Can you build Brand Advocacy in punchlines?

John Thornton thinks so. Kind of.

Verity sits down with Surreal's Senior Creative (and ex-Innocent wordsmith) to break down how brand voice becomes a business asset, how humour fuels loyalty, and why you should definitely check your QR codes before a campaign launch.

This isn’t another chat about tone of voice. It’s a behind-the-scenes on…

The truth about "funny" copy that drives action.
What most brands misunderstand about distinctiveness.
The forgotten value of comments, not campaigns.
Why authenticity is less about saying the right thing, and more about knowing your place (and being flexible on your fonts).

John shares the good, the bad, and the copy & collaborations that helped Surreal drive major awareness. Innocent, too. 

Whether you’re a brand builder, copywriter or just here for the laughs, there’s no fluff; just real talk from someone who knows how to make cereal & smoothies go viral.

 

Turn it up to learn:

• How to Create Copy that Converts, Sans-Corporate Feel: When the tone’s too polished, people scroll past. When it’s too offbeat, they don’t trust you. John shares how to strike the balance – writing copy that’s confident, irreverent, and still converts when it counts.
  
  
• The One Test John Uses to Decide if a Risky Idea is Actually Risky: If you want to get bold work signed off, use John’s litmus test: “What would the Daily Mail headline be?” If it’s not scandal-worthy, it’s probably just brave. Let’s break down how to push boundaries without blowing up trust, or approval chains.
  
  
• Why People Love Brands that Hire the “Idiot on Twitter”: It’s not about polish, it’s about presence. John explains why fast, scrappy, weirdly human replies build more loyalty than a year’s worth of branded templates. And why the best moments don’t need strategy decks; just someone funny with a login.
  
  
• The Difference Between Going Viral and Building Something That Lasts: Viral posts spike and fade. Advocacy sticks around. Together, John & Verity unpack how to turn attention into affinity, using humour and product to build content people choose to share – long after the algorithm moves on.
  
  

Listen. Laugh a bit. Rethink your brand copy.

 

Chapters:

03:10 – Meet John Thornton

07:00 – Why Self-Awareness Beats Tone Guidelines

09:10 – Innocent’s Process (and Freedom to Fail)

11:00 – Writing to Stand Out, Not Just Be Funny

12:50 – A Star Wars CV & Other Power Moves

14:10 – The Best Campaigns Are Barely Planned

15:40 – Defending ‘Vanity’ Metrics

16:30 – The Baked Bean Smoothie ft. Heinz

18:50 – Fonts, Risk & The Daily Mail Test

22:20 – Why Surreal Hides Its Humans

29:50 – Product Posts That Actually Get Shared

31:50 – Advocacy Is a Long Game

36:00 – Turning a Fail Into a Fan Moment

39:00 – The LoveHoney Collab Explained

 

Rate & review Building Brand Advocacy:

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Connect with John:

On John's LinkedIn

On Surreal’s LinkedIn

Via Surreal’s Website 

 

John Thornton [00:00:00]:

It's not about risk or like being shocking or rude like that. There's lots of ways to get attention which actually aren't very risky at all. Sometimes it's about realising what feels risky because you've worked in marketing for a while and what's actually risky. So like a test would have is just like, what would the headline look like in the Daily Mirror? What's the worst case scenario headline? I've done all sorts of shit where you just use Comic Sans instead of a brand font, right? There's no way the Daily Mail is going to write some hit piece about you for using Comic Sans. Like that just doesn't. Who cares? But that's the sort of thing where like new marketing people, oh, no, we've got to use a brand assets. God. And it's kind of like if you can't use Comic Sans once a while, they're not going to sign anything else off.

 

Paul Archer [00:00:50]:

Have you ever wondered why some brands grow exponentially, building legions of passionate fans that live and die by their logos and some, well, don't. I do all the time, and that's probably because I'm a massive brand nerd. But I believe there's a secret sauce at the core of every remarkable brand. A formula that sparks the growth of passionate communities of superfans, building a business and a reputation that will last for years to come. My name is Paul Archer and I'm a specialist in brand advocacy and word of mouth, having consulted for hundreds of brands on a topic.

 

Verity Hurd [00:01:24]:

Hey, it's Verity here, your co host of the Building Brand Advocacy podcast.

 

Paul Archer [00:01:28]:

In this podcast we tap into the greatest marketing minds in the world. They share the exact tactics and strategies used to build the world's greatest brands. Dropping actionable insights every brand builder can apply.

 

Verity Hurd [00:01:40]:

We've got some incredible guests coming up, sharing insights and tips that can truly shift the marketing landscape. If you want to be the first to hear, make sure you hit that follow button. The more people following the show, the bigger and better we can make it. So if you're loving what you hear, don't forget to follow and spread the word. Thanks again for listening. It really means a lot. I hope you enjoy this next episode.

 

Paul Archer [00:02:03]:

It's time to learn and Build Brand Advocacy.

 

Verity Hurd [00:02:06]:

Hi and welcome to today's episode of Building Brand Advocacy. I am joined by John Thornton, who senior creative at Surreal and also ex Innocent. But John, you have also been office Hottie.

 

John Thornton [00:02:21]:

I'm currently Office Hottie.

 

Verity Hurd [00:02:22]:

Office Hottie, the man behind every marketer's favourite content and a professional Mumbler.

 

John Thornton [00:02:28]:

Don't agree with the second last one. Professional Mumbler I'll take though. Yeah.

 

Verity Hurd [00:02:31]:

But yeah, today is gonna be a slightly different conversation than we usually have, but one that I think is very relevant today and I'm excited to get stuck in. Welcome, John.

 

John Thornton [00:02:39]:

Hi.

 

Verity Hurd [00:02:41]:

Do you wanna just give us a bit of an intro? Cause I get that Office Hottie and Professional Mumbler is probably not what you talk about on a day to day basis.

 

John Thornton [00:02:49]:

No, I might mumble about them. Yes. I worked at Innocence Movies for four years. I was a social media manager for three of them and then a copywriter for one of them. Turns out being a copywriter mainly just translating internal documents from corporate speak to human. Then I went to Surreal Serial. So I've been there for three years where I just sort of write about cereal.

 

Verity Hurd [00:03:11]:

Nice. Okay, let's get stuck in. So what do you think separates great copy that makes people laugh from great copy that makes them want to advocate?

 

John Thornton [00:03:21]:

I think there's probably not much of a separation. I mean it's maybe like context and it's also, it's maybe not so much about the actual copy, it's maybe more about the idea behind it. So, you know, I think if you, if it's funny copy on a website, you're maybe not gonna tell anyone about it. You'll just sort of enjoy it. Where if it's like if there's a big idea behind it, they've done something weird and wonderful. For instance, the. When Oatley did that sort of website about all their fuck ups.

 

Verity Hurd [00:03:49]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

John Thornton [00:03:49]:

That was like that, that wasn't just copy, that was like ideas. I think that maybe the idea is more what you tell someone about rather than the copy.

 

Verity Hurd [00:03:58]:

Yeah. And what do you think? For you, obviously this is your bread and butter. You're living and breathing it. What does a brand voice mean to you? Like where does it start?

 

John Thornton [00:04:07]:

I don't really know where it starts or stops. I mean for starters, I feel like half these brands, which sort of like you read any kind of job description for copywriting and be like, oh, protecting our distinctive tone of voice. And 95% of those brands do not have a distinctive tone of voice. But yeah, I kind of. I also think where does it start and stop? Because I. It kind of or can almost vary between different contexts. So basically it's surreal. The closest someone is to a checkout, the less likely I am to have written something silly, whether that's digitally online on the website.

 

John Thornton [00:04:38]:

Like I could write all sorts of silly things on the page where you edit your credit card details. You might not want me to be taking a piss on my credit card page, so probably wouldn't convert so. Well, if you're sort of making it sound dodgy. Similar same in a Sainsbury's or whatever. In that little. You pay money to have a little shelf bark. They're called just little things stuck on the shelf by you. You just want to be landing the sort of key messages there rather than doing some sort of weird meta nonsense.

 

John Thornton [00:05:06]:

Sadly. Although to be fairly, I have seen them do some quite weird meta nonsense at shelf and it does work for them. But equally like you see brands like all the Fast food brands, KFC, McDonald's, Burger King, their social media is very silly. But you go into any of those stores, they're not doing that stuff. It's buy burger. And I think is what they say.

 

Verity Hurd [00:05:27]:

Well, I'd really like to see the chicken dance when I go into a kfc. Where's that? I mean, that's a great routine. Okay, so surreal. Innocent. There are two very strong brand voices and I think a lot that a lot of brands sort of like look up to in a way. What is your best piece of advice for creating a brand voice, especially one that resonates really deeply.

 

John Thornton [00:05:50]:

So I think what do I do? I probably do the opposite of what you meant to do. I feel like they tell you to sort of, you know, you start with who's the audience, who you want to reach, what do they care about, what's true and all this stuff. I normally just kind of like write a few jokes and then reverse engineer it from there. So. Oh, these lines are. I don't know. To be honest, I could just do the same type of voiceover. Punchy, human, some of the word.

 

John Thornton [00:06:16]:

And then you just be like, oh, this is what I mean by punchy. Then I think the resonates thing, I think it's. There's got to be a level of self awareness. And that self awareness is basically like you're not the be all and end all. I think that's kind of the difference. Which you'll sort of sometimes see that. So maybe rhinos, like maybe now the best example where they're not pretending to be luxury. Right.

 

John Thornton [00:06:42]:

They're accepting that they're the budget option. And yeah, so I think that kind of thing where you like at innocent. There was a rule that you. I don't love these sections in the tone of voice where it's like we say this word, not that word. Innocent. One was very Small. But they said, like they say tasty, not delicious. Because it's just like a bit more normal, isn't it? Even more so like surreal where like protein products are not.

 

John Thornton [00:07:03]:

We're tasty for a protein product, but it's not like a Michelin star meal. Right? And so not talking about it as if it's a Michelin star meal, just being aware of sort of, you know, being a bowl of cereal.

 

Verity Hurd [00:07:17]:

I wanted to. I believe I saw somewhere that at innocent because it's such a distinctive tone of voice. Like when you sort of go into that team and you, you know, it go. You have a certain sort of like rigorous process to be able to even write comments on the brand's page because you've got to get it right. You can't just land this brand voice and then someone comes in and starts not talking like that. Is that. Was that true? Is there.

 

John Thornton [00:07:43]:

I mean, there's some truth in that. I think we were pretty. I'm pretty sure I was writing comments on my first day, second day. It's more because like just for you to get there, you've been through some rigorous interview and whatnot. So they've got to have some belief and it's more. They were rigorous throughout the time there to maintain. So we used to have a monthly meeting, all people on social where and customer service because there's a lot of overlap. Some of them would handle comments one day, customer service another day.

 

John Thornton [00:08:11]:

But my boss would just pick a handful of random comments here, tweets there, emails from here, just sort of a random selection. She said it was random. I think she probably picked some of them for a reason. But then we'd all just sit, read through them and debate them and be. This thing was really good. This thing was. How could we improve that? This bit was maybe not quite right and things like that. So it was more.

 

John Thornton [00:08:37]:

It was less about before you get there, it was more about whilst you're there, like maintaining. Which I think is good because I think there has to be a bit of freedom and trust and I think those are quite important. And if you make it this sort of like, oh, you can't put a comma wrong kind of situation and you're going to be a bit nervous and you're not going to do good work.

 

Verity Hurd [00:08:56]:

So I suppose, like, I mean, you're a comedian as well, amateur comedian. I feel like you're gonna follow on from that.

 

John Thornton [00:09:04]:

No.

 

Verity Hurd [00:09:06]:

Obviously for you it kind of comes natural, I expect. I'm guessing that you don't put that you need to have comedian experience to kind of get into this role of work. How do you kind of like develop that? I mean, obviously I appreciate there's like a bit of a process like you've just mentioned, but like what do you look for in someone that's kind of joining the team?

 

John Thornton [00:09:30]:

Yeah, so it's less. Yeah, it's less about like core comedy. Like you don't really need to know how to like land a punch. Well, you didn't. I would like you to know how to land the punchline. But it's more. I think what's more important is like stand out. Cause you're not, you're not writing zingers.

 

John Thornton [00:09:45]:

You're not trying to sound like Chandler Bing. You're more trying to stand out. So like a lot of the big campaigns you'll see, they're not exactly comedy comedy, like zinger, zinger, zinger. But they stand out. They sort of know how to get attention in a relevant way. I think those are the two things. So like in a job application or something, if it's two A4 sheets of paper in time for New Roman, very low chance that that's going to be the one. Whereas if it's like, I don't know, I never used this cv.

 

John Thornton [00:10:16]:

The CV I use is like Star wars themed just because you got to have a niche.

 

Verity Hurd [00:10:19]:

I just lost that.

 

John Thornton [00:10:20]:

But I did briefly for Wild Toy with a just like a poo themed one. And it's just gonna be like, oh, do you like hot stuff? And I'm just gonna use the word and like talk about how I give a. And all this stuff and just have a big picture for poo. Just cause you need to stand out. And it's also, it's a good vetting process as well. I think if you go quite far, like the whole style. When I switched to van, so just a normal cv, if someone wasn't lying to me, I was like, well, we probably wouldn't have gotten anywhere.

 

Verity Hurd [00:10:49]:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I like that. Vetting the brands that aren't gonna get you as well as them vetting you. I love it. That's great. I really wanna see the Pooh themed series.

 

John Thornton [00:11:01]:

Yeah, I never did it. Maybe I will one day.

 

Verity Hurd [00:11:05]:

Okay, so you, you, I mean you've had some great serial endorsements. Like obviously Michael Jordan, Dolce and Banana. Dolce and Banana. That's how you say it, right?

 

John Thornton [00:11:17]:

I actually don't know how the original brand's pronounced.

 

Verity Hurd [00:11:21]:

In terms of campaigns. What's the campaign that shouldn't have Worked.

 

John Thornton [00:11:24]:

But did one that shouldn't have worked, but did I think anything. What has been crapped out in the space of an hour and gone live. So some of our LinkedIn carousels are literally like, I'm like behind on my numbers this month, end of a month, tomorrow, just need some numbers. And then it's like I did one, it was like I just put a picture of a dog and put text over the dog so you couldn't fully see the dog. And I was like, oh, this is a very strategic dog. And the more you read it, the more I just revealed that I just desperately needed you to view this post to get my numbers up and I wasn't showing you the dog to bring you through it. So I think that kind of thing. We did one when we launched in Sainsbury's where I deleted a tweet saying we'd launched in Sainsbury's just so I could then release a statement saying we deleted a tweet.

 

John Thornton [00:12:11]:

Which when the company's like, oh, we've deleted a tweet. You're like, juicy. Someone did a naughty. And again, it's just an advert.

 

Verity Hurd [00:12:18]:

Yeah.

 

John Thornton [00:12:18]:

So you're just tricking people. I guess it shouldn't work. They should have higher standards for what they consume, but they don't.

 

Verity Hurd [00:12:25]:

And have you ever regretted a campaign because it succeeded?

 

John Thornton [00:12:29]:

Campaign because it succeeded? Don't think so. I'm very. Just gimme those numbers, you know, what are those numbers?

 

Verity Hurd [00:12:36]:

I'm intrigued. Like, what is it that sort of like, you know, when we talk about sort of like brand voice and you know, people are resonating with the brand voice, like what is it that you're kind of measuring?

 

John Thornton [00:12:46]:

Oh yeah, I don't measure that stuff. Just likes, shares, retweets, views.

 

Verity Hurd [00:12:50]:

Interesting.

 

John Thornton [00:12:52]:

Well, some would call vanity metrics.

 

Verity Hurd [00:12:53]:

Yeah, I was gonna say that is. Yeah.

 

John Thornton [00:12:57]:

Okay, maybe I'm very vain. But no, it's like ultimately, presumably most of the time you're going to be using organic social for kind of awareness.

 

Verity Hurd [00:13:06]:

Yeah.

 

John Thornton [00:13:07]:

And so awareness. A lot of people seeing you. So views, the way to get views is through people engaging with it, likes, comments, shares. So I actually think all those numbers are perfectly defendable numbers to it's awareness.

 

Verity Hurd [00:13:19]:

Right.

 

John Thornton [00:13:20]:

Yeah. I think there's got to be a level of like, it's got to ladder back to product and brand in some way. It can't. Like, you know, I could just post those bloody Minecraft videos, probably get some views. It's not actually doing anything for brand. So there's got to be a bear brand in there, but it doesn't.

 

Verity Hurd [00:13:35]:

Yeah, there's got to be some strategic element behind it. And obviously, John, you've been behind some viral moments and obviously there's a. There's a creative process that must go behind those as well. Like, if you were to break it down in. I know, you know, not, you know, this big thing, we don't have to go viral, but deep down we all want. We all want our moment. If you were to break it down in three steps, what would you say that is in terms of creating a viral post?

 

John Thornton [00:14:02]:

So I think there's only been one time I've tried and purposefully managed to create a viral post. And it wasn't the most viral, but it was the most planned. Like, this could do the numbers and it did do the numbers. So at Innocent, we were launching this, they were calling it a breakfast smoothie. It had like, oats, cinnamon in it. It was higher fibre, whatever. And so they wanted us to talk about oats and cinnamon and fibre and vitamins, none of which are particularly interesting. But we were sort of just brainstormed out of each one.

 

John Thornton [00:14:32]:

Didn't get very far. Brainstormed out of breakfast, landed on other sorts of breakfast, landed on baked beans. Then we were like, okay, what if we do a baked bean smoothie? So then we're like, we'll just pretend we're launching two breakfast smoothies. One will be the real one, one will be this baked bean monstrosity. We mocked it up to look suspiciously similar to Heinz. Then actually someone had a contact there, got Hines on board. So even better as then we just tweeted it out, which really well got. I think got like 1 or 2 million views.

 

John Thornton [00:15:03]:

So pretty good numbers. But also when I pitched it in like I'd had. This is of almost a perfect way to pitch it, in my opinion, because I didn't. So I would say that. But it was like I was just. Because it's hard to prove to people these things are going to work right, because you've not done it. And the senior people just like, they just like data. But so it was like we just got a bunch of examples of, like, weird food products where they'd done really well on social, like Northern Monk Aunt Bessie Beer had got like a gazillion shares.

 

John Thornton [00:15:37]:

They did a roast dinner Beer. That was the most northern thing you can think of.

 

Verity Hurd [00:15:42]:

I don't know. I'm a Yorkshire girl in that.

 

John Thornton [00:15:44]:

Where from? York past Yorkshire girl. But so, yeah, we got all these fake foods at work, and which maybe, like, maybe sounded slightly disgusting, but clearly everyone had liked. So that's kind of like that element works. Then literally people using the same mechanic. Heinz had done one before, actually, with a ketchup and a mayo thing, where it was like the fake one and the real one next to each other, just so the real one can get seen. And then when I was a kid, there was this Facebook group called Beans in Places Beans shouldn't be. And it had things like a wall clock filled with beans, a croc shoe filled with beans. That group always had a gazillion views, so literally had just a slide with like, weird food plus baked beans or weird food equals views.

 

John Thornton [00:16:29]:

Baked beans equals food. This is just weird food plus baked beans. So it should equal views. And it did equal views. No other time before or since has that process worked. But that was the dream process.

 

Verity Hurd [00:16:42]:

And you mentioned it sort of like you had a bit of a pitch and obviously, like you said, it's not always easy. I think something that we're seeing now is, like, a lot more brands want to be a bit more destructive in their brand voice. And I think the comment section is becoming a place where they're sort of like, testing things out. But before we touch on that, what would be your advice for brands that want to kind of start pushing boundaries a bit more, that want to start showing personality a bit more? Like, where do they start?

 

John Thornton [00:17:10]:

The ideal place to start is almost like the top and it coming from the top and Ben wanting that culture, because then when you're showing them the ideas, they're ones who's got to be like, yes, let's do that. And I mean, there's got to be an acceptance of, like, risk and there's going to be failure and sometimes it might blow up in your face and you've got to accept that you're all cool with that going in and so then you're cool with that while it happens, because otherwise it's just gonna be a shit show. And then. And it's not actually people. I've just used the word risk about four times, but it's not about risk or, like, being shocking or rude like that. I think there's lots of ways to get attention, which actually aren't very risky at all. Sometimes it's about realising what feels risky because you've worked in marketing for a while and what's actually risky. So, like, a test will have is just like, what would the headline look like in the Daily Mirror? A male.

 

John Thornton [00:18:09]:

Well and even. But, like, what's the worst case scenario headline. So, like, I've done all sorts of where you used to use Comic Sans instead of a brand fund. Right. There's no way the Daily Mail is going to write some hit piece about you for using Comic Sans. Like that just doesn't. Who cares? But that's the sort of thing where like senior marketing people. Oh, no, we've got to use a brand assets.

 

John Thornton [00:18:29]:

God.

 

Verity Hurd [00:18:29]:

Yeah.

 

John Thornton [00:18:29]:

And it's kind of like if you can't use Comic Sans once a while, they're not going to sign anything else off. I think it's also showing, just taking loads of case studies, I think now that, like across the broad board. So I think you mentioned Curry's earlier, like their TikTok, which is not. I mean, like it performs really well, especially because they actually get product in there a lot. And I've seen them do great things about like a sale where it's like the rarest. Like, that's the real sweet spot where you're actually talking about, like business shit and yet doing numbers. But, you know, prior to that, you'd never have associated Curries as like a sort of particularly standout brand. Like some of the museums who even like 10 years ago were amazing on Twitter and just kind of getting across the board, like, you can find some good B2B software brands.

 

John Thornton [00:19:16]:

You can find this about just being like. Doesn't really matter what industry these ones from just having a bit of fun. It's more about like fun than like being like shocking.

 

Verity Hurd [00:19:25]:

Yeah.

 

John Thornton [00:19:26]:

These guys do numbers, do way more numbers compared to their competitors in all sorts of different industries. So we would do more numbers than our competitors if we did this strategy.

 

Verity Hurd [00:19:37]:

Yeah, it's such a hard one to get right. I think a lot of people want a bit more humour and like you said that fun part and I think just. Yeah, I think it's just such a hard thing to get right. And with the Curry Singh, I mean, there's a lot of their employees in that, isn't there? And I think with you guys at Surreal, we don't always see your face. I don't always see the team. Is that. Is that something we can expect? Do you think that would add the next element to kind of the brand voice or do you think it's exactly where it needs to be behind?

 

John Thornton [00:20:07]:

Yeah, it's a weird one. So when we were at Innocent, we showed a lot of people's faces a lot. I think that was really good because it. I don't think there was a bigger company showing faces that much. Like, these brands are much bigger. But Nike, Adidas, McDonald's, they don't show any faces, right? Except maybe, like, McDonald's might show a staff member in, like, one of those. Like, there's something really corporate, but they're not just kind of showing, like, around the office vibes. So that helped Innocent, which was a big company, feel really small and friendly, whereas at Surreal.

 

John Thornton [00:20:40]:

Part of our strategy from literally, like, day one was to just sort of act bigger than we actually were and try and give off the vibe of. It's not just four of us sat around and so that's just kind of stuck. And also we're all ugly mingers, so why would we. Why would we put our pictures up?

 

Verity Hurd [00:21:00]:

You're office hottie.

 

John Thornton [00:21:01]:

Exactly. That shows you. If I'm the office hottie, how bad must. My other day.

 

Verity Hurd [00:21:06]:

Okay, I want to go back to sort of the comment section, because, like I said, it's been a big conversation and more and more brands are trying to get in there, like I said, to show their personality. Do you guys have at sort of, like, a strategy around, like, the comment section? Because I think a lot of brands are actually starting to build tactical moves around how they get in there and what they say and how they show up there.

 

John Thornton [00:21:31]:

Yeah, I guess there's almost two comment sections. There's your own comment section, and there's all sorts of other comment sections. Own comment section. Yeah. I think the. The great thing about the own comment section is that's the chance to show, like, really show how human you are to people. Because when you're replying to someone with something just, like, funny and natural off the cuff, within two minutes of them leaving that comment, they know it's not some agency with 15 people working. They know it's like one person just having a bit of fun.

 

John Thornton [00:22:02]:

And I think that really, like, people really like that feeling. That's, like, big part of Innocent was, like, built in that feeling of it. It's just like this company clearly just hires this idiot to sit on Twitter. How fun is that? So that's that one. So that is almost just. The strategy is just show it's human, show it's creative. Like, show it's not written by a fucking AI Chatbot. And then the other comments, I've never really gone into other.

 

John Thornton [00:22:29]:

Just left comments on other things. It sort of wasn't a thing when I was Innocent. I think we probably. If I was still there, we probably would talk about it. Because you're a big brand, you get lots of views it's real. We've not really done it because don't have time. It's like a resource thing. We're really small team.

 

John Thornton [00:22:48]:

Whereas these brands where they have multiple people as part of a social team, they probably can find time. I see some people, yeah. On LinkedIn they'll screenshot and be like, oh, whatever, the top 10 comments are all from these brands and oh, it's shitting, whatever. But in the, you'll see the comments have got like 2000 likes. Like people like it and like 2000 likes is good numbers. So yeah, I don't think it's that deep. It's not a bit like if people didn't like it, they wouldn't like it kind of thing. It's not.

 

John Thornton [00:23:16]:

I suppose the downside to. To it is. And this is maybe the most businessy.

 

Verity Hurd [00:23:22]:

Thing, I'll say exclusive here, guys.

 

John Thornton [00:23:25]:

Well, you can't measure it so you can't put it in. You can measure the likes but you can't measure reviews, which is ultimately a thing I like, I normally get judged on. So you can't put it in your spreadsheet at the end of the month? You can sort of put it. You can kind of half put it or if you can show that it's like it's helping your followers, whatever. Maybe sometimes there might, might be ways to show it and just because you can't show it that it's doing something doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. It's just, it's more like the boss might be like, is this doing anything? Yeah, but yeah, I don't know there's anything. It's not like. I think it's like a nice to have basically.

 

John Thornton [00:23:58]:

I don't think it's going to like change.

 

Verity Hurd [00:24:01]:

Move the needle.

 

John Thornton [00:24:02]:

Move the needle. It might move like a tiny bit. It's not going to, you know, you doing something off your own channel is going to move it more.

 

Verity Hurd [00:24:10]:

John. Right. If you were to start a new brand today and had to build the foundation of community only through organic copy, what would you do?

 

John Thornton [00:24:19]:

Yes, I guess that's actually similar to. That's kind of a. The task at Surreal. I think one of the first things I do it was one of the things we did. Things we did at Surreal is one of the first things first you did. It's maybe where I got the inspiration. You have a dating app, just a very cheeky campaign, winking very heavily at your big name competitors. I think it was for a start.

 

John Thornton [00:24:43]:

I think it's just a. I Guess it's not just organic. I did. We just did it organically but further did it in real life. But you a. You look and seem big if you've even just a few very tactical billboards. But it just. It's so easy to be like if you anchor yourself to those things.

 

John Thornton [00:25:03]:

It's maybe not a good tactic when you're bigger, but when you're small there's nothing to lose. It's just been like were this thing but better and it's such a. It's like day one kind of thing.

 

Verity Hurd [00:25:15]:

And what's one. What's one change any marketer could make tomorrow to start writing for advocacy, not just engagement.

 

John Thornton [00:25:25]:

The self awareness thing I mentioned or. Yeah, I mean, I think the two are almost. I can't remember a word. Inextricably. No linked. But they're very intertwined. I think it's very hard to actually. I think.

 

John Thornton [00:25:42]:

Yeah. The other thing I think you can do is. So we saw this a lot innocence where most of the time, most of our content, it was just about getting views. It'd be talking about the weather or dogs or Eurovision or whatever, which have nothing to do with smoothies. And sometimes it could do really good numbers. But the tweet would die overnight, it would not be shared the next day. It'd be forgotten and no one would like a month later be like, oh, do you remember this thing? And then we found when we did something really ridiculous about product, like if you just did like an average tweet about product, it'd do fuck all. It'd do worse than the weather stuff, which is why we mostly did weather stuff.

 

John Thornton [00:26:14]:

But when you absolutely nailed it, that stuff would live for a long time and it would get shared for a long time and then people would be like, oh, do you remember this thing? So it'd keep coming back. So having. I mean sometimes when you're like on social whatever, you just want fun and you just want numbers and actually having a little bit more like people, basically, people respect really good adverts. Like not. I think basically if it's like a four star tweet or social post, just generally it'll do really well from a brand. The four star one will do slightly worse. But if it's like, if it's a four star advert it'll do worse. But if it's a five star advert then it'll.

 

John Thornton [00:26:54]:

People will just like, that's actually a really good advert and they actually enjoy that and they can recognise that and share and that's where people really like it.

 

Verity Hurd [00:27:02]:

Yeah. And that's what gets people talking. Yeah, yeah. With their mates in the pub.

 

John Thornton [00:27:07]:

Yeah, sometimes.

 

Verity Hurd [00:27:07]:

Okay, what's one thing that like you think creatives get wrong when it comes to building advocacy?

 

John Thornton [00:27:15]:

I don't know if it's creatives I think. And you've got to properly, truly care about the customers and not just see them as like, you've got to see them as people and you want to do right by them and not just see them as numbers who contribute to your numbers going up. So I think that was the thing that innocent were like best at more so than like tone of voice, just like really caring about customers. And the. I don't think the customer service team ever measured how many clicks it was to resolve something. They did measure response time and things like that because that's part of a good experience. But it wasn't like how do we shut everything down as quickly as possible? It was like how do we make sure everyone has the best experience possible even if it takes longer? And they were like the best at surprise and delight and sending random things to people and all that stuff.

 

Verity Hurd [00:28:10]:

Yeah.

 

John Thornton [00:28:10]:

And so then I think, yeah. Another part of building advocacy is accepting it's a long term thing, not a short term thing. And it's like invest in where you're gonna have to wait five years for it to really pay off. But it will compound so much. And so again like the comments thing, if you do like five really unique comments a day to people, that's 25 a week. That is 1255 years. 7250.

 

Verity Hurd [00:28:46]:

I'm so glad you, you weren't going to ask me to do that for you.

 

John Thornton [00:28:49]:

And so actually that's not as big a number as I was hoping for. I should have chosen a bigger number to start with but you know, it kind of, it does build up over time to suddenly that's quite a lot of people who feel like they've had a very unique one on one experience.

 

Verity Hurd [00:28:59]:

Yeah. I mean it's a flywheel that. Do you find that you're, do you find that the way you kind of the personality and the brand voice that you've got, do you feel that that inspires people to be more open to give you feedback? Do you find that through, through socials and through the comments?

 

John Thornton [00:29:18]:

I think when, when people like a brand and care about it, they are more likely to tell you their honest opinion then about something you've done, whether there's positive or negative feedback. Yeah. I mean you can look at some supermarket brands. Right. Where. Oh God, here's an example. The Napolina canned tomatoes.

 

Verity Hurd [00:29:44]:

Interesting.

 

John Thornton [00:29:45]:

If. Can you imagine sort of either being outraged or delighted by a business decision they make? Maybe not. Whereas like, yeah, innocent people would be sort of outraged or delighted depending on.

 

Verity Hurd [00:30:01]:

Okay, John, you make all of this look really easy. How do you keep the trust intact when the tone is disruptive?

 

John Thornton [00:30:10]:

The trust with like leaders or with audience? Both leaders, I guess it's them getting bought in early days. Like, this is why we're doing this. This is why we're messing about. This is why we're changing the fonts. Because over time it leads to good results and short term there's actually no actual risk. And then with customers. Yeah, again, it's like it's choosing where and when and it's known when and then to be a bit silly. So there was one we did at the start of the year.

 

John Thornton [00:30:42]:

We had honestly one of the most embarrassing fuck ups we've ever had where we'd. We were doing this campaign with a gym where you scan our box and you get a free trial at this gym. And we fucking. No one in the business checked the QR code.

 

Verity Hurd [00:30:55]:

I was gonna say it's the wrong one, right?

 

John Thornton [00:30:57]:

Yeah. So just the fucking first image off Google Images, when you search QR code, it takes you to the Wikipedia page. Four QR codes. Someone had put in a placeholder. Literally no one checked it. But then I was like, well, this is really funny. This is a good way to talk about the campaigns. We talked about it.

 

John Thornton [00:31:13]:

Whenever you talk about business per se, people just really like it. So we talked about it. Performed really well. Way better than any other way we could have talked about the campaign. So it was really good. I can guarantee you if you pitch that to some corporate people and be like, oh, we can't show it. We might like can't show. You know, they would.

 

John Thornton [00:31:29]:

Especially in food and drink, they'd be like, oh, if you're being. If people know we're sort of. We don't check that. What will they think about allergies? What will they think about this and that? And you kind of have to trust that people aren't gonna jump through all those hoops. And like this campaign we've seen, I think it's been our most viewed post this year. Yeah, A couple of million views. One person left a comment being like, oh, I have allergies. I'm now a bit worried as now I just replied to him being like, hey, the manufacturing people are smart and know what they're doing, this is our marketing people.

 

John Thornton [00:31:58]:

They're idiots. And like, being like, those are two separate things. Don't worry. They came back and they're like, cool, Great. I feel reassured. So. Yeah, there you go.

 

Verity Hurd [00:32:07]:

I remember seeing that. Did you recently do sex toys in the cereal as well?

 

John Thornton [00:32:11]:

Yeah.

 

Verity Hurd [00:32:12]:

What was that around about?

 

John Thornton [00:32:14]:

Well, you used to get toys and cereal, right?

 

Verity Hurd [00:32:16]:

Yeah.

 

John Thornton [00:32:16]:

And we're growing up cereal, so. Growing up toys, adult toys, vibrators.

 

Verity Hurd [00:32:21]:

Love it.

 

John Thornton [00:32:22]:

Plus it was a. We were launching a honey flavour.

 

Verity Hurd [00:32:24]:

Yeah.

 

John Thornton [00:32:25]:

Big old dildo brand called Love Honey.

 

Verity Hurd [00:32:27]:

Yeah.

 

John Thornton [00:32:28]:

Plus, you know, every cereal ends with like O's, so generic cereal ends with O's. It all just kind of. Oh, yeah. Multiple good reasons to do it again.

 

Verity Hurd [00:32:37]:

You make it sound so simple and easy.

 

John Thornton [00:32:41]:

I thought that one was kind of just on a plate. It kind of writes itself. We'd had. We'd. We'd been planning the honey flavour for like two years. It'd taken a while to get right. Me and my colleague Ruth had had the pitch deck ready for two years. And then like, Love Honey I.

 

John Thornton [00:32:56]:

Because they're so hot on pr, they. I think it was like the smoothest, like, most enthusiastic we've ever had, like a collab pitch go. Like, they were super up for it. They were super easy to work with. They sort of recognised. Yeah. It's just a fun campaign. Yeah.

 

John Thornton [00:33:12]:

That was quite straightforward as these things go.

 

Verity Hurd [00:33:14]:

It was great. And other than yourselves, what brand is really standing out at the moment? Who else is doing this? Who else has got a brand voice that you think is really resonating with their audience and really killing it in this space?

 

John Thornton [00:33:28]:

I think Pure Sport recently have done some great activations at the marathon and the hackney half and things like that. And I'd not really heard about them before, but they've sort of. I mean, they look really. I don't know, I have no idea how big they are, but they look. I don't know, something about their font just makes them look like they could be like a 30 year old brand that I've just been sleeping on. I realised that Monzo have made a page for an employee, a fictional employee.

 

Verity Hurd [00:33:59]:

I've not seen that.

 

John Thornton [00:34:00]:

It's called Greg at Monzo. I think he used to appear in like some of their jokes.

 

Verity Hurd [00:34:04]:

Yeah.

 

John Thornton [00:34:06]:

Anyway, like, it's a kind of similar innocent. We'd sometimes have just like fictional members of staff we'd sort of talk about and they'd become like running jokes. They've actually made a page for it, which I think is great. We actually, once Innocent, we got banned from our own LinkedIn account, like the social team, for a little while. So having a. Setting up, like an employee, one or one from like the marketing department was something we talked about to get around it, but we didn't actually do. So I like that they've actually done it.

 

Verity Hurd [00:34:30]:

How did you get banned?

 

John Thornton [00:34:32]:

We were just having too much fun and there was a lot of internal politics and the HR team thought that LinkedIn was like their channel. We thought LinkedIn was our channel. We lost that argument.

 

Verity Hurd [00:34:43]:

It's an interesting conversation, though, in terms of, I think particularly now what brands are using LinkedIn for. I think has massively changed and I think it is very much more sits in the marketing function.

 

John Thornton [00:34:58]:

Well, you can. I think that's a bit like, as a whole, people were just like, yeah, not using it. Innocent had like 100,000 followers. Their post would get like 12 likes because the HR team had written it. And then my. My boss, Anna, who was like, we should be using this with a social team.

 

Verity Hurd [00:35:17]:

Yeah.

 

John Thornton [00:35:17]:

And then literally, like, take a Facebook post which had a thousand likes stick on LinkedIn, it'd get 4,000 likes just because it would stand out on LinkedIn. And then when we actually tweaked it to be like, more like just putting a couple of extra business jokes, it perform even better. And then the HR team got crossed and said, we're being silly. And the leaders were like, yeah, yeah, LinkedIn should be sensible and serious. Well, winners and fucking smoothies. What are you talking about? Which wasn't the most persuasive argument I've come up with somewhere to rein it in quite a lot. But no, yeah, I mean, you can. Or people, like, think, like, they're like, oh, it's only marketers who are reading it.

 

John Thornton [00:35:50]:

No, it's not, mate. Like, you can literally scroll down, you can see who's liked it. You can read a job title. They work in sales.

 

Verity Hurd [00:35:55]:

Yeah.

 

John Thornton [00:35:56]:

Getting angry, like, with, hey, stuff again. It's like, people are people, like people on LinkedIn still have to like, drink drinks and eat breakfast. And it's your toilet paper company still to wipe their ass, like, you know, so why not. Why not sell toilet paper on them?

 

Verity Hurd [00:36:12]:

John, this has been great. Thank you so much. A very different conversation. One that I've absolutely loved. Laughed a lot. Thank you so much.

 

John Thornton [00:36:20]:

I mean, all of us.

 

Verity Hurd [00:36:21]:

If anyone wanted to get in contact with you, where would they find you?

 

John Thornton [00:36:25]:

I'm on LinkedIn, obviously. Just search my name, John. And I'm on Instagram Fawnjohnton that's about it.

 

Verity Hurd [00:36:34]:

Awesome.

 

John Thornton [00:36:34]:

Or I live in Crouch Hill. Phone number begins with a seven.

 

Verity Hurd [00:36:41]:

Thank you so much.

 

John Thornton [00:36:42]:

Thanks.

 

Paul Archer [00:36:44]:

That was another episode of Building Brand Advocacy, the world's top brand building podcast. To find out more about Building Brand Advocacy and how this podcast is part of a bigger plan for our Brand Building Cookbook, then make sure to search for Building Brand Advocacy in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or anywhere else that podcasts are fine. And make sure that you click subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. Thanks to Juul for sponsoring. To find out more, go to ww.dual.tech. That's D U E L dot TE C H and on behalf of the team here at Building Brand Advocacy, thanks for listening.