. So 32 vendors across London, independent shops, local cafés, a pottery studio, a record store, and they were the voices, the voice piece of the distribution. So again, it felt like an obvious one. Why not do that? Why spend money from a big corporate ad agency? Why not just funnel that straight into the local coffee shop?
[01:35:39.080] – Andi J
So philosophically, I love what you’ve done. It’s all about community. It’s about being true to London It makes absolute sense. Listeners will be probably nodding along going, of course, that’s an amazing idea. Two problems with that approach that spring to my mind. Firstly is, logistically, it sounds a nightmare. If you buy an ad campaign, you’ve got an ad buyer in an agency or you work maybe directly with them, you ring somebody up or you drop them an email, I’ve got this much budget, I need to do this thing on these days, these things. Send them some artwork and by magic, it appears, right? And really, that’s all you’ve had to do With a bit of luck, you might even get invited to a football match by the ad agency if you’re spending enough money. It’s great. So logistically, was that a real pain in the ass just having to go around and sell 32 different… You’ve got to pitch it, it’s probably 50 times to get 32 spaces. That’s not an insignificant amount of time across a big city in 18 different boroughs.
[01:36:37.420] – Joe R
Absolutely. If you’d have asked me about this two months ago, Andi, I’d have said, Let’s go for it. You asked me today? Yeah, it was a lot of work. And luckily, we got into contact with a young entrepreneur who’s trying to set up a network like like this that we’re talking about. So they’re called Watch These Spaces. And basically, we have formed something with them where they were doing the outreach, they were doing the connexions, they were trying to do the main installation. So that took something out of it. But I think one thing that we’ve not acknowledged here about this space in terms of the effort, et cetera, is word of mouth. Because if a billboard is on a bus stop, how much word of mouth does that generate? Apart from the creative, sure, the creative might generate word of mouth, it might generate discussion. But what’s interesting about putting it on the shop window is the café owner knows about it. The café owner knows their backing, Wandsworth. And so their word of mouth to their customers about that poster is… We don’t know this yet, but I’m thinking it’s a lot larger than a traditional bus stop.
[01:38:00.000] – Andi J
Which is an interesting… It brings me nicely to my next question. It’s an interesting point. In so much as the marketer in me is screaming, I love it, I love the idea, I love the creativity of it. But what have you sacrificed in reach for novelty? I’ve been a bit.
[01:38:15.810] – Joe R
Absolutely. No, yeah. Absolutely valid.
[01:38:18.100] – Andi J
If my numbers might be wrong, but let’s say there’s two million tube journeys a day. Not everybody goes through one station, but it’s a high volume thing, right? You put an odd either on the tube, near a tube station, you probably get in a couple of million impressions a week, no matter what tube station you’re at, as long as it’s within zones one or two, right? You’re probably going to hit that thing. You get billboards or bus stops on or even bus sides driving across London. You’re measuring the impact of that in millions of people per week. You got 32 windows in boroughs, and I’m guessing here, but you’re probably measuring that impact in direct impact. Are you at a million a week? For the campaign, as opposed to each ad, each execution that you put if you did a traditional campaign, is probably measuring millions per week per ad. So have you sacrificed a lot to do this?
[01:39:13.360] – Joe R
Yeah, I do think so. And I think this isn’t an approach that works for every campaign. But I think for a campaign that’s rooted in celebrating London and celebrating localness, and celebrating personality and community, it does make sense. And that risk is worth And potentially that reduction in impressions and reach is a price to pay for something that feels so apt for the campaign. But yeah, I would not be suggesting that this is a something that could be used for everything because some messages don’t need to be localised. Some messages can be citywide, plastered everywhere. Some might say sanitary, just whack it out there, get it out there. This is a different approach for a campaign that’s honed towards community, that’s honed towards that borough being a celebration of that borough. So I think we’re talking about placement and reasoning for placement, which I suppose is something that is a point of distribution. There is a reason for distribution in certain respects, whether it’s fly postering, whether there’s a reason for all that to exist. I think we’re just suggesting a new way and also then just giving that money straight to an independent shop owner that really needs it.
[01:40:34.170] – Joe R
I think sure, there is some… I can see the approach that it could be just a means for a story, but I think And this is hard to track and understand, but I think the interest, the intrigue here is that word of mouth in that very coffee shop when they see the window, when they go in and we made magazines. So in every shop there was magazines. So again, there was something to revert to. Here it is. Here’s the story. This is Forest. Get 30 minutes on us if you look through this magazine. It’s like a better connexion, a deeper connexion, hopefully.
[01:41:09.820] – Andi J
You mentioned another thing I love there, magazines. You’ve gone old school with this. You’ve got pictures. Are Almost like you’re trying to sell a circus, but it’s better than that. You got pictures in local windows, you got magazines going around. What was the concept behind the magazine? And is it all just like, Here’s where you should ride a forest, or is it a bit more Red Bull-esque, where there’s a little bit of just really interesting stuff to read and you’re weaved throughout it?
[01:41:33.640] – Joe R
It’s purely storytelling. It’s enriching the story, and it’s like a deeper into the funnel. So you see the window, you see Jarvis in the window from Merton, and you see that Homes of Him means a warm hug. And then once you step into the shop and you see the magazine on the side and it says London is Our Home, a community series by Forest, you then look through the magazine and you see 18 stories of people that believe London is Our Home and why. And so it’s a deepening of the flow, if you know what I mean. If you’re intrigued about the window, you then go and learn about that and you get three minutes along the way, which is always a nice boost, something that our riders always want. But I think that is the reasoning for that. And again, it felt true to the point of the campaign. We’re telling a story. This isn’t a purely awareness story, is it? This is a brand building emotional campaign. So why not add that emotion if someone wants to delve deeper into it?
[01:42:38.760] – Andi J
Was any of this a tough sell internally? Did you have to go to the boss and be like, look, I know you’re expecting to see ads all across the London Tube network, and I know you’re going to want to see us. You want to hear us on the radio and you’re going to want to see it here and there. But I’ve got 32 coffee shops in a magazine. This is it. Was it a tough sell internally or given the ethos of the company, was everybody on board? How did that work?
[01:43:00.760] – Joe R
It sings very true to the ethos, which helps. I think one thing that I’ve not mentioned here is a way to caveat this, this feeling of very much personalised out of home, is to barrage the digital ad. So the digital ads were rife, if you know what I mean. So that was a real saviour in terms of we’re making sure we get it-Reaching frequency online and then-Exactly. Get it out there, get it out there, get it out there. We’re well-versed in digital ads. So, yeah, I think that helped. But I think Everyone backs the fact that this is so true to what Forest is going to be for the next few years. We are London’s homegrown. And if a campaign really embodies that, I think it’s worth the risk of potentially less reach via traditional out-of-home. So be it.
[01:43:46.700] – Andi J
Relatively new campaign when we’re talking. So the final receipts have not been collected as yet. But are you sitting here quietly confident that the metrics that you need to hit in terms of preference app downloads, and whatever else you’re looking at, are you seeing them tracking the right way? Or are you trying to repurpose more spend in the digital just to try and get you going that way, too?
[01:44:10.700] – Joe R
Too early to say at the moment, but I think this is long A long game. As you know, emotional brand building is a long game. We know that. Functional brand, functional building in terms of marketing, we know that’s quick and easy and potentially you’ll get a sale straight away. But this is a long term goal. And it’s something that, yeah, it might take a year to properly see this, let’s say. But I mean, yeah, these things don’t happen overnight. And I think I couldn’t share any early data on that yet. But I’m confident that this is the right way to go. And branding shouldn’t always be about making a quick book. It should be about building something that sticks in your brain. And so when you get to that buy on the street, you pick that one and not that one.
[01:45:02.860] – Andi J
So we had a guy, James Hurman on maybe coming up to a year ago now. James runs the advertising effectiveness for Walk and an agency in New Zealand. Various bits and bobs. Great marketing brain. The one thing that always stuck out from that interview with him was he said, too many marketers are looking, and it’s not necessarily a marketer’s fault, but we’re judged on quarterly performance and annual reviews, but actually build brands over years, not in months. And we should be asking the question, what decisions can we make today to make this brand better in 2028? And answer that question and work back from there, as opposed to what do we need to do to hit our quarterly target? And I think you’re saying in a very different way, something very similar. We are trying to build this brand for the long term, not for the quick book.
[01:45:52.120] – Joe R
A hundred %. And that doesn’t mean that your functional messaging shouldn’t exist because it should exist. Ease of You should be a big of a shared E-bag, but there’s more to a brand, and that’s the reason. I mean, there’s a reason people buy a Mac, right? To be very straightforward.
[01:46:10.740] – Andi J
The quality of the microphone, isn’t it?
[01:46:14.040] – Joe R
They both You know this, a Mac and a Dell, they both access the Internet, but a Mac, yeah.
[01:46:22.060] – Andi J
As someone who made the move to a colouring in machine, a Mac, two years ago, three years ago now, having resisted for I mean, I’ve been in marketing, of goodness, too many years. And designers used, Oh, you got to get a Mac, you’ve got to get my… I said, Lads, you stick over there with your colouring machines. Everything I use is spreadsheets, word documents. I’m fine here. I was wrong. I was wrong. I should have done it. I should have made that movie ages ago. Affiliate link to buy a Mac in the show.
[01:46:50.040] – Joe R
I’ve actually got a partnership with Apple.
[01:46:53.480] – Andi J
Yes, a new sponsor of the show. Well, we’ll take Forest instead. Anyway, Joe, I I love what you’ve done here. I love that you’ve captured the essence of London, which is, as I said, I am, for a non-Londoner, one of London’s biggest fans. So it sounds like you’ve really captured the essence of where you are, where you call home. The big question, because you could never rest on your laurels, what next? Where do you go next with Forest?
[01:47:22.080] – Joe R
I think more of this brand building needs to happen for us. I think we’re just scratching the surface. And I think more of this, maybe less of the travelling around London. Production-wise, I think we all need a good rest. But I think in terms of the ethos and the energy that this campaign has given us, and hopefully will give our potential and existing customers, that’s something to build on. And the breadth of this is the biggest breadth we’ve ever done in in terms of campaign. So this only sets us up for more.
[01:48:03.180] – Andi J
It feels like a campaign that you could still be running in 10 years time because there’s so many stories in London.
[01:48:08.360] – Joe R
There’s so much. And there’s so many… I mentioned that we interviewed our writers as well as photographed them. So obviously the posters in the windows were photographs, but we videoed them. And so we’ve got three, four answers per person about what makes London home to them. And we posted one on our feed so far, one per borough, and they’ve done great. But we’ve got loads. It’s almost like a full strategy in one campaign, which is mad. You could stretch this out. You could stretch this out for six months. But we’re on to the next one. So stay tuned.
[01:48:43.360] – Andi J
Well look, Joe, before we let you go, do you have a book, a resource, a podcast, something that you think other people should check out? If they’re listening to you, they like how you think, what would you say they should be looking at?
[01:48:54.880] – Joe R
I’m not a traditionally trained marketer. And a few years ago, maybe a year ago now, I did do Mark Ritson’s mini MBA in brand management. Yeah.
[01:49:05.140] – Andi J
Alumni of that as well and loved it. Yeah.
[01:49:07.860] – Joe R
It was as a designer faking it as a brand man, that was like, Okay, this is conversational The bluntness of the way he was putting his points across was just it relates to anyone. And I think anyone that doesn’t have that training, if they’re going into that, I think it’s valuable. And And watch Mad Men 15 times. That’s my other one.
[01:49:34.540] – Andi J
Well, I’m not on an affiliate link with Ritson. He was on the show Series 2, I think. Sorry, I haven’t done the brand management in the NBA. I did the marketing one. But still, Ritson is a marketing training in my background, but I still found it really useful because of that. It’s blunt delivery, but it’s an entertaining delivery as well. But it’s sharp. The details in it are sharp. Do the mini MBA. I’ll put a link to that in the show notes.
[01:50:03.640] – Joe R
Yeah, do it. If you can afford it.
[01:50:05.720] – Andi J
Yeah, it’s pricey, but it’s good. It’s good. So if anybody wants to get in touch with you, Joe, are you LinkedIn? Are you social media? What’s the best place to find you?
[01:50:14.180] – Joe R
Mainly LinkedIn. And yeah, Forest LinkedIn, Forest Instagram. That’s where you can see all of our work. And yeah, appreciate you having me on, Andi.
[01:50:25.340] – Andi J
No, it’s been great to chat. It’s been brilliant. It’s been great to talk about London for a while. So Joe Rampley, thank you very much.