Neale 00:10
Hi, I’m Neale. It’s another episode of another Bright Spark Podcast. I’m here with Helen Carrie, Senior TV Producer, Brand Copywriter and Brand Voice Advocate. Helen, welcome to the podcast.
Helen 00:22
Thank you very much for having me. It’s good to be here.
Neale 00:23
Thank you very much. I want to dive into your work on copy writing with tech brands and brand advocacy. But I’m really, really interested in your TV side. So we could dive into that. Your most recent program, The Secret Millionaire Giveaway with Michael Sheen. Can you tell us a bit about the project? I’ve seen the episode it’s an hour long. It’s absolutely brilliant. Can you give us an overview and your involvement in it?
Helen 00:48
Yeah, of course. Gosh, it’s so wonderful that that has finally seen the light of day.
Neale 00:53
Because it was two years in the making, wasn’t it?
Helen 00:55
We started shooting it in January, 2023. And obviously you’ve got the kind of… So I was producer on that and I was… I led the casting on it. I was story producer as well. So it was kind of on me to find the people in Port Talbot, which is Michael’s hometown, who would be happy to talk to us about their financial situation, about their struggles with debt and with high cost credit. And obviously Brits struggle talking about finances. I feel like everybody struggles talking about finances, let alone with a very famous person, let alone aunt Helen. And also I suppose there’s potentially some shame there. People don’t want to admit the trouble they’ve got into and that kind of stuff. So not the easiest job. There’s so much stigma around struggling with debt, using food banks. I think one of the things we found when we were shooting that, especially with men, is that because there’s sort of an expectation that you’ll be the breadwinner, the man of the house, even though in reality that is often not the case anymore, it was even harder to find men who were comfortable talking about their struggles and failing, if you like, in their minds to be the provider and the breadwinner and the supporter. So where I started, the very first thing I did, and this is quite old school, I suppose, within a couple of days of starting work on that project, was go recce. It was sort of a pre-recce in Port Talbot. I basically just walked around. Yeah, it was maybe one level back from actually knocking. Yeah. So how’s your cash flow? But I had an idea of where I was going to go, sort of churches, community centers, and I had flyers, so I was sort of fliering to a certain extent. So I was sort of genuinely hung out, making a bit of a nuisance of myself, handing out these flyers, putting them up in shops, putting them up in public places so that people would see them, but also sort of following my nose. So I would, I went into community centers and I said, look, I’m making this show and we’re looking for people with these kinds of experiences. Where would you suggest I go? And as a result of that one day, wondering about, slightly aimlessly, I ended up being put in touch with an incredible woman called Kerry, who’s actually one of the main contributors in that film, and the bulldog’s boxing gym,
Neale 03:18
Which she runs.
Helen 03:19
So it’s her, that’s her business. She’s a business owner and that’s an incredible, it’s a charity, but it’s also a gym. And that was our kind of our hero location. She was one of our main contributors. Cornerstone of the episode. Yeah, and it’s just, there’s something so wonderful about shooting in gyms as well, like aside from kind of the hard-hitting current affairs, like from a kind of, if that’s the point for you, like there’s so much stuff, there’s so much activity, there’s so much texture, like they’re just really fun, interesting places. But put out, but steel, hard, it’s that kind of lens. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I suppose then a bit of a juxtaposition between the fact that there’s sort of this hard exterior that you kind of see on first impressions, but then actually we’re going into the tea room with, you know, people. Yeah. So it was a lot of kind of old school community building, like gaining trust, just getting to know people. And one of the other contributors, sort of main contributor from that, for that film, again, I found from a contact I’ve made on that trip who overheard somebody in the pharmacy. Right. I mean, you couldn’t write this. No. Overheard somebody in the queue for the pharmacy talking about the fact that she was an assistant nurse practitioner, but had also taken a second job as a painter and decorator to cover her expenses because she was really struggling, like kind of a month end and, and called me basically said, I’ve met this person in the queue for the, for the pharmacy. And you came visiting last week and said that you were looking for people with this, with the experiences with high cost credit and with debt and with credit invisibility and put me in touch. So very fun.
Neale 04:55
Oh, brilliant. I, so Michael Sheen, obviously the, the main, the main guy behind it, he invested, was it a hundred thousand of his money and managed to wipe off a million pounds of debt.
Helen 05:06
A hundred thousand pounds of Michael’s own money. So it wasn’t paid for filming. He essentially footed the bill for the whole project, made it all possible. And he bought on the secondary debt market, a million pounds of consumer credit and then wiped it off. So that was, we started off calling it kind of the debt heist. That was sort of an early working title. And the whole thing kind of feel and the mood of the film was, was planned around with this heist kind of in mind. And the director, Paul Taylor is amazing at films that kind of combined current affairs, quite hard hitting current affairs with sort of a comedic or like very specific mood, right? Then quite a lot of Joe Lyset stuff. Right. And I got you back. Joe Lyset’s got you back. And that is a similar kind of sort of flavor. Because he managed to keep it light. It’s hard hitting, but the episode it’s, it’s, it’s quite, yeah. It kept people, it’s, I think the technical term is like pull through. It kept a surprising number of its audience to the end, considering it’s a show about a pretty like hard hitting, pretty, like not very cheerful subject matter.
Neale 06:13
It’s pretty difficult stuff.
Helen 06:14
Yeah. Michael made it engaging. And the people as well, because it’s true stories and stuff. Absolutely. Yeah.
Neale 06:20
So your background’s a documentary maker, not documentary, documentary producer rather. Well, we’ve talked before, we’ve worked on like with Martin Clunes, sort of traveling around the world. And then more recently, obviously we’re working with Charlie Brooker’s production team on the Philomena Clunk stuff. Diane Morgan absolute treat. Absolutely hilarious. You’re telling me that when they approached you, they wanted authentic documentary makers as well as comedians. Why was that important to the look and feel of the show?
Helen 06:50
I’ve always have so much admiration, especially in TV for people when they’re hiring, because you don’t have very long to do it. You don’t have very much money to do it. Who think outside the box, because the pressure is on and it’s really tempting to put like a shout out for, you know, people who’ve only ever worked on this one particular kind of show who, you know, came out of the womb doing compliance on blue light shows or whatever it might be. But actually in my experience, the strongest teams are often built when you bring together people from different backgrounds, or you bring somebody in from a different genre or different format that can kind of bring a bit of a new perspective to things. And that was exactly, exactly, that’s exactly what they did. This was Cunk on Earth, which was the 2021.
Neale 07:38
We should probably explain actually. So, Cunk on Earth, we would say, it’s a mockumentary, isn’t it? So you’ve got the main character Philomena Cunk, who’s a bit clueless, but interviews, like professors, she interviews Brian Cox on one of the episodes, and it’s her take on like life evolution, the world art, that kind of stuff. It’s pure comedy, but it’s to watch it, you would think it’s an actual documentary.
Helen 07:39
Yeah. And that’s what makes it so funny. And we talked, we philosophized about this a lot, sort of Charlie and the writers and the production team. It’s at its funniest when it comes closest to being the high end documentary that it is parodying. So the higher the production values, the more kind of ivory tower and illustrious and sort of Oxbridge, the professor, the kind of more hard hitting or serious the subject matter. And she’s tackled everything. So history, she’s done Shakespeare. Religion. Religion. Yeah. I think she did Christmas once. That’s maybe slightly less hard hitting, but the more kind of intense and serious the subject matter, that’s when it is at its funniest.
Helen 08:47
And when Diane is at its funniest, when writing really things, because it is ultimately a parody. And she’s this kind of… bumbling fool we thought of we thought of her somewhat there’s this kind of childlike essence to her she’s a bit foolish she’s not mean-spirited and she’s never tried and none of it is ever this was something else we also probably thought a bit too much about but there was she’s never the joke is never on the person that she’s interviewing it’s harder on her ignorance isn’t it she just doesn’t know yeah she just doesn’t know and that was one of the things that when we were kind of giving notes to her interviewees who were fabulous people who were like so up for that like so game for it and and it is a quite different thing i would say now that the cat’s out of the bag so to speak about Cunk everybody everybody knows it so you can’t we can’t cast like since i’ve been involved in it anyway we couldn’t cast any more people who were completely ignorant of the premise so they had to a certain extent kind of go along with it but they were all such such good sports but we would always sort of brief them to treat her like don’t let her get away with her misconceptions or her misunderstandings like correct when you need to yeah like she’s sort of you wouldn’t you wouldn’t tell a child that they were right about something that was just totally wrong so you do have to kind of course correct her um and and when they did when they’re a bit more firm with her i think that’s when when the friction of the comedy comes out yeah and a lot of that is improvised like yeah oh i well imagine yeah there’s one i think it was the most recent one there’s there’s a bit where is it avango painting and she does a huge description over and you’re thinking oh right she goes it’s just rubbish i mean i think she swears but yeah it’s just absolutely fantastic and turns to a yeah and our critics art historian who was face just drops and that’s the that’s the moment u
Neale 10:36
From uh Charlie Brooker black mirror technology ai um we spoke about this to a month or so ago i was chatting to a guy called Henrique Olifiers is he is a game designer for bosses studios i’ll stick a link down in the comments so you can watch it if you’re caught up with it um he we were talking about ai and creativity um henry’s take on it was um ai isn’t quite at this stage where it can sort of create a modern story with a twitch you can have a story a narrative and i was saying in the future will it be possible to do that and he was like yeah no absolutely but in the future our tastes will be different so what we want now will be different if you take an episode of like a tv show like for example the x-files i hold the x-files in the same regard as i would severance severance is my current favorite tv show put them side by side severance is you know by it’s just it’s just a lot better because of time and ideas and that kind of stuff how have you found the impact of ai creatively in the in the media how is it impacting television and there’s there’s not as much budget in bbc i tv anymore adolescence is the uk’s most watched tv on netflix streaming is a lot more where do you see that sort of landscape going?
Helen 11:50
so in my experience ai has had almost no impact on tv yet um and i should say i work in like a particular niche of the industry i guess across two niches so one is kind of unscripted tv documentaries and travel logs the other is sort of scripted comedy but in my case extensively conk um and so far in my experience is working on those shows the only way that ai has influenced us is where i had found a new transcription tool or a new like editing tool or a new um note taker tool and was like hey guys let’s use this this is actually much quicker than the the way um and so i don’t have a kind of overarching sort of zoomed out perspective on all of tv i also don’t work in development so i’m not the person like coming up with all the ideas for the shows so it could be that devsy are you or like tv devs are using ai to help with that process i don’t know too much about that writing on the other hand is i think there was a list put together recently of sort of industries or disciplines that are most at risk from ai and writing copyrights right on the top marketing is like yeah yeah number one if yeah top five if not number one um because there’s other there’s that i i know from experience there’s i’ve seen on on linkedin moving into tech lots of companies and you can tell when they’ve done a blog and it is ai it’s like in an ever-changing world you know this is this digital landscape that we live in it’s you you can you can sniff it a mile out yeah and i think you know we’re getting a lot more savvy towards that but i think there’s a have your own identity and brand voice you don’t want to be like everyone else No,
Helen 13:36
exactly. And I do think AI with writing is an interesting one because the conversation that you had previously was at Henry. Yeah, Henry. So, what he says about where AI will get to, like, it can’t craft a story that is genuinely compelling with a surprising twist yet. I think he’s right, we have to assume it’s going to get there. So, if good writing, if interesting stories, if even brand voices, because there are tools like Jasper that can already sort of emulate and take on different company voices, if none of that is, if you like, safe, then what can AI not do? I feel like those are the things that we should lean into, and it’s easy to say, maybe lazy to say, oh, human creativity, that’s what we have, the bots will never have that. They probably could. Yeah, I agree. Where are we, like 2025? It’s chat GPT, what are we on, 4.5 or something as the paid versions. How good is this stuff going to get? I think it’s going to get really, really good. So, for me, what I’ve enjoyed doing, and this is sort of like a personal, like a self-soothing exercise to a certain extent, but it’s also my job, so it’s kind of important, like it’s, oh, do I stay in this new thing I do, or do I retrain again? So, yeah, I genuinely have, I kind of had to grapple with these, with these questions, and one of the ways that I think that we will be able to stay ahead, or at least stay differentiated, and one of the ways I’ve been able to actually start seeing AI is like, I don’t mean an opportunity in that I’m going to get one of those, like, computers melded into my brain, but like, good luck. Is thinking of ways in which I can maintain and even amplify my, like, humanness, what makes humans, like, really unique, and work with AI to do the other stuff, and it can help me get even better at the storytelling, even better the creativity. I already use it as a kind of sparring partner to, like, hone ideas, and I’ll go to it with the ideas and be like, what if this, like, make this better, give me this times a hundred, and when I have a hundred ideas, then I bring my human judgment back to it and find the two that are really good, which it doesn’t know, it’s just given me a list, that’s the kind of back and forth that I have with it. I also love using it for holding sort of little mini focus groups, with a load of sort of customer avatars, essentially, to do audience research, so I make it hold focus groups with different kinds of matching characters, you give them personalities, and ask them what their struggles are. And they are, you can put your ICP data straight into it and say, put these five people around a table, what are they struggling with, what’s keeping them up at night, what are their buying triggers, where do they get their information, it’s such powerful stuff.
Helen 16:24
But to come back to what I think sort of will set humans apart, for me it’s the judgment piece, it’s having that list of things and being able to go, well I’m going to bring everything I’ve been through and everything I’ve learned, and my kind of curation, I guess, and say these are the best two, and these are the best two for this particular client, and for this specific context, and here’s why. The other thing is lived, without sounding too corny, lived experience, because we are patchworks of everything we’ve ever done, everything that’s ever been done to us, everything we’ve lived through, and AI will never have that. Until they upload your brain. Yeah, well exactly, it’s all getting a bit blabery as well, maybe they will become human, but that’s what’s comforted me, and actually what’s helped me and what I’ve found, like brought me some success as well, is just leaning into the humanness. Yeah, and the relationships that you can build, and it’s never going to replace that, is it? But yeah, the messiness, the insecurity, the imperfection, the worries, the, you know, did I get that thing right? It’s all of that stuff that it could maybe emulate, but I think it will never truly feel, so if we can kind of lean into almost like the imperfections, and this sort of like individual patchwork of experiences that makes each of us kind of, this is sounding very corny, but I actually mean it really seriously, but I think that’s the thing, that’s what we have that it doesn’t have. Yeah, no, I agree. We touched on businesses using chat GPT, write blogs and that kind of stuff. Why is it important for brands to have their own voice, their own identity? I’m thinking we work with like a lot of startups who don’t have any marketing, they’ll have like an idea for a product, they may have the seeking funding, you know, they’re working on prototypes, they’re working on the actual product, trying to get that to market, ASAP, you know, where should people start and why is it important to start? Yeah, I think, I think it’s where I always kind of start with brand voice, is that it’s sort of unfair that you need a brand voice, because I think there’s quite a solid argument, or certainly a good question, if my product’s great, if the work’s good quality, if the tech’s good, if the customer service is good, surely that should be for itself, right? And to be fair, in a world where we were all sort of unthinking and feeling automatons, and we all made choices based on logic and facts and reason, that probably would be enough. But we just don’t live in that world. So people, whether we like it or not, and even whisper it in B2B marketing, are swayed by emotions all day long. And the way that you tap into those emotions as a brand is by sounding sort of human or humanesque yourself. And that’s where brand voice kind of comes in, because brand voice is the way that you build trust with an audience. It’s the way that you sound kind of human and relatable. It’s the way that you, rather than just listing your brand values on a website, you actually live and embody and speak those things.
Helen 19:41
It helps you be memorable, it helps you stand out. So if you’re comparing five different providers for a particular service, and they’re all providing pretty much the same level of service, they’re at the same price point, the customer service, all of your decision-making criteria are pretty much equal. The one that you remember, the one that you feel you trust… How you had a emotional response to those. Yes, probably the one you’re going to go for. And that even holds when we’re talking about long, complex sales cycles, buying committees. Even people who are buying for businesses are still ultimately human. They all get distracted and bored, and they get interested by stuff. And I think that’s how we have to think about B2B marketing as well. It’s almost like a B2C model. People buy from people. We’ve talked about this before. It’s relationships at the end of the day. You work with people, but if you don’t get on, especially with freelancers, then it’s a very cold cut a lot of the time. What are some of the big mistakes that you’ve seen people made when they’re setting up a brand? What are the big no-nos where I think it’s failed. In terms of brand voice, or is that? Yeah, in terms of brand voice, I mean, because I think there’s a danger sometimes, isn’t there, of people, when they’re starting off, they just think, oh, I’ll be very authentic, but you can sort of like be too authentic and a little bit too close to the bone. I think there’s still, we’ve talked about LinkedIn before, it’s like becoming a bit more Facebook-y, and people go, oh, it’s not Facebook, you shouldn’t share this, that, neither. But you’re right, it’s about relationships, and people want to connect and stuff. I think there’s sometimes a danger of maybe sort of going too far, potentially. Yeah, I mean, so with the LinkedIn thing, I think there is like authenticity has become a bit of a buzzword, and authenticity- I’m very authentic by the way you should enjoy this podcast, and yeah. I can confirm, it’s all real. It is, yeah. And there’s, yeah, authenticity has become a bit of a buzzword, or maybe a bit of a dirty word, and I think there’s a danger that people feel that being authentic just means you pour your soul out, and that just isn’t the case, everybody has, if we’re talking about personal brands, everybody has to spend, I would say, a recommend, spend a bit of time figuring out what you are genuinely comfortable sharing. Because vulnerability does get engagement, and I think it’s because people are interested in real stories, they don’t want to see just the successes, they want to see all of the failures that happened before the success. It’s lessons learned as well, isn’t it? I mean, you can’t learn, really, from a success story, because people are just seeing the shiny end result. A sort of rule that I have, and I think it is important that everybody spends a little bit of time figuring out where their comfort zone is. If you feel comfortable being a bit more vulnerable, a bit more open, that’s absolutely fine. What I personally like, the way I like to think of it, is what would I share with a colleague in the pub after one drink?
Helen 22:37
not after three. Because it is ultimately the internet and all of the stuff that you know our parents told us about strangers on the internet still applies and also your clients are on LinkedIn if you’re freelance so you also have to think well what wouldn’t I be comfortable with somebody I want to work with seeing or reading or knowing about me like how vulnerable is too vulnerable and also what could potentially turn that person off and do you care and you have to find that yeah find that kind of balance here so I think that do you care as important as well I mean we as a company we uh gift a lot of Lego we all like we’re an engineering company Lego values align with ours a lot of people like it’s like a common denominator and we’ve been to shows before exhibitions and sort of walk the halls like are you interested in Lego and if people go no it’s you’re kind of like well we probably don’t want to work with you then you know it’s if you it’s it’s a great way of not just Lego but as you said the vulnerability do I want to work with these people and do I do I not yeah sort of testing the waters in terms in terms of fit and that’s where I guess brand positioning is really important as well and I personally have found this not just working with clients but also sort of in the early stages kind of building my own personal brand a big part of it is deciding who you want to turn off you and accepting that though there will be people like the more specialized you get the more you hone your position the more you decide like what you do and who for and what problems you solve you’ll put people off you’ll alienate them um I don’t mean in terms of like from your content you don’t I don’t personally want to anyone to read my post if you’re alienated from me but in terms of sort of prospective clients who are thinking about this from like a business rather than like a you know friends friend personal relationships type way then people there will be people that you’ll put off that will just will decide that they don’t want to work with you and I think that’s a really good thing I think it’s a good thing because we I wouldn’t have got on with them I probably wouldn’t have done a particularly good work with them we’re not a good fit and that’s fine I think that’s good because it means they can find someone that’s better for them find young people exactly something really really empowering about putting people putting off the wrong people and that’s okay some people work with the ones I mean I right for someone else
Neale 24:49
yeah I um I won’t say the company name but I was a market manager for for an organization and the director of marketing thought I was better for the job in his mind I was a lead person went through all the stages of views met the ceo uh I went in a suit I mean I I worked converse with with absolutely everything and very pink yeah they were very glittery we’ll get we’ll do a separate shelf we need better ways we do I just turned up as I would normally really nice suit converse and uh got initial feedback from the directors like yeah you basically you kind of a week later still I hadn’t heard anything and then a phone up said oh yeah we just need to sort out some details and unbeknownst to me he was fighting with the ceo she was like absolutely can’t have the job he came in wearing a pair of trainers there was no dress code or anything but they’d kind of whittled me down to the last person and eventually he’d convinced them that you know I was I was the right fit and it was okay but you know it’s it’s people not you know it’s okay for people not to get on with people or whatever you find your own fit and yeah
Helen 25:53
and I feel even better than when you find a place where you do feel like I remember and it was probably like my second job out of uni the first time I was hired because I was a bit of a weirdo rather than despite it a bit of a weird and it’s like depends on your scale and it’s you’re a wonderful weird thank you your whole body just breathes a sigh of relief and your soul I mean soul it’s a bit of a silly concept but but like everything about just oh okay oh this is a good thing for these people it’s amazing it’s a really nice feeling yeah no I mean I’ve said this before I’m I mean I’m just saying this because I’m working with a badge this is January I feel like if I might try like my people it’s just I’ve kissed a lot of frogs to get here but I’m so happy that I did uh right freelancing so uh 2017 you started to go freelancing yeah what was the decision behind that and lessons learned and tell me your story please Helen my freelance my freelance birth would you recommend it So that’s an interesting question.
Helen 26:57
So the story for me was basically that I had a staff job, my first sort of TV runner job, was in-house at a production company that did behind-the-scenes on feature film. So red carpet premieres, press junkets, sort of making of DVD extras, that kind of stuff. And it was a small company, they did all the post-production in-house, it was such an amazing place to learn. That was there almost four years, I learned to shoot, I learned to edit, I learned to produce. And also I’d never lived in London before that job. And as a runner, you’re basically a cheap courier, right? I adored being a runner because I had so little responsibility. I was like a rural kid in a big city. You get to see the sights every day. I was running like hard drives around Soho and my eyes must have had stars in them. I was honestly just like, it was amazing. So I loved being a runner and I was sort of on this like skill collecting mission, but not in a kind of hard-headed, ambitious, professional kind of way, just in like, oh, camera’s fun, edit, fun. And I’ve got such a range of experience at that company, it was awesome. But after three and a half years, I guess the learning curve was kind of leveling off a bit. And I was a bit, I was just hungry for something else. And I had these skills and I was like, oh, what can I do with them? Where could I take them? So I’m trying to remember, I think I did have something lined up, but only very roughly, and then it fell through. Right. So important freelance lesson to learn right from the start. And I did this, and I’m so pleased I did this. So before I went freelance, I spent about six months doing two things. Firstly, saving money. And secondly, talking to everybody I could get my hands on given like my relatively limited network at the time, because I’ve been in-house, I hadn’t been moving around. And just all building a network, a wider, wider net. Exactly. Like getting to know people and asking their advice. Like, what do you wish you’d known before you went freelance? And I’ve got really good advice. Like, take your holidays when things are quieter in your industry. Like figure out the, figure out the kind of ebbs and flows of your personal, the industry you work in. Take your holidays. Firstly, take holidays. Don’t be a bad boss to yourself. Give yourself time off. You’re allowed to breathe. You are. And I get a good accountant with other advice and save up. So this, the figure kind of varies, but ideally between four and six months worth of like rent and bills or mortgage and bills, whatever the situation is. So the, and this is the way I like to think of it, so that you can afford to fail a little bit and you can afford to wait a little bit and you don’t have to say yes to the right, everything that comes along with the absolute first offer. And I do think having that, you know, that cushion, if you like, I’ve been lucky to always have had it to a certain extent. It hasn’t always been six months, hasn’t always been four, but it’s always been there.
Helen 29:46
And it just gives you that little bit more kind of freedom and time. And, and yeah, time and freedom, I think of what you need to make good decisions as a freelancer. Less stress and panic as well. If you know that you’ve got a bank of stuff. A little bit of, because that, because the very first, the reason or wasn’t, I knew I wanted to go freelance, but then the kind of catalyzing thing was a particular opportunity that then fell away, which in TV and to be fair in, in the marketing branding world as well, projects all the time, all away, you know, priorities change, budgets change. And I think you always have to plan as a freelancer as though that’s a possibility. So keeping your client base diverse, keeping your income streams diverse are two particularly good ways. I’m quite a fan of Esi Cajun when it comes to that. And then I, so I then was approached about a different project from a guy that I’d met in the pub in Westminster, where I used to live. And he was Dan Snow’s director, sort of Dan Snow’s right hand man director. And that’s how I ended up working at Dan Snow’s startup, which was called history here. It still exists. It was, it hadn’t even been launched at that time. It’s the Netflix of history programming was basically how they were positioning it. And I joined as the sort of shooting director, editor, producer person. So they actually, in the end, needed somebody with exactly that set of skills that I’d built up, although they never needed me to do any teleprompting. I’ve never had to do that since I was about 23, which is sad. I quite enjoyed that.
Neale 31:15
You’ experienced and mine, my very first job out of uni was working for Carlton, which is now ITV Granada. And I was running on Crossroads and Family Fortunes for two years. Didn’t get to learn how to edit, just literally running backwards and forwards. I did get to have Christmas lunch with Madge Bishop from from Neighbours, though.
Helen 31:33
So come on, life goals. Wasn’t a complete waste of time. Oh, I do think runner jobs. Yeah, I feel like everyone in TV, but especially when you’re kind of when you’re running or when you’re doing like research and work, because people treat you quite badly and don’t really follow. Maybe it’s got better. Maybe it’s got better in 2025. I fear not. So like the stories tend to be better because the treatment is slightly worse. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so you were freelance. And obviously, in TV world, you talk about the buffer. So television cycle, so you run a production. And once that ends, it’s kind of a cliff face, isn’t it? It’s kind of stops. So is that why you sort of expanded into sort of copywriting and sort of moved into into that space? So yeah, the TV, I guess the old school model in documentaries anyway was basically the director would take their film into the edit. But these days in unscripted, that’s quite expensive. So you hire generally a shooting director, you’re lucky if you get a crew and a producer for the duration of the shoot.
Helen 32:37
And then they get, yeah, let off into let let free, shut back into the world of job hunting. And you hire an EP and an editor producer for the duration of the edit. Obviously, these two bits can overlap. But broadly, that’s what happens these days. Why did I get into copywriting? Because for four months during COVID, my TV job became technically illegal. Because there was a period where especially if you make documentaries, you’re filming people doing the stuff that they do. And if nobody can do the stuff that they do, so a few people continued working during that time. I think any like hospital shows, like any of those shows you’ve seen about COVID, they got sort of special dispensation to continue working. This isn’t particularly glamorous or fun. But it was really about insurance. So nobody could get no production company could get proper insurance to keep going. Because they just couldn’t put that bill themselves. And then come the summer, I guess it was June, July, TV people got key worker status, which is a little bit mad. Yes, yeah. And the government just underwrote all TV production, which meant that almost overnight, things started like turning into action. But during that four months of unemployment, apart from doing a lot of mutual aid, volunteering, I basically was like, what do you do? What else do I have to sell legally? Like, what else can I like, what else can I monetize? Like, what else? What other skills do I have? What else do I do? And I was like, huh, writing, I’ve done quite a lot of that storytelling, like speaking in particular voices, like if maybe this is something I can do. And that basically started me, I made myself a portfolio and put like ropey uni work and like spec stuff on it. And then wrote for content mills and just built up this portfolio and then kind of use that to apply. So it was very, yeah, it was starting at the bottom with no, no in-house mass, no kindness, no contact in that industry at all. No in-house marketing experience, no branding experience, no, yeah. What drew you into the tech space? Because that’s quite, it’s quite a, I mean, I don’t have a technical background, as I’ve mentioned many times this podcast. I mean, I don’t know, uh, resistor from a transistor to not, I do a little bit now, but here for over two years, I should know that. Um, but yeah, why, what drew you to technology? Did you stumble into it, fall into it? Was it the first climate came along type situation or? Did you stumble into it? Probably yes. So I think what happened that the way that, so I initially, I was a generalist. I was writing for raw dog food companies, static caravan companies, um, all the sexy industries. Yeah, all the interesting ones, the standard rope access, you know, if you, if you’re like running a construction project and you either can’t or don’t want to use scaffolding, you can use suspended robot.
Helen 35:25
Yep. If, if it’s a strange, uh, unsexy niche, I’ve probably written it. So I started off as a generalist and then decided that I want to niche sort of, I mean, essentially as a, as a, as a marketing exercise, like as we’ve talked about already, like if you exclude lots of people from your pool of potential clients, actually the clients that you’re left with, you’re a better fit for, you’re better matched for, and it just makes the process of finding people you want to work for better. I’d done a little bit of, uh, sort of B2B tech work through an agency, a B2B agency, which I really enjoyed. It was an IT data center, digital, you know, modern workplace, cloud computing type company. And I’d been, I’d come in relatively late in the day to this project and just hit the ground at such a cliche, but hit the ground, absolutely running, interviewed all of their kind of subject matter experts, written a website for this rebrand, like 30 pages of copy in about two weeks and really enjoyed it. And it was sort of that first exposure to like IT, I guess was my kind of inroads to tech, IT and IT support and, and cloud computing and, and the data center, all of that kind of thing. I just found it so fascinating. And that was one of the places I’m kind of constantly going through this realization process. And it’s kind of these different light bulb moments where I realized that the two things that I do that for a long time, I kept very separate, actually have so many areas of overlap and that interviewing people to get to know them and their areas of expertise and what keeps them up at night and what fascinates them. It’s learning to tell a story, isn’t it? That’s what content writing is all about, surely. That’s a lot of what underpins it. Yeah. You’ve got a start, you’ve got middle and an end. And that’s the clearest way to translate any message you’re branded, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s all about people. It’s about people and like what you can learn from them and what they can tell you about their history and their interests. And I am obsessed by that. And that is one of the things it turns out that both have in common. So yeah, that was kind of in road for me. And then I kind of niche down a bit more into sort of B2B South is obviously a huge umbrella, but I’ve enjoyed particularly sort of ed tech, learning and development stuff, HR tech, cloud computing, I’ve ended up like hybrid cloud stuff. I really enjoy it. And just like Vore IT, is that a thing? Vore IT support. It’s my new favourite thing. Vore IT. So to go back to a question that I asked a little bit earlier, you won’t freelance 2017.
Neale 37:55
Would you recommend it?
Helen 37:57
not to everybody not to everybody i think i do have a course caveat but i think a lot of people selling courses pedal freelancing is like the answer to all of your problems like free yourself from the nine to five free yourself from your horrible boss like it’s it’s sort of it’s it’s kind of rascarena type exactly it’s upheld as this sort of if you’re not enjoying traditional employee-dom be a freelancer but what people don’t talk about and one of the things that when i’m sort of posting on linkedin i guess about a third of the time maybe like once a fortnight i try and post specifically about sort of my experiences of freelancing and sort of freelance struggles and learnings because the grass is not always greener when you’re a freelancer sometimes it’s the barren desert yeah sometimes it’s like yeah hot and uncomfortable and uh yeah it’s and and i what i the thing about freelancing that i guess people don’t tell you because it’s not glamorous and it wouldn’t sell those courses is that you have to do that the book all of the books stop with you so you have to do all of your own marketing all of your own sales you have to build all of your own relationships you do all of your own finances which can be wonderful because it means that like in tv if there’s not enough work going around you have to wait for shows to be to be commissioned with a production company and then they’ll crew up and maybe you’ll get work with sort of freelancing in the in the marketing world if work dries up you just have to go out and drum it up you have to go out there and find the business for yourself by whatever methods it might be outbound inbound you know email marketing however you do it maybe if you stop it all stops it all stops exactly and that level of kind of like pressure and autonomy is my favorite thing about it i feed off it but it’s also exhausting and it’s simply not for everyone and i don’t mean it’s not for the week only this time survive it’s truly just not for everyone like some people are far more successful and empowered and um and ambitious and fulfilled in full-time employee-ness and that’s absolutely fine so i think it’s yeah i wouldn’t recommend it wholesale i’d say go in with your eyes open and there’s a lot of look i imagine playing as well making connections like we’ve talked before how how we met and to get you in here it’s it’s it’s not okay so if you work really hard you work work work you’ll succeed for some people it just it just wouldn’t wouldn’t yeah i think there is i’m really wary of saying there’s no such thing as luck because i think ultimately like i am from certain amount of privilege like i was i was brought up in a household where i where i was encouraged to like go to school and work hard at my lessons and i think this is the ultimate privilege is that my parents basically raised me to believe that and not in a sort of darling princess helen kind of way but they they they raised me to believe i could basically do anything that i wanted to do and that it’s not sort of hyper wealth and it’s not fancy cars or houses that is the most incredible privilege to basically be raised to believe that you can be whatever you want and i think that is not luck like i can i can sit here and say i make my own look but actually that upbringing is like a big part of you had an education of yeah of that you i mean i was i was i was private educated and i think for better or worse didn’t have a particularly great time in school but the one thing that i did get out of it was that were sort of taught that you can achieve you know and that’s that’s and it’s fueled a lot of my decisions in my life it’s like i’ve been unhappy in the workplace whereas um of my off to my wife’s uh worry worrisome sometimes she goes are you sure you’re gonna leave it’s like yeah yeah i’ll be fine we’ll work something out whereas for her it’s like you need the job you need to stay there and i’m kind of a maybe not a disbelief that things will work out
Neale 41:51
but i think it’s a great privilege to say to be able to have that confidence given to you and brought in and by the way you will be called princess helen on this on this podcast because that’s just fantastic
Helen 42:02
i insist on being called that you you should do you should do fantastic
Neale 42:06
we which we’ve chapped before about bringing different people with diverse backgrounds and different diverse mindsets one of the things that our customers like about Ignis not that this is a sales pitch for Ignis because i don’t like to do this on this but we have a lot of neurodiversity in the business we have people from different backgrounds uh different ethnicities different parts of the country you uh you know and what our clients benefit from is that our engineers all think differently all works peer reviewed so you’ll have you know we call them t-shape so they’ll have a generalist knowledge about everything generally not everything our engineers know everything they have a broad knowledge but then they’ll deep dive into fpj program or high powered hardware or whatever or python or whatever the specialist is but they can all look at the same problem and go have you thought about this have you considered this and you get like a broad series of solutions whereas you know if you’re all you’ve had that experience yourself when shooting the the cunk series
Helen 43:11
yeah and all of the all of the best experiences of my life in in tv like on pro on project teams have been when the hirers have thought outside of the box and not just hired sort of all of the obvious people for the gig and what they did for kumkon earth was deliberately make up teams of pretty much 50 50 scripted comedy people so people who knew the genre you were of the genre who just got it and like docs people essentially essentially people like me who at that point had only ever made series documentary it made the stuff that kung takes the piss out of i guess what they were also looking for maybe in personality with somebody who wouldn’t mind making a literal mockery of their entire life’s work today but i remember the last show that i’ve made when i interviewed for that that show i produced when i interviewed for that was tony robinson’s history of britain so i mean literally the direct it’s basically what philomena is is sending up yeah but it has to look authentic doesn’t it in order to the only way the send up works is it looks authentic but i imagine as a producer for that you still had to find where to shoot you had to go on location it’s it’s your skill set it’s your experience Yeah and that is and that is I think where they kind of struck gold if you like I mean those teams worked so well together I’ve never had more fun at work than making Con Con Life like it was just joyous and it was partly because we were all just fascinated by work because they are quite different worlds in TV like unscripted docs and tv docs and special and scripted comedy so we were sort of fascinated by each other’s worlds and then blending these skill sets but in terms of how it’s made I would say it’s actually slightly harder to so if you’re producing a doc yes you need to find the right contributor the right interviewee you need to kind of tease out the right storyline you need to find the right location but once you’re there and assuming that I’ve done my job well I’ve cast the right kind of person to tell the right bit of a story at that point and they’re being shot in a dazzling and totally thematically appropriate place then all that’s left is for them to just sort of be them and to do what I figured out they’re definitely going to do which is tell the right story in the right way and all that so once you’ve got to that point cameras rolling then probably it’s going to be good and then it’s my job to sort of steer it a little bit if it’s not and and you know to kind of figure out the day let people go exactly whereas what you’ve got with CUNC is something that ends up looking like that but is actually super engineered because every single bit of it is is is minutely scripted not the interviews that’s a bit more free flowing and it turns out it’s actually much harder to to do the like super over contrived impression of the real thing yeah yeah of course and also um yeah it’s just very fancy locations it’s just slightly more illustrious people like yeah the the standard is is taking up the next notch yeah I think I think it’s a good lesson for business in general I mean I’ve I’ve built teams in different organizations in fact the shoe place started off with a team of two and built it to a team of eight or nine I’m giving more clues away for where that place was which I shouldn’t do but what I learned prior to that is you kind of interview people and you have an unconscious bias and it’s like oh you like music oh okay so you know but and you sort of get to know someone you think oh okay well they’ll probably get on with them and they’ve got the same sort of skill set so you just tend to hire but what I’ve learned over the years is actually hiring people who aren’t like me because you know I’m I’m very sort of impulsive and sort of creative and you know I work to the 11th hour and I work really well when I’ve got a really tight deadline that’s how I like to work but actually having someone who’s like super organized isn’t as impulsive you know as a clear head probably better eye for detail that’s only going to benefit so having diverse people in organizations is not a bad thing magic it’s magic when you have more and it might sound like a cliche but when you have more diverse voices in the room the ideas that are generated are just better because you’re bringing together perspectives that you’re like it’s it’s like there’s a bit there’s always a bit of a challenge and a bit of a clash and I think that’s where like really good stuff you need that friction is like lightning about yeah as long as it’s sort of you know safe space to do that like that’s when really really good stuff happens I think you’re wrong wrong yeah shooting that right down right I think that’s pretty much we’ve got time for so thank you very much for being on the show thank you for having me that’s so much fun but great thanks