#BR39
Chanel Clark and Kim Voon: I interviewed 2 marketing greats working in Australia and New Zealand. This edition of Bright Objects has some of their insights. Slideshow with Dave Hayward has the rest. And then this old chunk of coal was interviewed by the legendary Mina Amso on the Notes from the Executive podcast.
Cards on the table: I really admire Chanel, Kim, and Mina. They’ve achieved all they’ve achieved in a style that I aspire to: a combination of spirit, charisma, humour, intellect and grit. And the underpinning theme of their stories has let me indulge my minor obsession with eponymous laws (principles ascribed to someone, like Murphy’s Law).
Introducing Gall’s Law. You’ll need to read on to find out what John Gall’s principle is all about.
From coffee catch-up to 19,000 people
Chanel Clark had three bullet points and a microphone *.
She'd been invited to speak at a Tracksuit event, with a hundred marketers in the room. She'd had a wild idea for a year, and figured if she didn't say it now, she never would. So she counted down from three and announced she was starting a marketing club.
The plan was coffee. Thirty marketers, once a month. She didn't bother with a fancy name.
Screw it, I’ll just call it The Marketing Club
180 people joined in the first week. Four years later, The Marketing Club has just passed 19,000 members across New Zealand and Australia, all of it grown organically.
I recorded Chanel for Slideshow at the Podcast Bach (the idea of another marketing great, Stu Lees) at the Business Expo. Picture a customised “bach” (North Island speak for a holiday home) with intense lighting, Expo noise invading our equipment, and people peeking in the windows. Just the right amount of chaos. On the same day, I sat down with Kim Voon of Insight Online. His story starts at the other end, with a client who already had 50 clinics. But he ended up making exactly the same move: going small to scale big.
* (Complete segue: I’ve tried and failed to shoehorn in a reference to criminally underrated Derrick Harriott’s reggae take on the 1975 soul classic Eighteen With A Bullet without ruining that opening line, so I’ll leave it here for your audio pleasure instead.)
Going back to small to scale big
Kim's agency took on an Australian healthcare business with about 50 clinics. The founder wanted scale, and Kim delivered it: over 250 leads a month, every number on the dashboard green.
Then Kim did something most agencies never do. He went looking for those leads inside the client's business, and he couldn't find them.
So he did the maths. 250 leads across 50 clinics is about one new person per clinic per week, spread across five or six services. No clinic manager notices one extra walk-in a week. The previous agency had run the same model and never spotted it.
Kim could have kept pushing. The dashboard would have backed him. Instead, he took the problem to the founder with a plan… and was totally prepared to hand back the account. (Like a journalist, we have chosen to “protect our source” by using a pseudonym and calling this founder “Mike”).
Mike's response: "You found a problem. We have a solution. You need to get on with it."
Two clinics in Victoria. A couple of services each. Phone calls tracked alongside bookings. One report covering just those two sites. Ninety days to prove it, then roll it out state by state.
"There is nothing like a lap of reality," Kim told me. "All that thinking, all the ChatGPTing, there's nothing like doing a run out in the real world to show you what you've really got."
Gall’s law is in play
In 1975 (the same year as Eighteen With A Bullet), a paediatrician called John Gall wrote a slightly cranky little book about why systems fail. Its most quoted line is now known as Gall's Law:
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work.
Gall was writing about bureaucracies and machines. He could have been writing about marketing. Big things that work almost always started as small things that worked. Chanel's coffee club was a simple system that worked, and everything since has grown on top of it. Kim is doing the same thing on purpose: finding the simple system inside a big business, proving it, then building out.
Practice what you preach
I was interviewed by Mina Amso on Notes From The Executive (starting at 54:45)
It was a big day at the Podcast Bach. Along with Kim and Chanel, I interviewed Auckland Transport’s Anna Lawrence (her episode is coming soon).
Then Mina Amso turned the tables and had me on Notes From The Executive, one of Aotearoa's leading business podcasts, at another activation nearby. She asked how I look after my own brand.
My answer was three things. LinkedIn, along with speaking at events and contributing to the marketing community. Slideshow, where people tell the story of the problems they've solved in business. And this newsletter, every fortnight (or every week when work allows me).
My podcast and newsletter are relatively new, and while they’re small, they’re growing fast. Each one is a small thing I knew I could keep turning up for. In truth, what keeps the show on the road is a slightly obsessive need to come through for you.
With a little help from my friends
Chanel ran The Marketing Club on her own for a year before she put a call out to the regulars for help. Now she's in what she calls an operational transformation, "putting in all the framework, systems and structure that I should have done three years ago." I’ve been through this journey: initial stages and success fuelled by individual heroics and sheer bloody-mindedness. Then scaffolding, structure, streamlining, and letting go of control to gain control.
If you can manage to sequence it that way, it’s a great way to go. Prove it small. Build the boring structure. Then scale.
When we talked, I found myself sounding like a Gartner consultant when I described it as moving from a heroic individual to enduring performance. I see people (including me in the past) try to skip the middle step, and that's where green dashboards with nothing behind them come from.
Come together
Kim and Chanel were generous with what they know. Here are three things you'll get from listening to the episodes.
How to get found in AI search. Kim's rule (is this “Kim’s Law”?): authority beats volume. Five hundred AI-written posts about plumbing won't help you (thank goodness). Being the plumber who knows the drainage problems in the Waitakeres will. He also shares a simple trick: ask ChatGPT who the best providers in your category are, then ask it how it came up with those names. The answer tells you where you need to show up.
How to tell if your business needs a community. Chanel now teaches businesses from FMCG to tax and wealth how to build one, and she starts with the same three questions. What would a community do for the business? What do your people actually want from it? Can you keep showing up, long term? "And if it's not, don't do it."
Why your first customers are already in your phone. Chanel didn't realise how many marketers followed her on LinkedIn until one post filled her club. When Kim started posting video, his first wave of leads came from existing contacts he just hadn't had lunch with lately. Together, they make a strong case for getting over the fear of hitting post.
Kim's episode also has the full story of the two-clinic rebuild, how your personality can define your business, and yes, ranking on AI search. Chanel's covers how she got Jon Evans of The Uncensored CMO to two “Marketers Days” in a row, buffered by an uncomfortable but productive economy flight in between.
Kim Voon: YouTube · Spotify · Show page on Europa.nz
Chanel Clark: YouTube · Spotify · Show page on Europa.nz
Me on Notes From The Executive: YouTube, from 54:45
A big thank you to Stu Lees and Jay Downes for creating the Podcast Bach and inviting me in. Loads of fun.
If you're sitting on a big idea, you may need to go small to scale. If there is a there there, I can help get the idea off your metaphorical napkin and into market. That's my favourite kind of conversation. Let’s have it.
Always forward. Dave
