From Funnels to Pinballs: A Human-First Framework for Building Brand Trust in the Age of AI

[00:00:00] Let me ask you a question. What if that magical marketing funnel that we all talk about, that we've been taught about, is actually a lie and that there is a better mental model to replace it with? My guest today says that the funnel assumes a magical gravitational pull that just doesn't exist. Think about it. Real customers don't bounce around like a pinball. They hear about you on a podcast, see an ad about you two weeks later, and don't buy a podcast.

[00:00:30] Maybe until months after that. And when everyone's using AI to churn out lookalike content, doubling down on the human element in this scenario is absolutely going to be your biggest competitive advantage. If you're nodding your head saying, tell me more, you'll want to make sure you listen in to the very end of this next episode of the Digital Marketing Coach Podcast.

[00:01:00] Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, SEM, PPC, Email Marketing. Whew! There's a lot to cover. Whether you're a marketing professional, entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on for expert advice. Good thing you've got Neal on your side. Because Neal Schaffer is your Digital Marketing Coach.

[00:01:28] Coach. Helping you grow your business with digital first marketing, one episode at a time. This is your Digital Marketing Coach. And this is Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody. This is your Digital Marketing Coach, Neal Schaffer. Welcome to episode number 443 of this podcast. And hey, it hasn't been a while. How the heck have you all been?

[00:01:54] I have been awesome. Actually, in the, well, 10 weeks since the last episode, half of those weeks, I've actually been traveling both to Japan and then most recently to London. But also, I realized that I needed to build a more sustainable infrastructure so that I can more regularly, more consistently publish this podcast, my commitment to you. So I am now on the end of getting that infrastructure in place.

[00:02:23] I am always excited about the future. And I can't wait because, yeah, there's a backlog of episodes. And, you know, just thinking about that last episode 10 weeks ago, AI just continues to evolve and impress, right? So lots more to talk about. But hey, I want to focus on today's episode because, and I am also guilty of this, right, that we try to pour customers into a funnel and we assume that the model still works.

[00:02:52] I still believe it, but I also think a little bit differently about it now after the interview that you are about to hear. Today's guest argues that modern buyers don't move in that straight line. They bounce, they drift, they come back months later from a completely different direction. And in a world where AI is flooding every feed with sameness, the brands that win will be the ones that leave with people, not automation.

[00:03:17] This is a theme that actually we're hearing more and more about as AI generated content seems to permeate social media and real life. So today's guest is Phil Trigas Evans. He is the founder of Giraffe Social, a UK agency that works with some of the world's biggest brands. And he's the author of Human First Marketing, The Art of Being Seen, Trusted and Remembered. He spent 13 years putting human first thinking at the center of social and digital strategy.

[00:03:46] And I think as you listen in, you're going to find that his perspective of mine, there is just a lot of natural alignment between how we both think. So it was really a fun conversation. And I think because you're a listener to this podcast, you will have a lot of fun listening to it as well.

[00:04:02] So in our conversation, you're going to learn about his empath framework for understanding customers beyond demographics, why he replaced the funnel with the pinball method, as he calls it, and where he draws the hard line between smart AI use and lazy AI use. Without further ado, here's my interview with Phil Trigas Evans. You're listening to your digital marketing coach. This is Neal Schaffer.

[00:04:32] Hey, everybody. Neal Schaffer here. Welcome to another episode of the Your Digital Marketing Coach. As you all know, I love to find authors, experts, people that I really respect that I want to learn from to bring on this show. And that's why today I'm really excited to have, well, before I say his name, he is the author of this amazing book called Human First Marketing, The Art of Being Seen, Trusted and Remembered. Phil Trigas Evans.

[00:05:00] You're going to learn that Phil has been heavily involved with social media marketing and still is. But as all of us realize the impact that AI has in many ways, he's going to be taking that human first marketing approach to digital and social and really giving us some insight as to how he sees how we can be more human in the age of AI. So, Phil, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Neil. Pleasure to be here. Excited to have you here.

[00:05:27] So, Human First Marketing, we'll talk about AI today. Obviously, when we were born, AI wasn't a thing, although it was a thing, but we didn't know about it. Yeah. Social media and all that. How did all this get started for you? Sure. So, I sort of first entered the world of social media by accident, to be honest. So, when I was 21, a friend of mine, we decided to start a business. And to do it, we had to spend all of our money on a particularly complicated website.

[00:05:57] So, we had no money for marketing at all. And all we knew was social. You know, we'd grown up using social media. And it was around the time when businesses were first starting to see social media as a potential marketing platform. So, we used social to market the business. It went very, very well. Very quickly, we started being asked by friends who had bands or family members who had businesses, you know, hey, could you do this for us?

[00:06:23] And I don't think we even knew what an agency was at that point. But we started a social media agency. We started it in an afternoon, called it Giraffe Social. Well, we actually called it Giraffe Social Media when we started. And, yeah, we're 13 years on and we're still going. And, you know, we grew to a team of around 15 of us. And we work with some of the world's biggest brands and doing some really exciting work. So, that's kind of how I entered the world of social media, as I say.

[00:06:52] I sort of, by accident, really. I didn't really plan this as a career path. But I think that's true for most people, isn't it? Yeah, no, me as well. And, obviously, when you got started, I'm curious, what was the business that you started that you were launching the website for? Was it like e-commerce? It was a social network. Okay. So, we had an idea for a social network that was based around reviews. And, to be fair, it did well.

[00:07:18] So, in the first few weeks, we had over 1,000 users on the site, which, considering it was two kids with, you know, very little money and experience, it was pretty impressive. However, we quickly realized we didn't have the capital nor the knowledge to continue and to make a go of it. So, it kind of faded off. And, also, I think, you know, we started Giraffe. I always joke, the other website we planned for a whole year. And, Giraffe, we started in an afternoon.

[00:07:48] You know, we probably spent longer thinking about which animal we wanted to brand around than we did around how the business would even function. So, yeah, so, we ended up just focusing full-time on Giraffe. And, we haven't looked back since. Very cool. And, you know, there's a lot of different agencies out there. Obviously, your focus on social media is one of your niches. What else would you say is sort of your secret sauce that you've grown over time why customers come to you? Sure. I think over the last few years, it's been our human first positioning.

[00:08:18] So, you know, we realized probably about three years ago that all of the campaigns we're running that are most successful have one thing in common. And it's that there's people at the center of them, whether that's influencer marketing or brands that have, like, a particularly visible founder or where they have great cultures and their teams are super, you know, proactive on social and there's lots of employee advocacy. So, we started to see this pattern and saying, like, there's definitely something here.

[00:08:46] And, obviously, during that time, AI sort of exploded into consciousness for everyone. And I think as that's evolved and is becoming more omnipresent, we feel like the human first philosophy is actually going to be one of the only ways you can kind of stand out from what's becoming a bit of a sea of sameness in the marketing world. Yeah, brilliant. I think we've reached very much the same conclusion over time. That's why I was excited. Never heard it with that term.

[00:09:15] I always have, like, you know, leverage the other or, you know, have others represent you. But, yeah, it could be employees. It could be founders. But it is the human at the center, right? The term, I sort of came up with the idea of human first because we were doing a repositioning exercise for Giraffe. And I was looking at all of our competitors and, you know, we've got a lot of amazing agencies in the UK. And 90% of them were referring to themselves as social first.

[00:09:46] And I think that's, you know, I think it's good. I think it's a good way to think when you're a social media marketing agency. But I thought, well, we can't call ourselves that because that's what everyone else is calling themselves. And, you know, being different in the world of agencies is near on impossible. So I was like, well, we can't do that. We have to call it something different. So I was like, well, why not just human first? Why not focus on that? So it was more of a sort of flippant rebellion against what everyone else was referring to themselves as than anything else. But it's, yeah, it's obviously stuck now.

[00:10:15] And there's a book with that on it. So I have to stick with it. You always do your best with these flippant ideas. So keep going, right? Yeah, I'm a habit of being a bit contrarian, to be honest. Yeah, no, that's awesome. It's also just a great example of differentiation in the market, of really having, I won't call it a niche, but just a different stand, right? And then making a brand out of that stand and everything it represents. So, yeah, great example.

[00:10:40] It's really, really difficult to, I think, in any industry, just because there's such a low barrier to entry now to start a business. There just are so many companies. And I think that's especially true in the agency world. And being different and standing out is hard. It's really, really tricky. And I think a lot of agencies kind of tackle that problem and wrestle with it. So, yeah, we were pleased to find something that we thought, this is our thing.

[00:11:07] So human-first marketing, I guess, you know, you sort of hinted at it. What would be your formal definition of that term? I would say human-first marketing is a marketing philosophy of putting people back at the center of your strategies. So whether that means just generally using tactics like influencer marketing or employee advocacy or, you know, having visible executive teams.

[00:11:32] But more than that, it's about understanding your customers as people. I think over the last 10 years, we've just been inundated with more and more data, more and more metrics. And I think there's lots of positives to that. But I also think the downside of that is that we're starting to think of customers as data points in a spreadsheet rather than as people who have lives and, you know, emotions.

[00:12:03] And human-first marketing is about understanding that side as well. So it's not just about celebrating the people inside your business. It's also about deeply understanding your customers and trying to focus a little bit less on short-term sales or results and focus more on building advocates. You know, how do we create advocacy for the brand? Because ultimately, I think that's the goal we should all be aiming for as marketers. Yeah, amen. And how do you recommend for the businesses that are listening?

[00:12:33] How do you recommend they better understand and develop relationships with their customers? And I know there's no one single answer. But from your clients or experiences, are there certain things you see that are really, really good tactics or tools or vehicles to help companies do this? Yeah, so this was a question I asked myself when I was writing the book. And I have a personal hate for customer avatars. And I don't know if that's just because I've had to make so many of them in the time that we've been doing giraffe.

[00:13:03] But I find them a little bit insulting. I think it's you're stripping people back to sort of basic demographics. And I think in that, you kind of lose the messiness of humans. So what I did is I actually came up with my own framework for this. And it's something that we use at Giraffe. And I've called it the empath framework. And basically, each of the letters stands for something. So the E is about emotional understanding, trying to get into the emotions of our audience.

[00:13:32] The M is about market and trends. So what's the context that they're living in at the moment? What does their world look like? The P is for patterns of behavior. How do these people make decisions? Are they impulsive? Are they people who will look at your website this year and then make a purchase next year? The A is audience feedback. It's a pretty wild idea, but it involves actually speaking to your customers. I'm a revolutionary. And the T is team feedback.

[00:14:01] So again, I think, especially in larger organizations, the marketing teams often won't speak with the sales teams who won't speak to the customer service teams. And the customer service and the sales teams are the people who probably best understand your audience because they're speaking to them every day. So it's important to speak to those people. And then the result of those five sources of information is what I call a human understanding map.

[00:14:29] And it's kind of anti-avatars in the sense that we're not trying to create a persona that we're marketing to. We're just trying to create an understanding, a map of where they are, how they're feeling,

[00:14:41] what sort of patterns of behavior there are, how they're feeling, how they're feeling, how they're feeling, how they're feeling. Just imagine the insight that you get from that is pretty incredible. And therefore, that becomes the center of what drives the strategy going forward, I assume. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

[00:15:08] And you find out things that you wouldn't have known. I think when we use customer avatars, there's a lot of assumptions. And that framework kind of doesn't allow for that, you know, because you might have assumptions and they're challenged by, you know, the emotional understanding side of it. The easy exercise I always tell people to do is to copy and paste all of your reviews, all of your customer reviews into a document,

[00:15:35] then also copy and paste all of your competitor reviews into a document. And then, heaven forbid, use an AI tool to analyze those reviews and say, look, give me a word map. What are the emotions that are used most commonly in these reviews? This is something anyone can do in five, ten minutes and you will get a much better understanding of how they're feeling. Or even just hang out in forums or like Reddit. You know, people aren't shy with their emotions on the internet.

[00:16:06] They're pretty forthright when they want to tell you how they feel. So it's pretty easy to get to that information without having to pay lots for like deep industry reports and these sorts of things. Indeed, indeed. Well, great advice. And you mentioned that two-letter word, AI. So you take, you know, an approach that human-first marketing, and I'm quoting you, is the antidotes to AI overload. Overlord works as well. Yeah, I guess so, right?

[00:16:36] In Terminator language. Tell us a little bit. I mean, the whole, any marketer you talk to, any brand you talk to, there's obviously a tremendous amount of interest in AI. And when we talk about AI, ladies and gentlemen, it's not just generative ad creating content. There is analysis, summarization, finding insight, everything that Phil just mentioned there as well. But I suppose you're saying, hey, in this world of AI, we should be doubling down on human-first marketing. So I first wanted you to sort of talk about what that means.

[00:17:02] And what, you know, with AI, what do you use AI for and what you don't use AI for in your human-first marketing approach? Sure. I think as sort of the human-first guy, I think a lot of people assume I'm anti-AI. But I'm really not. And I think the line I always say is that I'm anti-lazy AI. I think AI is an incredible tool. And for marketers, there's loads and loads of uses for it that are extremely valuable.

[00:17:31] I think where I draw the line is when you are sort of opening ChatGPT and saying, hey, write me five LinkedIn posts. And then you're just copying and pasting those on. And, you know, but again, I do think that people remove the nuance from how AI is used because, yes, that's one end of the spectrum. Another end of the spectrum is not using it at all. But there is a middle ground where people could use it to say, hey, I want you to write me a post on this topic.

[00:18:01] These are my opinions. This is what I believe about this topic. Like this is an example that I have recently. And then have ChatGPT to sort of formulate that into a strong post with a good hook and these sorts of things. I have less issue with that because you are still at least putting your insight into it. But I do think that the temptation to scale with AI is obviously there.

[00:18:25] And I think as marketers, we have to see that as an opportunity because it's the whole idea of when everyone zigs, you zag, right? It's, you know, every post, especially on LinkedIn, every post is starting to look and sound the same. And as marketers, that's an opportunity because, okay, well, that makes it easier to stand out.

[00:18:46] And for me, the ultimate way to stand out is to focus on people and humans and be real and authentic and, you know, show your face and be imperfect. I've seen a few people talking about deliberately leaving spelling errors in posts so that people know it's not AI written. You know, it's interesting.

[00:19:08] So, yeah, I see the AI stuff as there's loads of, like you mentioned, analysis, summarizing things, and even sometimes acting as a sort of a sparring partner. That's probably been one of the most effective uses I've found is saying, hey, I think this. Why am I wrong? What am I not seeing? You know, and sort of almost getting it to challenge you. That, for me, has been one of the most exciting uses of it.

[00:19:34] But, yeah, I just think we have to be careful where we draw the line with how we use it in marketing. Yeah. And on that note, you mentioned, you know, talking about LinkedIn, personal branding is something else I wanted to, you know, ask you about that. You believe that it can be a growth engine, not just for your personal brand, but I suppose for your company, especially if you're a founder or one of the public figures.

[00:19:57] So can you tell us what your, and we've had a lot of people, including myself, talk about personal branding on this podcast, what your perspective on that is? Yeah. I think everyone has a personal brand already. I think that's the first thing to say is that whether you are deliberately creating one or not, because of social media and because of how we exist virtually these days, you have a personal brand. And I was saying that to someone before, and they said, well, what if I didn't have a social media presence?

[00:20:26] And I said, well, that in itself is a statement. Your personal brand is you're the not on social guy. Right. So, you know, people are always making these assumptions. So I think when you accept that everyone kind of has one, it's worth thinking consciously about it, planning and thinking, okay, well, what, what do I want it to be? And yeah, personal brands are useful for you personally, but I'm a big believer that they're going to become even more important.

[00:20:55] And companies now, I know we do this, but when we're recruiting and we're looking for new members of the team, what are they doing on social? You know, it's almost like employee influencer marketing. Like if you hire someone who's super active on LinkedIn and they've got 10,000 followers and they're always posting about their current company. Amazing. I mean, that's, that's someone you want in your team. Right. So I do think there's a, I think everyone kind of needs to be thinking about their personal brand.

[00:21:24] And I also think one of my big beliefs around personal branding is that it should be always evolving. I think you can, you can create a marketing strategy for a business that stays true for a while, but people are always changing and beliefs are always changing. And as a result of that, I think it's important to regularly sort of come back to the drawing table and say, do I still believe this?

[00:21:48] And is that still one of the key pillars that I want to be sort of pinning myself to like, you know, I think it's, it's important to keep coming back to it. Yeah. I'm curious with human first marketing, you mentioned employee advocacy, one component of that, of the companies that you work with, do you find companies are still hesitant to sort of train employees and foster that employee advocacy?

[00:22:12] Or what is, you know, what do you see right now where, you know, near the end of 2025, what do you see as companies doing in that space? Yeah. There's a lot of demand for it, but there's also a lot of fear around it. Not understandably, but I think the word that underpins all of employee advocacy is trust. I think if you have, if you have a great culture and you have a team of people who love working where they love and are treated well and appreciate their position and their role,

[00:22:42] I think you can trust them to post about their time at your business and what they think and what they're doing. And I think the only time employee advocacy really doesn't work is when it's forced, when you're saying, right, post this this week because we're pushing this promotion. And at that point, it's not really employee advocacy. It's, you know, sort of employee hostage. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:23:05] You know, and it's funny, Phil, we've been talking about this for more than a decade and yet we're still pretty much at Squaremen, even though the employee compared to 10 years ago is much more public, much more active on social media, much more creating content. So there's really never been a better time. But yeah, the employee hostage. I love that one. Well, when I was when I was writing the book, I started by writing the more sort of practical section of it and sort of like this is how you can do this and this is how you can do that.

[00:23:35] And then I doubled back because I thought, you know what? A lot of these methods of marketing, they require certain principles and certain understandings and beliefs. And I did two chapters in the book, one on culture and one on values in a company, because I think if you don't have that, some of this stuff just won't work. There's stuff you kind of have to have in order before you can start thinking about employee advocacy.

[00:24:01] You know, ideally, you have a great company culture and people you don't even have to ask people to do this. They just want to talk about what they're doing and the work they're doing because they're so excited about it and passionate about the brand and so on. But yeah, so I sort of doubled back and thought, actually, we need to focus on that first as the foundation. Yeah, no, it makes it makes a lot of sense. Another thing I wanted to ask you about was this concept of it's not about funnels.

[00:24:28] It's about pinballs for those of our generation that remember what a pinball machine actually is. I've never heard of that, that the pinball analogy with funnels. So I'd love if you could educate us on that. Yeah, I tackled the same thing when I was telling my team who, you know, the average age of is probably 23. And they were all like pinball machines. I've heard of those. So old.

[00:24:55] Yeah, this is a real point of contention for me. So I think funnels are a lie. I think they're based on a fiction. And I think we need to move on to something new because, yeah, I just don't. There's lots I don't like about funnels. I'll give you a couple of points. But one is the assumption of some sort of magical gravitational pull.

[00:25:22] You know, when you look at the diagram of a funnel, it's kind of the idea is that we get people in the top and they just there's this fall through this magical funnel. And then they turn into customers. And the reality is, is that in general, people don't want to be marketed to. They don't want to be interrupted from whatever it is they're trying to do. So the reality is, it's actually more like a huge hoover at the top, sucking people back out of the funnel. But when you look at it and you plan for it, we're not really thinking that way.

[00:25:50] So the other big thing is the modern customer journey isn't a three-step process. It isn't awareness, consideration, conversion. No one's really buying products or services like that anymore. We consume far too much media, far too much marketing for it to be that linear. The truth is, is it's chaos. And I think that's probably why we stick to funnels because it's neat and it's simple and it gives us a sense of control.

[00:26:20] But the reality is, is it's not really representative of what a customer is doing. You know, the typical customer journey might be that they hear about it on a podcast and then two weeks later, they see an ad. And then a week later, one of their friends tells them something. And then they look at the website and they think about buying it, but they don't. And then, you know, they see another, it's just all over the place. So I came up with the idea of the pinball method. And the idea is that you flip the funnel on its head. So awareness is now at the bottom.

[00:26:50] Consideration, I've changed to engagement because for me, if you have a funnel of three stages, and I know some people might tag on advocacy as an afterthought, but, you know, let's be real. I think most people think of it in those three stages. But if you have three, consideration is essentially a salesy sort of stage. Conversion obviously is. So that's two thirds of the funnel that's just focused on getting people to do something. For me, I think the landscape's changed. So consideration is engagement.

[00:27:18] Actually having conversations, building relationships. Then it's conversion and then advocacy. And it's flipped so that it represents people falling back down. And, you know, for those who have played pinball, that's what pinball is, is that you're trying to desperately keep this ball in play and it keeps dropping and you keep trying to propel it up. And the idea is that this ball is going to bounce around. You need to create marketing strategies that accept that that's the case and build for that. Like, how do we keep this ball engaged?

[00:27:46] How do we keep it bouncing up the pinball machine? And we use it now at Giraffe and it's changed how we think about marketing and it's changed how we think about strategies because we're no longer sort of hiding from the reality of these people might not want to be marketed to. You know, we need to create value. Like, we need to have marketing that people want to consume rather than sort of assuming they will just fall through this funnel.

[00:28:14] So that's a pretty whistle-stop tour. But, yeah, that's my sort of philosophy is that I think we need to be moving more to pinball machines than funnels. Yeah, that's a brilliant analogy. And, yeah, the funnel definitely is – there's been a lot said about it. I think Joseph Jaffe, this is like more than a decade ago, I think he wrote a book called Flip the Funnel. So it's always in debate. I don't know that. I don't know that. Yeah, yeah. And he's – well, I think he's a Brit who moved to the U.S., if I'm not mistaken. But anyway, in the PR world, pretty famous.

[00:28:44] But, yeah. Yeah, so there's been a lot said and done. I mean, I use the funnel analogy because it's convenient. But I love the way that you talk about it there that has a lot of meaning and like the flippers and trying to shift the machine until you get caught is like, yeah, you need to keep reengaging in a meaningful way to keep that alive. And I think that's a really great analogy that has a lot of truth behind it. So, well done. You've given us a lot to think about.

[00:29:10] And when I started this podcast and I looked at our proposed title, we did have the word AI in the age of human-first marketing. So I'm curious, just getting back to that theme, everything we talked about here did not involve AI. And it's funny, I'm about to record a podcast episode myself saying that AI is not the only answer. Because I think a lot of marketers just think with AI, all their problems are going to be solved. And we know that's not the case.

[00:29:33] But where do you see human-first marketing going in the next few years as companies sort of double down on AI? Does this become an area where let's leave this untouched by AI, let's only use it for analysis, for insight? Or where do you see it or where do you, in draft social, where do you see yourselves using AI over the next few years? Yeah, I think over the next few years, I think one of the most important sort of currencies of marketing will be trust. And I think you could argue that's always been the case.

[00:30:03] But I think it's going to become even more the case when we have to start questioning whether that image is real, that caption was written by a person. And the more that happens, the more trust becomes important. So for me, human-first is the way forward because it's people. And really, when you strip it back, a business is just a group of people trying to provide value to another group of people.

[00:30:26] So if we sort of mess that up by just using AI all the way in between those two things, it's just going to be a disconnect. And I think the brands where there is still a human element will be the ones that succeed. In terms of how we will use AI? So there's some ideas we have at Giraffe. So we're not anti-AI. And we definitely use it in terms of analyzing data and these sorts of things.

[00:30:51] But I also think that there's potentially a world where you create virtual audiences to test content against. I think that's an interesting angle. So you're not using it to create the content. You're using it to test it. I think that's definitely an interesting position. And I think for agencies as well, there's other things that could be good in terms of sort of, and we're not even sure how this would work yet,

[00:31:19] but uploading everything to almost like a client ambassador where you can kind of test content against that as well to make sure it's on my brand. And it's like hitting all the key pillars and it can spot errors and these sorts of things. So yeah, I think AI is amazing. And I think it's obviously not going anywhere. It's just knowing where the lines are, where we need to draw those lines to make sure that we protect the human element of marketing. Because otherwise, what are we doing?

[00:31:48] I mean, if it's just, you know, AI marketers marketing to AI people buying products. I mean, it's just like, I don't know. It's a little bit depressing. Indeed, indeed. So it's all about avoiding the synthetic disconnect to summarize. I did want to ask you, as we're nearing the end here, you know, agency owners writing books. I think you're only the second person that I know of that's done that.

[00:32:14] So what sort of compelled you to write, you know, human first marketing, what we've been talking all about today? I'm a huge book nerd, as you can probably tell from my background. So I've been reading books, you know, nonfiction since I was about 14, 15 years old. And I've always had a dream to write a book. But I've never found a topic that I felt passionately enough about and I felt was original enough that I wouldn't just be regurgitating, you know, marketing books that I've read in the past.

[00:32:45] So when I started piecing together this framework for human first marketing, it occurred to me, this is a book. This is definitely, you know, something I could go away and spend a year, two years really researching. And I always say there's a bit of a selfish endeavor as well, because I might have had all of these ideas, but it was, you know, manic in terms of none of them connected. It was all just, yeah, I think this and I believe that and this we saw this worked.

[00:33:12] And so the book was a really nice way for me to kind of collate all of that into something slightly more coherent and less rambling. So it helped me sort of build a framework that not only helped me in terms of understanding what I think about marketing, but also informed the suite of services that we provide at Giraffe. Giraffe. And just generally, I hope is a vehicle for people to use marketing for good. Yeah. I mean, amazing. And this is not on Amazon.

[00:33:40] You'll see books that are very, very short, right? But this book, let me look at the page count. Yeah. And I write pretty long books as well, but what do we got here? I think it's like 400. Yeah. 400. So I'm going to estimate this is like 80,000 words, something like that. I think it ended up being 92,000 words. Yeah. That's brilliant. Yeah. Brilliant. Crazy. One of the two. I don't know. It was definitely longer than I intended it to be.

[00:34:09] And, you know, at the end, my editor had a conversation with me to say, this chapter about this pinball method. But this is a potentially another book. Maybe you should just take that out. But I think, you know, and I'm sure you're the same when you're writing that I've read a lot of books before that I think this is this could have been a blog post. This could have been, you know, something a lot shorter.

[00:34:32] So I was so desperate to just make sure it was crammed with value and insights and ideas that no one could feel shortchanged. And I probably got a bit carried away. But yeah, I'm proud of it. So I'm happy it's out there. And the reception's been great. Yeah, well done. I mean, it's just an example. Like, how long should a blog post be? How long should a video be? As long as you need to tell a story. And then there are some that, you know, I wrote a book on LinkedIn last year. It's like 15,000 words. But it's complete, right? I expanded to 30,000 words. But it's still complete.

[00:35:01] I don't feel compelled. Why write more when it's all there? So this is the thing is that, you know, most people will say to you that good writing is concise writing. So yeah, I know. I'll keep that in mind for my next book. Yeah, no, no. It could be 90,000 and concise. Yeah, vigorous writing is concise is my, yeah. Yeah. But anyone's teaching me. So final question, you know, we've sort of talked a lot about Giraffe Social and you mentioned your beginning. So what types of, for those that are listening, what types of clients are you, you know, do you serve the most?

[00:35:30] Do you work mainly with big brands or smaller businesses or everyone that needs help with your social media? Or where's the sweet spot so that listeners know whether they should be reaching out to you or not? Well, I'd encourage anyone to reach out on LinkedIn if they need any advice or want to, you know, discuss anything that we've covered. But with Giraffe, we predominantly work with quite established brands, quite large companies.

[00:35:51] And we're finding that at the moment, a lot of our work is with B2B, like big organizations, because yeah, Human First seems to almost work better for B2B because these are companies that have 700, 800 employees, right? So if you can find a way that these, they can get their team engaged in marketing, it's insanely powerful.

[00:36:16] The other big thing is that we have a lot of these companies that are coming to us because they want us to, to manage the sort of LinkedIn presence of their executive teams and help them create content. So that's another big sort of area of things we're doing at the moment. Yeah. Yeah. There's definitely a lot of that going around. So, well, excellent, Phil. Everyone listening, Phil's a great guy. When he says, if you have any questions about anything we talked about here, you know, hit me up on LinkedIn. He really means it. So I wouldn't be shy. Phil, thank you so much. You've been a wealth of, of inside knowledge.

[00:36:46] Obviously you've shared your, your story with the world through your book. Any sort of last things that we, we didn't talk about that you wanted to bring up before we go? No, I think really just thank you to you, Neil, because, you know, we've connected in the past and you've parted advice with me and, and you've always been so open and helpful. So yeah, just thank you to you really. Oh, not at all. It's, uh, it's all about raising, raising a level for all of us. Right.

[00:37:10] And, and then, you know, companies, customers win and people win and, and yeah, I'm on the human first marketing bandwagon myself. So, so thank you for carrying the torch and I look forward to seeing, uh, you know, hopefully I haven't been to London in a few years, but hopefully are you in London or are you outside? We're just, just, just south of London. Yeah. So if you're ever over, let me know. Well, yeah, we have one of my favorite Japanese soccer players, Mitoma plays in Brighton. So, uh, maybe on the way down there. Yeah. Well, there you go then. So I'm, I'm in Portsmouth. I'm just along from, from Brighton.

[00:37:40] Very good. All right. Looking forward to it. Thank you so much. Awesome. Thanks, Neil. All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did. You know, here's why I keep coming back to this conversation because it is a reminder that trust, it probably has always been, but we more and more realize that it is the most valuable currency in marketing. Especially with AI generated content flooding every channel.

[00:38:06] It's the brands that maintain the humanness, the personal brands as well, that maintain the humanness through their founders, their teams, their customers. Those are the businesses that will stand out and endure. Hey, if this episode resonated with you, or if any of my rep episodes resonate with you, I'd love for you to leave a review for me on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to this episode. It helps more marketers find the show and keeps these conversations going. If, well, you don't know how to do that.

[00:38:36] Feel free to ping me on the socials, neil at neilshafer.com. I can definitely help you out. And also thank you to Phil Trigas Evans for such a generous and thought provoking conversation. All right. There's a lot more episodes to record and publish to get out to you, to get caught up. So this is Neil Schaefer reminding you that I am your digital marketing coach, Neil Schaefer, and I am here to help you along your digital journey.

[00:39:01] Whether that digital journey is AI assisted or 100% human, I'm here for you. I can't wait for the next episodes. So I will see you next time. Once again, your digital marketing coach, Neil Schaefer signing off. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach. Questions, comments, requests, links, go to podcast.neilshafer.com.

[00:39:26] Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes at neilshafer.com to tap in to the 400 plus blog posts that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community. If you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your digital marketing coach.