How VOLY is driving impactful customer experience
Josh Peacock, Head of Marketing at VOLY, sits down with host Mark Jones to share how the instant grocery delivery startup is building a community of customers.
There’s quintessential grocery pairings, whether it’s grabbing a loaf of bread with your milk, or more recently, scrambling for toilet paper and hand sanitiser. But “Huggies and Pinot” might be one of the most incongruous combinations so far.
For Josh Peacock, Head of Marketing at VOLY - an instant grocery delivery business using e-bikes in the Sydney area - the proof of the pairing was in the data pudding.
"There's a data trend around particular products being ordered together. An example is Huggies and Pinot wine. Which makes sense if you really think about it,” Josh says.
Josh believes VOLY’s investment in data has been key to connecting with their customers. If they can understand ordering behaviour and trends, including the items customers are purchasing together, they can optimise the overall experience.
“We're not a traditional supermarket – we're not open to the public. So, we don't need to have those things on two aisles miles apart,” Josh says. “If we're seeing the data showing us that those things are being ordered frequently together, we can actually design our dark stores and our fulfilment centres, so we have those next to each other from a pick and packing perspective.”
This insight has a significant impact on VOLY’s mandate of ultrafast delivery times. “If you are trying to measure things in nanoseconds, you need to kind of get down to that level where you can shave off a few seconds,” Josh says.
“We are heading towards an instant attention economy, but it's also an instant need economy,” Josh says. “So, if you can grab people's attention, drive a moment of commerce in that, and then sort of be there within a few minutes at someone's door, that's incredibly exciting.”
Josh and VOLY are creating an impactful customer experience throughout the entire process from the packing room to the front door.
“We are really actively trying to go green and be sustainable, and really lean into what's a core part of our operation and logistics but make that a part of the brand as well,” Josh says.
"Our people is our product. Our people will determine the brand that people want to ultimately buy into, and our people will determine the culture and everything else that flows off the back of that.”
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The CMO Show production team
Producers – Candice Witton & Dylan Hayley Rosenthal
Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr
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[Transcript]
Participants:
Host: Mark Jones
Guest: Josh Peacock
Mark Jones:
There’s an old saying goes: 'You don't get a second chance to make a good first impression' And according to research, people make eleven decisions about us in the first seven seconds of contact.
That’s interesting when we think about today’s instant attention economy.
Brands need to grab attention and drive a moment of instant commerce. So how do you create an impression in those first few nanoseconds?
To start with, it never hurts to be human. People connect with brands that can project their personality and inject a human element to an interaction.
Creating a surprise and delight moment of unexpected joy is another way to stand out from your competitors and keep you front of mind of your customers.
So how are you making your customers feel good?
Hello friends, Mark Jones here.
Welcome to The CMO Show. Excited to join you for a great episode today. We have Josh Peacock, Head of Marketing at VOLY.
For those who don’t know VOLY, they are an instant grocery business using ebikes for deliveries across the Sydney area. It’s a disruptive startup that’s recently received a record amount of seed funding.
Our guest today has worked across big brands like Samsung, Netflix, Hyundai and YouTube in both Australia and South Korea.
Josh came into the business early in it’s inception and we talk about the challenges and opportunities of marketing a startup, working to build a business with the right people, determining the brand and what they stand for and how they engage with their audience.
We also touch on the power of data and creative partnerships, and how they are taking their customers on the journey with them.
Saddle up and enjoy.
Mark Jones:
All right, Josh Peacock. Thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate having you on the show today.
Josh Peacock:
Thanks for having us, Mark.
Mark Jones:
Let's go from the top. Tell us your story and how did you get to be in your current role?
Josh Peacock:
Sure, sure. It's quite eclectic, I would say. So I always explain my career as a career in two halves or many halves. I've had half my time in some client side roles or marketing roles. I was a Marketing Manager for Hyundai for a while, and I've had my other half, my time in agency roles. Most recently, managing partner for VMLY&R. I've also spent half my time in Sydney and the other half in Seoul, which is an unusual place to head as an expert in the marketing and advertising world. But I did four years there, worked on some projects for Samsung Global.
Josh Peacock:
But look, it's been great. It's been a wild ride and now I'm in the startup game and I actually feel like I'm at home. It's been really great to step out of those client and agency side roles and actually find something that I think fits right in the middle. It's got that pace of agency, but that ownership to drive and be accountable for results that you get from client side roles.
Mark Jones:
For those that are uninitiated, what is Voly, and why would it make you feel so at home?
Josh Peacock:
Yeah, so Voly is an absolute disruptor in the grocery game. What we are doing is delivery faster than anyone's really done it before. What you do is it's an app, is the core products. You jump on, you can order groceries and alcohol and other items as well. We drop that into a pick and packer who picks and packs within two or three minutes, and we deliver it out in short distances to the local neighbourhood.
Josh Peacock:
What it means is you can order from us and you can get it faster than a Jimmy Brings, a Coles or Woolworth's. You can get it faster than Uber eats, and we call it instant commerce. So it's really about getting what you need when you need it, and we even deliver it ourselves. So it's not like what you would see in terms of some of those other delivery businesses, which are all contractor based.
Josh Peacock:
We have full-time employees and the secret to doing it quickly is e-bikes. So we fulfil from micro stores or micro fulfilment centres, usually hidden in your neighbourhood. You probably don't even know it's there and our guys that are fully employed jump on the e-bikes and just kind of ferry it out to short distances. So bit of a game changer in the grocery space, but the delivery space as well.
Josh Peacock:
And what I love about it is it's a brand I've come in. I was one of the first employees and I've been given full ownership of it. So I'm able to kind of determine what this brand is, what we stand for, how we go to market, how we talk, how we engage socially, and that part has been incredibly sort of satisfying and fulfilling.
Mark Jones:
Well, let's talk more about the brand in a second, but you did say this word home, which I was quite keen to understand in the context of big global brands, your time in South Korea and agency, and why does that startup environment feel so good? What is it about that experience, particularly as a marketer and someone who thinks about brand strategy? What's so different?
Josh Peacock:
I started asking myself where I draw my job satisfaction from? So I've worked on Netflix, I've worked on McDonald's, I've worked on Samsung. You can't really lure another big brand where I'll go, "Yep." It's the brand that's the draw card. So I started asking myself, "What do I like to do? And where do I get that job satisfaction from?" So for me, I consider myself a bit of a builder or a bit of a maker. So to come in and build the team and build the brand, that really felt like home for me.
Josh Peacock:
And the other thing I learned, which is really rewarding is it's actually much tougher to do things with less dollars. So what we are trying to do, we don't have the budget of a Coles or a McDonald's yet, and maybe one day we'll get to that, but right now we need to find creative ways to challenge our competitors, to grow market share, to really catalyse the community we have to market for us. And that part has been an interesting challenge and an incredibly rewarding challenge as well when you get it right.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. Got it. Okay. So super creative. Now, Uber, Deliveroo, MILKRUN, there's no shortage of competitors into this space, and I presume all of them can go and buy e-bikes as well. In startup land, we sort of talk about that, not only the ability to differentiate, but also to protect that differentiation.
Josh Peacock:
Yeah. I think a large part of it comes down to the brand and the story you want to tell, and why does someone choose an Uber Eats over a Deliveroo or one of those other competitors? And I think a lot of it is who we are, the personality that we choose to embrace, and I think that's one part of creating a differentiation. Yes, it's true, Coles or Woolworths or an Uber can kind of go and add these things, get some e-bikes and start delivering tomorrow, but I think it takes a challenge to build a business that's great, and it's a challenge to build a business full of the right people as well.
Josh Peacock:
So for us, and this is something I learned in agency land, your people is your product very much. And I think for us, we look at it the same way, our people is our product. Our people will determine the brand that people want to ultimately buy into, and our people will determine the culture and everything else that flows off the back of that. So I think brand is really key in terms of differentiation.
Mark Jones:
It's interesting. I consulted to a company in Slovakia, which does very much a similar sort of thing in terms of high-speed rapid delivery through an app competing against the same competitor set. And the term they used to describe themselves was, "We wanted to be a love brand." And I was like, "Tell me, what do you mean by that? Like a brand in love?" No. So they meant a brand that everybody loves and we have this emotional connection to.
Mark Jones:
Give me a sense of what your brand personality, your style, what sort of emotions are you creating? And just connecting that to your point about sort of the team culture, I think there's a very interesting space here when you start talking about the values and the team dynamic, how you translate that into an external context?
Josh Peacock:
Sure. The brand of marketing that we are doing is feel good marketing, and actually, it's not dissimilar to what you would see with a brand like McDonald's. You feel better when you eat there. You should do at least based on how they position their comms and the brand itself. And it's the same for us, it should feel better to shop with us versus another supermarket.
Josh Peacock:
So that comes down to little details. So you've got a 15-minute experience roughly, right? So you interact on the app. You get a bag dropped off at your door. How do you really create an impression in those nanoseconds? So we look at things like bringing a bit of some personal touches back that were kind of being lost. We all go to the supermarket these days and we transact with the machine.
Josh Peacock:
So we do have a human interaction in our service at that moment of deliveries. So how do we add an injected bit of that brand personality, that warmth, and make customers feel good? And some examples of that would be we hand write on the bags. If you're a first-time customer, we give you a little card and we put your name on it. And we say, "Welcome to Voly." At Christmas last year, we gave everybody a freebie. It was a banana with a Santa hat and some googly eyes on it.
Josh Peacock:
And again, it's just that moment of unexpected joy. You open your delivery bag, you've got the items there that you asked for, delivered on time and great quality produce and stuff like that as well. But then you've got this little moment of surprise and delight that just makes you feel good, and you can feel good as well about the fact that we're delivering on e-bikes, that's better for the environment. And we are really actively trying to kind of go green and be sustainable, and really sort of lean into what's a core part of our operation and logistics, but make that a part of the brand as well.
Mark Jones:
I think you must have read my mind because it's obviously where this goes next, which is sustainability, how we think about food. Interestingly enough, just today I saw a big billboard. It was OzHarvest saying that food wastage is worse for the environment than plastic production.
Mark Jones
Now, I don't know what the stats are behind there, but there's certainly a sentiment that suggests that we need to be a lot more careful about our food consumption and production against that whole backdrop that we are aware of in the climate and sustainability. So how can you balance the need for that messaging and getting that right, at the same time as building a brand from the outset, because this is not a sort of an easy thing by any stretch of the imagination, right?
Josh Peacock:
Yeah. I think it's somewhat fundamental to the new business model that we're introducing. So if you think about, when does food wastage occur, it's when you do a large weekly shop and you have too much leftover because you didn't know you were going to go out for dinner on a Thursday night, or you're going to have less people in the house or whatever that situation was. Or if you look at the alternatives out there, some of these meal kit subscription services, they lock you in, they send you seven meals. Again, life changes, life's dynamic, people change, they have different plans. Quite often I think everyone that's tried those often has a meal left over or they just don't feel like eating that thing that they plan to eat on a Thursday four days out, and they change their mind.
Josh Peacock:
So inherent to our proposition, and I know I'm not quite getting to the enviro sustainability aspect just yet, but I think changing how people shop will make us more conscious of wastage at its core. So do you need a full pantry when you can get what you need delivered in 10 or 15 minutes? Do you need to plan that far in advance? Can you be inspired for what you want to eat in the moment and have it delivered in the moment?
Josh Peacock:
So I think some of those things will over time sort of change how people shop and hopefully lead to less wastage, and then us as a business, our range as well, it's very dynamic. So things that we do is we get our produce fresh from the city markets daily, because we're getting kind of drops regularly, we're able to kind of use data and we're able to use AI to actually predict what the demand is. So from a business point of view, we're able to kind of control wastage in a better way like that as well.
Josh Peacock:
And then the other thing we're kind of looking at is because we are delivering direct to your door and quite often multiple times a week, it's like, what can we do as a part of that user journey to kind of help combat these things as well? So whether that's taking things back, whether that's picking up bags and returning them, I think these aren't things we're doing now, but certainly things we're thinking about. And I think we're uniquely positioned with our business to be able to kind of have a real impact here over time.
Mark Jones:
So tell me more about your customers? And obviously there's the demographics, but also the psychographics. What are the lifestyles, the behaviours? How have you understood those? And I think if we think about lessons for everybody, what approach have you taken to that side of things?
Josh Peacock:
Sure. We have been actively really trying to build a community of people and we're trying to build a brand that's not just our brand. We're not a top-down company in terms of how we want to deal and interact and transact with customers. We actually want our customers to go from watching a brand on stage to actually being backstage with us and being a part of building the brand. So things that we do quite actively, we go out, we survey, we ask for feedback, we run focus groups. "What would you like to see range? What do you like about the brand? What would you like to win in a competition?" All these things are actually crowdsource.
Josh Peacock:
So inherently, what we're trying to do is build a brand that's community-based where you get to have a say. We sent some comms out the other day and we invited people to be the CEO for the day, "Come and be the CEO of Voly. What would you change? What would you like to do?" And I think that's rare and not something I've seen a lot in my career, but something we're really trying to embrace here at Voly and make a core part of what we do, and we should be doing it all the time.
Josh Peacock:
We should be doing it day in, day out, weekly, part of our comms, just really trying to get people involved. And I think one thing that's unique that I've noticed, particularly with a startup brand, people are invested they feel like they're a part of the journey with you. So when we do send out comms, we get half the people will come back and they do want to have a say, and they do want to talk to us because they feel like they're part of this startup journey with us, and that's really unique. And I hope that we can hold as much of that as we can, as we grow over time.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. Obviously, when you find those early adopters who are willing to give you guys a go and then they're so invested knowing you from what sounds to me like the formation of your origin story in this vision setting, vision casting for where you're going to go. I think I can imagine people being quite engaged at that level, but what about the types of people? So just to be a bit selfish for a minute, if I was to have a crack at using you guys, I have four children and our weekly shops are not insignificant, if I can put it that way. And if we do get it delivered, it's bags upon bags, upon bags. You'd probably need about 10 of your e-bike guys to look after our family.
Mark Jones:
So I suspect I'm not your target audience. Is it smaller couples or even just people living on their own? What's the way of thinking about this?
Josh Peacock:
It's been a really broad mix. I'll say a few things. I think initially, you don't know when you're a startup, right? We're not spending huge amounts of money on qual research. We're learning through who's coming in and we're trying to find out as much about them as we go. Initially, we really did kind of go after the full grocery shop and the supermarket, and we wanted to get those guys. I think the top up shop is really kind of the gateway drug for the full shop.
Josh Peacock:
I will say that because it gets quite addictive when You're missing a few items or you run out earlier.
Mark Jones:
Okay.
Josh Peacock:
But a lot of people still shop in a really ritualistic way. So they shop on a Sunday or a Wednesday, or whenever those kind of peak periods might be. But what we have seen is a really broad spread of people. So we've seen people coming in from grocery. We've seen people coming over from meal kits because they want a bit more flexibility. We've seen people come over from takeaway because the value proposition versus a takeaway delivery company is actually incredibly strong.
Josh Peacock:
So the price is cheaper. Often we get there faster than an Uber Eats or a DoorDash, or a Menulog, or something like that, and often at a lower cost as well. So we've seen a huge uptake in ready made meals, things that are quick and easy to put together in simple recipes and stuff like that too. But to answer your earlier question, it's a really broad demographic that we're finding. So we've had during the pandemic, people working from home with kids. They weren't really able to easily leave and go to the shop. So we had quite a large number of parents coming through.
Josh Peacock:
We've also got young professionals and young couples. The fact that it arrives so fast, it's quite a cool moment, but they just want something a bit different from what you're getting from the traditional supermarket as well. We've had people at home sick because they've had COVID and they've turned to services like Voly, and they've ordered. You can almost write the order out. It's Strepsils, orange juice, Nudie orange juice, Panadol or Nurofen. You see those things kind of spike around key lockdown periods as well.
Josh Peacock:
So we've seen a pretty broad spread to be honest, and I think that's just testament to how needed a service like this is, and how convenient it is as well.
Mark Jones:
One of the lessons that I think is really interesting for everybody, regardless of whether you are a startup level or a large organisation, is this concept of listening and learning. And when you're a larger organisation, you tend to have a lot of data or what you think is an understanding of how people think, feel, and behave. And when you're at your stage, it tends to be far more intentional, right? Because you're hungry and it's very easy to overlook the intentionality of really listening and studying the data.
Mark Jones:
What's the challenge that you face with so much of this being effectively on the fly It's a variety of customer types, different types of orders, different locations, are you sort of laying a survey or some sort of groundwork for how you think about data and analytics, and setting up patterns of behaviour? Because I think the risk is that you might get more mature and fall out of the habit.
Josh Peacock:
Yeah. Yeah. And you see other businesses, a lot of other startups, that they'll have this mentality, "If you can't measure it, we don't do it." And we've started to sort of get into that space as well. One of the first hires we made was a data team and it's really integral, but we don't want to fall into... it's easy to fall into the traditional trap of just assuming this is typical grocery data that we should reference or... because we're doing something new and it's such open space, you need to be conscious just to be consistently open as to what this thing might be.
Josh Peacock:
Maybe today it's groceries and alcohol. Maybe next week or next year, it could be something very different. We're essentially building the infrastructure to be able to provide instant commerce. So that's the physical infrastructure in terms of dark stores, our ability to deliver it quickly, and I think that opens up some really unique and interesting possibilities as to what we can get people quickly. So what do people need and what do they need urgently? And what are they prepared to kind of turn to a service like Voly in order to get that?
Josh Peacock:
So our investment in our data team has been really key. I think trying to look at behaviour more than demographics is a really key thing as well. So what are people ordering? When are they ordering it? At what frequency? What things are they combining that with? A really good example of that is... and we see this, quite often there's a data trend around particular products being ordered together. So an example was Huggies and Pinot wine.
Josh Peacock:
Which, it makes sense if you really think about it, but what we've got the unique ability to do, we're not a traditional supermarket, right? We're not open to the public. So we don't need to have those things on two aisles miles apart. If we're seeing the data showing us that those things are being ordered frequently together, we can actually design our dark stores and our fulfilment centres where we actually have those next to each other from a pick and packing perspective.
Josh Peacock:
So the data is really key to everything we are doing. It's key to where we might go and the sort of questions we might ask, and it's also key to our operations and how we actually lay out our dark stores. Again, if you are trying to measure things in nanoseconds, you need to kind of get down to that level where you can shave off a few seconds, because your Huggies and your Pinot are together on the picking floor.
Mark Jones:
I'm trying to think how you'd package that up. It's a care package in different ways, maybe. I don't know, but I can see the opportunities for creativity there. Just very briefly on the practical side of things, we've talked about food and your specialty in this sort of food category, and you touched on pharmacy medicines as well. How does this thing actually work?
Mark Jones:
So you've got your own stores or are you just at the fulfilment from anybody? Because I've just sort of got this question about, well, what areas can you operate in? It's a big country.
Josh Peacock:
Yeah. So we're vertically integrated. So one thing we were fortunate about is there was a lot of real estate sort of came onto the market during the pandemic. So it's been quite easy for us to kind of get sort of physical presence on ground. So when we say vertically integrated, we mean we develop the app, we own the app, someone places an order, it goes into a fulfilment centre, which is a dark store. It's likely something not on the main strip. It could be hidden in your neighbourhood and it's our staff are fully employed from the store manager to the pick packer, through to the riders.
Josh Peacock:
So we kind of own every step of that supply chain and that's really key to being able to do things faster than they've ever been done before.
Mark Jones:
Yeah, just to jump in, people can't walk in off the street.
Josh Peacock:
No.
Mark Jones:
Not designed for that. All right.
Josh Peacock:
Yeah. And I probably appreciate dark stores, not a term people are familiar with. So it's literally a centre or a micro fulfilment centre that's designed specifically for delivery. So if you were to go inside, it would probably look a lot like a supermarket store in terms of having shelves of produce, but we don't need to build a really nice avocado stand for display in the hopes that people buy avocado. We build it in a way that's quick and easy to kind of pick and pack. So that's kind of the key difference there.
Mark Jones:
Yeah.
Josh Peacock:
So you'll likely find that they're kind of hidden in your community somewhere and we think suspending that belief is kind of the interesting part about it. So if you know that we've just delivered from across the road to the other side of the road, and it arrives in two or three minutes, it's probably less of a bit of magical sorcery than if you don't quite know where it comes from, and it still arrives in that time.
Josh Peacock:
So we love this idea of you ordering it. It's a bit of magic. It sort of comes from your neighbourhood or your community. It's delivered locally in a matter of minutes.
Mark Jones:
Okay. So where is the service available?
Josh Peacock:
So we are in 100 suburbs in Sydney at present. So we started in Sydney. We've started obviously more central, kind of where it's a bit more dense and built up, and the aim is to kind of expand quite quickly.
Mark Jones:
Yeah, great. Presumably national and so forth.
Josh Peacock:
Correct.
Mark Jones:
You guys received something like 18 million in seed funding, I read in some media. Is that right?
Josh Peacock:
That's correct. Yeah. So we secured 18 mill back in December, which is a seed round, which is, I think, close to a record or one of the top sort of levels of funding at a seed round for this type of business.
Mark Jones:
Yeah, because the sort of business you're in is non-trivial in terms of size and scale, and potential to scale. So what was some of the feedback from investors at that end? And I guess I'm thinking still here about the story that you're telling and the way that's positioned.
Josh Peacock:
So as you probably know, this space is really heated up all over the world. So you've seen the likes of GoPath and Gorillas in the States. You've seen Geta, Wizzy in Europe. So there's been a lot of interest from investors in this space and particularly in Australia, there's always that question of, well, how do these models work in a country that's geographically very different?
Josh Peacock:
So it's been pretty easy to prove it out from an Eastern suburbs of Sydney point of view. It gets a lot more challenging as we kind of go into Western suburbs and other areas as well. But for us, we're really committed. So those are the sort of questions we get asked. Everyone knows there's potential for this space. We all know that this is where it's heading, not just with groceries and alcohol, but many categories.
Josh Peacock:
So I think we know the consumer demand is there. We know it'll change behaviour, but for us it's like, how do we really make this model work not just in inner city locations, but across the country? And that's what we're committed to doing.
Mark Jones:
If we go back to the top of the conversation, you were talking about being disruptive. I wonder whether this is more additive in terms of different channels for effectively distribution or. How do you think it might ultimately disrupt Coles and Woollies from a big grocery perspective?
Josh Peacock:
Yeah. I think being disruptive, there's two sides of it and we probably don't... we think competition's great. We're not in the business to take anyone else out or anything like that. I think for us, it's a massive market. The Australian grocery market's worth over a 100 billion. There's plenty there for everybody. So I think for us, we really see Voly sort of playing a bit of a complimentary role. So those moments when you need things faster. We don't think traditional supermarket players will ever be able to replicate this model. Not anytime soon.
Josh Peacock:
If you think about where products are held, often in a supermarket, it's not quick to get in and out of a shopping centre. So really, in terms of how you're set up, a move to a different type of physical infrastructure is key. So I think for us, we're looking to play a pretty complimentary role to that, whether it's the top-up shop or whether it's an alternative to take away and those sorts of things. And I think that's really how we break into the market, but for us, we want to behave in a disruptive way, and I think that comes down to how we market and what channels we use.
Josh Peacock:
I think almost the second you start using the same channels, the second you're on TV, the second you're doing radio and you're just going all out, you feel less disruptive as a brand and I think that's really key for us. So we need to continue to behave in a disruptive way and we need to continue to take our product to market in a disruptive way. So whether that's through a really unexpected partnership. We partnered with at Valentine's day, the guys at Normal. Normal's part of the Eucalyptus group. So they're a sex toy company essentially, and we thought this would be a great marriage of two unexpected brands for a moment in time.
Josh Peacock:
Basically, we put the products online for that week sort of leading into Valentine's day, and we decided to go out with a message, which was, "Groceries for grownups. We come quickly, so you can too." So you've seen this kind of playbook used with brands like Koala when they had the billboard out front of Ikea. And I think for us, we're a small brand. We don't have the big media budgets yet, but what we can do is command some attention and behave in a disruptive way.
Josh Peacock:
And quite often, we obviously want to build a really sort of premium and quality grocery image and we're a serious grocery player, but through some partnerships you get a bit of license to stretch that boundary a bit, and they're a great brand, incredibly ethical. They've really got a great mission around normalising conversations in that area. So we felt that was a great coming together of two brands to generate a bit of PR, to behave in a disruptive way and get some cut through. And it worked and the product sold as well, which was the other thing that surprised me.
Josh Peacock:
So I think it was a bit of a tipping point for us at that moment, where we realised that hey, groceries and alcohol is the core of our business and it's what we do, but really, there's a massive opportunity here for other products and partnerships. We can get people what they need faster than anyone else, so let's lean into that a bit more. And I think that's really the crux of what the disruption is and what gets people's attention.
Mark Jones:
In the consumer space, one of the things that we pay a lot of attention to is long-term patents of behaviour change. And I just wonder what you think the future looks like in terms of, are we going to head more and more towards this speed, interesting packaging of different products? What's the trajectory of it?
Josh Peacock:
Yeah. I think we are seeing a real convergence to be honest. So I think the first thing is, yes, we are heading towards an instant... well, it's an instant attention economy, but it's also an instant need economy. So if you can grab people's attention, drive a moment of commerce in that, and then sort of be there within a few minutes at someone's door, that's incredibly exciting.
Josh Peacock:
So I think the ultimate journey would be someone sees a recipe blow up on TikTok and there's a, "Voly it now and we're at your door in 10 or 15 minutes later." So I think that moment is incredibly powerful and you'll start to see that not just in food and groceries, fashion, other categories as well. So I really do believe that's the future and that's a big part of why I jumped on board with Voly so early. So yeah.
Mark Jones:
Yeah, that sounds a bit like the WeChat model where it's vertically integrated and you've got like a whole bunch of different services available in a commerce platform via social. And it quickly connects the, "I've seen that. I want that. I press a button and I get it fast." Right? And you've already got my details, so I'm reducing the friction there too.
Josh Peacock:
Yeah.
Mark Jones:
We think a lot about security and that whole dynamic of what this kind of might mean for the future, and I think for marketers, it's really fascinating to hear your story.
Mark Jones:
Also enjoying by the way, the connection between the creative side of your career and where this is going. I imagine that's been an interesting part of it too. You probably think very much in that creative space and thinking laterally, right?
Josh Peacock:
Yeah, absolutely. So I think what we try and do as a marketing team, you don't need to be creatively trained to be creative and inject ideas, and we try and build that culture where everyone is ingesting ideas almost on a daily basis. And I think you're in a startup environment, which is incredibly unique. We empower people as much as possible to be creative, but to go and implement things as well.
Josh Peacock:
I remember when I first started, It was like second or third week there and we had this idea that we wanted to kind of give someone something that was considered on their order or one of their first orders as a freebie. So if somebody had ordered cheese and dips, we'd throw in some crackers for free.
Josh Peacock:
And again, those surprise and delight moments that make you feel good, but we were talking about it one day, and the next day we'd rolled out a pilot trial of it, which would've taken months, in anything I've done in the past. So that side of it, not just the ability to be creative and encourage the team to be creative, but our ability to go and execute something and just not be afraid of failure. Just see how it goes, get some data, ask our customers what they think of that initiative, and then agree on whether or not that's a permanent thing going forward. And I think that fail-fast sort of mentality is incredibly important.
Mark Jones:
I think you are ticking a lot of boxes in terms of things people would like to do in their careers, so well done. Obviously, early days, but it's really great to get a sense of your story and really, thank you for sharing those insights with us, particularly like this concept about thinking creatively, as we're just saying, and connecting that through to different ways of doing business and partnerships, and so on.
Mark Jones:
So Josh Peacock, thank you so much for being our guest today on The CMO Show. It's been great to have you with us.
Josh Peacock:
It's been a pleasure, Mark. Thanks for having us.
Mark Jones:
So there’s Josh Peacock. I hope you enjoyed.
I think one of the main lessons from our conversation is the value of listening and learning from your customers. Whether you’re a startup or well established, you need to connect with your audience regardless of the size of your data set.
Gaining an understanding of how people think, feel, and behave is going to give you an edge and ensure that your service and messaging is on point
For startups, the challenge is finding a balance between getting the messaging right while building a brand from the ground up. For Josh and VOLY it’s been both an interesting challenge and an incredibly rewarding challenge as well.
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That’s all from me this time, thank you for joining us on The CMO Show. As always, it’s been great to have you with us. Until next time.