Harnessing Neurodiversity and Team Integration for Innovative Digital Marketing Solutions

Hey, hi everyone. Now, welcome to your show, E-Coffee with the Experts. This is your host, Ranmay here. And today we have Rory Mason, who is the Managing Director at 21 Degrees Digital with us. Hey, Rory, how’s it going?

Not bad. Thank you very much for having me.

Lovely. Rory, before we move any forward, let’s get to know the human behind the mic. Why don’t you talk us through your journey, over you as growing up, and how did you land up in the digital marketing, SEO space, and also about your agency, not only on the use of digital, what do you guys specialize in, what are core competencies, and we take it off from there.

Wow.

How long do you have? You got time, don’t worry.

That’s amazing. My journey was interesting. As a kid, I really wanted to be a director. That’s all I wanted to be. I nearly left school just think I could go work in TV. So I went to work in TV. And this was in the mid-naughties when indie music was bursting everywhere. And so being somebody that got ADHD, I had no idea at the time. But then when all of a sudden, distracted by music and went to work in the music industry where I got a job in a music venue that ended up being a Marketing Manager, and it got me into music. It got me into that industry and was great, but I then started falling in love with marketing. So moved into PR from there. My career is a very checkered try everything. Then from PR, what I discovered was you’d have people saying, So what questions me? So they’d hire you to get an article in the Yorkshire Post or in the Telegraph, and they’d turn around and say, That’s great, but how many hovers does this sell me? And you go, Well, come on, this is this. So what I worked out at the time was it was an exciting time when PR was being rolled into SEO, and I found a way of saying, Actually, no, this link that you got from the Telegraph has actually increased your rankings and was able to use SEO to answer the show what question about PR.

And that’s how I got into the world of digital, being a bit of a geek, really, and just hyper-focusing going down all sorts of avenues. Then that took me on to being… I ended up being head of social media for a company called Search Laboratory, which was amazing. Then I set out into my own freelance journey and ended up setting up a agency called Ground Up Digital, which was a social enterprise. The idea is we hired people who struggle because of neurodiversity to get into the workplace. No, that was fantastic. But then from there, I ended up merging with another company called 21 Degrees, which is my company now because at the time, we were offering WebSEO, PPC. They were offering social media management, graphic design, and video. We were just working so closely together. It made sense just to merge the two businesses and go forward as one. We haven’t looked back since. It’s been one of the best decisions I ever made, and my business partners are incredible.

Lovely. Quite a journey, I must say. You did work with Sony and Superdry, big brands. How was your experience there? How was it helped with your own agency?

That’s experience. It’s a really interesting question. Working with brands like Superdry, I helped run Superdry’s PR campaign, SEO PR across Europe. That was really interesting because, again, big teams, learning lots about how to doing PR in different countries. I’ve worked on campaigns for O2, I’ve worked for Viking Direct. These big companies, they really care about brand, they really care about making sure that you’re delivering KPIs to a really high standard. And so I learned to jump higher and to be more organized and to make sure that I was stepping up to that professional standard. Because when you’re pitching to the Superdry Board in the Superdry Boardroom, it is very nerve-wracking. So I learned something amazing. But the techniques that I learned using for big brands, I’ve been able to take to smaller companies because for me, a lot of this seems like a dark art It’s seen in terms of your approach to digital and how you do it. Smaller brands just feel they can’t access it. So actually taking those learnings and then passing them on, creating a smaller agency by design because we’re much more nimble, we’re much more able to collaborate across the department.

And then saying, But that’s the level of standard that I know Superdry and Sony are getting. There’s no reason why a company that’s just started to turn over seven figures shouldn’t get that same access.

Absolutely. And you spoke about the merger earlier, right? The mergers are quite fascinating. Someone in it will understand the challenges and all the headaches that comes with it. So what are some of the biggest challenges within the merger of 21 Degrees and Grounded? Also, what were the initial rewards that you got out of the merger?

Oh, great question. In terms of the merger, the biggest challenge was definitely bringing two completely separate teams that worked in completely different ways and saying, sticking them all in one office and going, Guys, get on. Obviously, there was a lot of TLC and a lot of making sure, but what we found out instantaneously was there was a very us and them mentality. We even sat down to sit down with the teams and saying, Do you realize that you’re talking about the ground-up lot or the 21 lot? It was making sure that those teams start to seamlessly work. But one of the biggest rewards that we had was we had two sets of clients, essentially, that when we pulled everything together and we turned around and said, All our video clients, we turned around and said, We can now offer web design and SEO. They were just, The brilliant, We trust you for video, we’ll start using you for that. Similarly with the SEO clients and PPC clients, we could turn around and say, We can now do video. The mixing of that together for our clients meant it was more than just upselling one client list.

It was all our clients benefiting from having a better service and people they trust. Yeah, it It was an interesting journey. I’d say in terms of getting the teams together, it took us at least six months to a year for everybody to feel fully 21 or it’s a single team. But once you go through that and you take the time to really understand on a human-by-human level what their challenges are, why they’re thinking this way, when you bring the team forward, it’s so rewarding.

Absolutely. Now that you’ve won, how do you now differentiate your agency’s offerings from your competitors? Because you and me understand there’s so many agencies now, right? So it is a crowded marketplace. So what is the mindset to stay unique to what you’re doing?

It’s, again, a really good question because I think there’s something like 4,000 agencies in leads alone. And when basically you’re all selling Google Ads, you’re all selling people, you’re all selling WordPress websites, it’s really hard for you to differentiate yourself. And there’s two ways that we There’s two ways that we do it. Firstly is through our service level. I know that’s a easy thing to say because, again, that requires you to have a lot of trust. But a lot of our work comes from word of mouth because of that service level. Looking after our customers, One of the things I love is when we come in after a bad agency. If somebody’s had a bad experience, it’s always hard to convince them to trust you. But we’ve had comments where people have turned around to us and said, your agency has done more work in a week than my last agency did in six months that the last six months of our contract. Again, that just helps us really because they understand what bad looks like. They now see what good looks like. It means those clients just stay. We never lose those clients because they love that level of service.

But the second thing that separates us is really what an agency for me is our team. Without your team, without your staff, you have nothing but you sat behind a desk trying to do Google Ads or trying to do a PIT development and sell something. One of the things that we’ve got a mission to is to be the most inclusive agency in the UK. This comes through from anything in terms of our staffs. My main focus is neurodiversity because I’ve got ADHD and dyslexia. We nurture and encourage staff that think differently in that way. But also only 6% of the advertising industry is represented by the BAM community, and over 50% of our staff come from BAM communities. Really, we are trying to look at our staff and think, If our staff are diverse and they’re diverse thinkers, then that’s exactly what your audience is like. You don’t want a bunch of middle-aged white men sitting there and telling you how to sell cosmetic products or something like that. We represent much better your audience, and so therefore can give you a much better service and come up with ideas that are going to resonate with your audience better.

Those are the two ways that we try and stand out.

Have you said no to a client ever? You must have at some point Give us that story.

I’ve fired clients before. Oh, okay.

One step ahead. Okay.

Yeah, no, I’ve had to fire a client because, again, you get those certain clients that know that if they shout the loud this, they can get the most. But the problem is that then comes at detriment to the nice, lovely clients that we work with and also our staff. Again, I was talking before in my previous answer about how we look after our staff. If I’ve got a client that is regularly ringing up and giving an absolute dressing down to one of my staff for what I feel is no reason, I don’t feel that client deserves to work with us. I have rung up and said, I’ve rung up and said, I absolutely said to clients, If you feel like that’s my client, my team, again, I will Absolutely. We will terminate the contract. Really, in terms of the story that you’re looking for, we had one client and he would just… Everything would be, you’d get the scope, you’d get it quoted, and then he’d just be like, It would be more and more. Then he’d ask for it, we’d say, Everybody gets three rounds of revisions. We were on revision 20. I just turned around and said, No, we don’t need this.

We don’t need this anymore. It’s taking you taking too much time. Again, he was just so impolite about it. Everything was a chore. Everything was there. He didn’t really understand what he bought. Thought he could use his weight to throw everyone and shove everyone around. Again, we ask for… At the end of the day, for us and our clients, we’re there because we truly care about making their results improve. And as a result, we like it when our clients. We want our clients to see them as part of our marketing team. We want them to see us as an extension of their goals, not somebody that they have to work against and can just shout because they’re paying us some money. That’s not who we are.

Absolutely. And talking about client relationships, what is your secret to building those long-lasting and successful client relationships?

My say, I love getting people excited and really making them think about the optimistic future. Because, again, that’s what we’re here to do, to build and help them grow their companies. And what my favorite things to do is to sit down with our clients, some of our key clients, every six months and say, What’s the next six months look like for you? How do we plan this out? Where are your goals? What are we doing? How do we get excited? And then saying, these are the things that we can do. And really taking that time. But also, the real of the key is actually listening to them. Because if you turn around and I get them excited at the start of that meeting and they say, Do you know what, mate? We’re struggling a bit now. We’re having to cut marketing budgets, cut, do everything. I’m going, But you need a PPC campaign on top of you. That just doesn’t work. It’s really understanding and being there for them and jumping as in one of the right moments. Again, managing expectations as well, I think, is just as a complete aside to throw in there as being realistic about what you can achieve.

Because the time is when I have tried to promise the world to clients, it always ends up biting me back.

Absolutely. The promise over deliver is the same.

Yeah, exactly. The amount of times when I’ve been being like, Oh, I’m going to do these extra five hours because they’ll really appreciate that. Then they just look at it as in, Oh, it’s nice, but they don’t appreciate the fact that you stayed up till 2:00 in the morning doing stuff and getting because you didn’t communicate the value of what you were doing beforehand. Setting those expectations, clear communication and getting them excited is by, would be my in a nutshell answer.

Absolutely. We also believe in the retention starts from the moment you have sold the client with the pitch, with the first pitch you made. If you’ve understood what do they need and it is exactly what you offer and you’re good at it, your client will be retained until unless you really go for it up. But if you know that you’ve sold something which you’re not an expert at or you’re not understood the requirements directly today or tomorrow, three months down the line, this is going to pop up. Obviously, after that, like you mentioned, important pointers, clear communication, setting the expectations right. These are crucial, I would say, milestones during the journey of that client, having the proper weekly, monthly, fortnight take falls in place and setting the expectations. It is quite crucial.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

And talking about neurodiversity, right? How can businesses leverage neurodiversity to create more inclusive and effective marketing campaigns as for you?

That That’s a fantastic question. Because the thing is about neurodiversity is so little understood in terms of some of the people that estimate as many as 20% of the UK could be neurodiverse in some way, shape, or form. I see so many people out there that think that They think that they’re a bit bonkers or something along those lines, and they have these traits and they just don’t understand. The key to neurodiversity is the fact that you can latch on to creativity, you can latch on to hyper focus and see. For example, for me, I I can shut myself in a room and just sit down on my computer and just work and work and figure out a problem, and I will sit there until even if the lights have gone out and everybody’s gone home and I won’t notice anything else going around me because I’m focused on that problem. But then the problem is that might burn me out in order to do it. So I’ve got to make sure that I’m then going, okay, we’ve got flexible working hours work really well for someone with neurodiversity. So you can have that hyper focus.

You can go down those rabbit holes. You can get that true value because you set somebody like me that task, I’m going to find the answer for you because my brain will literally not let me not find it for you. But then we also need to, and that might mean I work late one night, but then that means I need a bit of time off the next morning. It’s having that flexible working hours, utilizing that and understanding what your staff strengths are, but more importantly, what their weaknesses. That’s one thing I find really interesting about when we hire, because I’m really interested in what they’re not good at. I’m They’re interested in what they’re not good at because A, we can put provisions in place to stop that from happening. B, we can talk to other members of staff because you might have a member of staff that’s not good at analyzing data, but you might have another member of staff who is. So get the member of staff who is good at analyzing data, analyzing all the data, and get graphic design being done by the other person because their strengths and weaknesses will balance.

And if you can understand that about your staff, whether neurodiverse or not, you can create a truly rounded team each person compliments one another. The neurodiversity style of thing, that’s really important because understanding those strengths and weaknesses not only could help them and empower them, but then also enables that level of creativity and flourish of control which just then is on a marketing campaign can just be invaluable.

Absolutely. As someone who has led various digital marketing teams and agencies and with direct brands as well, what are some of your leadership lessons that you have learned and how do you implement it at your own agency?

I think, I always find it funny because I don’t. As a leader, I just don’t… Sorry, I’ve not answered this one very well at all. As a leader, I never feel like I am a leader. I just set up an agency and people come around me and people come to me and ask me for things. Sometimes it just shocks me that people consider me as a leader. But as you point out, I have built multiple companies and I have led multiple marketing team. But I think the thing is being being open to ideas. Because if your team, chances are, are 10 times better than you at most of the things that you do. If you can understand that, then again, it’s about understanding where their strengths and weaknesses are, listening to them and guiding them on the journey and just letting them know that you’re there for them. Then letting them flourish, having that space of being like, You’ve got the tools. Give them a little nudge, off you go. I have a much more laid back, I trust my staff to go off and do the work and deliver the work. They know the expectations.

Then it’s just a case of… That’s it. I think I feel, to summarize where I’ve started, I feel more like I’m a guide than a leader, so to speak, because really, I feel most of the time they teach me stuff.

Lovely. I’m glad you mentioned that. You learn so much from your team when and around because they come with so much expertise and their own skill sets. I really love that part. And in talking about 2024. We have already seen the end of 2023 with AI technology and it is always there, but we can’t… What are the most exciting marketing trends that you are seeing in 2024, and how can businesses leverage them?

I think for me, the real lean into EEAT from an SEO perspective is that’s the most exciting thing because with the creation of a lot of this spammy AI bot link building, generate 20,000 pages in a day. I was really worried about where the internet was going. In one core update, one single beautiful core update, Google just thrust away all the rubbish. I’m really excited about the way that we’re talking about how all brands and people are coming to the table and they’re talking about wanting to show their expertise, to show their skill, to really demonstrate their knowledge, but from a place of understanding. I think that is going to make the internet a much richer place because there’s a reason we all lean into Reddit heavily for everything, because that’s where people go to tell their stories. If we can now take EAT, build it into beautiful stories, you’re going to have a really good brand. That’s a love the fact. That’s a cornerstone of the internet at the moment.

Absolutely. Absolutely. You did, Rory. This has been a fantastic conversation. A lot of insights there. But before we let you go, a quick rapid fire.

A quick rapid fire, go for it.

All right. Your last Google search.

It was Manalord’s Pasture Update.

Okay. First, be a check.

It was a ski shop in Otley.

Okay. Your next vacation.

I am going to London next week with my kids. I’m really excited.

Lovely. And your celebrity crush?

Oh, God. Do you know what? It’s easy for you. Yeah. Her name Yeah, her name’s just… She’s the girl from Hunger Games. That one, I can’t remember. I’m terrible with celebrity names.

All right. I will not give you any further. Thank you so much, Rory, for taking our time to do this with us. Really appreciate it. For audiences, if they want to reach out to you, how do they do that?

You can find me on LinkedIn. That’s probably the best place. Or you can go to 21degreesdigital. Com and call the number. I’ll be on the other end. Lovely.

Thank you so much, Rory. Cheers, man. Thank you.