S1 E19: Mark Francis — on Differentiators, Guilty Pleasures, and Building an Agency

Hey everyone, this is Ksenia Montan and welcome to another episode of People of Marketing Podcast. I'm the founder and CEO of Planable, the collaboration tool for social teams. And I launched this podcast to take a sneak peek into the lives of marketers that inspire me. Every week we explore the story of their careers, the choices, mistakes, wins and imperfections of their work life. My guest today is Mark Francis. He's an experienced marketer who has led marketing teams in global blue chip financial services companies including London Stock Exchange and New York stock exchange. In 1999, he founded a digital agency, Blue Flamingo Solutions, alongside his marketing career. And in 2013 he left his marketing positions to focus on his agency. Nowadays, Blue Flamingo is a successful digital enablement web design and development agency with offices in London in the UK and Toronto in Canada. Mark, thank you so so much for making time to join me today on People of Marketing podcast.

Thanks for having me.

So you have such a long experience and such a big background in marketing and I want to start at the beginning. I want to start with your early career. Let's walk a bit to your career and try and connect the dots. Looking backwards and my first question along those lines is what, what got you into marketing in the first place? Do you remember what attracted you and what was your first interaction with marketing ever?

Now that's a good question. I think it actually goes back a long way to my parents. My dad had his own business, so I was always interested in business and wanting to run my own business. And my mum was an art teacher and an artist in her own right, so she was very creative. So there's these kind of two forces, a business force and a creative force that I had as parents. So throughout my kind of early life I was always trying to work, doing car cleaning rounds, working at Safeway to earn money. And then at school I did quite well and ended up choosing business at university, but still not entirely sure which direction to go in. But at uni I really enjoyed the marketing type topics. And then there's a slight side story whereby my girlfriend at the time, her mum, was very impressed with the with the Valentine's cars I used to create for her daughter each year. And she was kind of a big wig in the corporate world and recommended that I focus my skills on a marketing career. And at that point I decided that that made sense. So I continued university Life, did an MSc in International Marketing and I guess the scene was set from there. So early, early steps into marketing.

I love your side story so much and it Actually takes me to my next question that I had. So across our careers we always have this odd events that happened to us. They don't mean that much at that point in time, you know, seemingly insignificant. But then in time you realize that they actually changed your life and they're considerable milestone. And your journey. Did you have anything else like that?

It's difficult when you look back at life and where you've come. You tend to feel that it's been a set of kind of coincidences. But I think you can pinpoint certain things that you've done throughout your life that take you to where you are. An example in my personal life is that a friend I met in my masters had just been to Venezuela. He talked me into going to Venezuela. I went there and met my wife there. So now married to her, to a Venezuelan.

Amazing.

And she's kind of very much my sounding board for my whole career. So I think a lot of the decisions I've made in my career, the way that I've gone, the fact I started a business when I did, etcetera, is largely down to her and largely down to my friend telling me to go to Venezuela. So I completely agree with you. There's all these little points that kind of direct you to where you are today.

I love it. Two great stories already. I'm happy I'm chatting with you. Something else that I wanted to ask you about your early career in marketing and what got you into marketing in the first place is if you had anyone early in the beginning of your journey, if you had anyone you were admiring and looking up to, kind of like a role model or someone you were following for inspiration. Did you have anyone like that?

I think it was really my early bosses. So just to continue my story after university, I realized that I was not going to get a decent career in Hull, which is where I'm from originally. So I moved down to London and in the same week I found my first job and I started Blue Flamingo. The idea was that at some point in the future I could kind of come out of the corporate world and continue with the agency. But I understand it. I really did want to have a career in marketing. I did want to work for big companies. I don't think I was business mature enough. But the first company that I worked at was a company called ICC Information. And I think my first boss there, a really clever chap who I'm in contact with today, helped sort of form my, as I say, sort of business maturity. He taught me that there's A lot more to marketing than what you learn at university and a lot more to business as well. And a few bosses after that. Very different personalities, but also really helped to kind of mold my career, my sort of beliefs and understanding of what works in marketing. So to answer your question, I think it's really the managers I've had in.

My career that's such a fortunate position to have your bosses as role models because, you know, many people have role models and are taking their inspiration from entrepreneurs, you know, Richard Branson or, you know, if you're in social media marketing, Gary Vee and so on. But I think it's so, so fortunate to be in the position that you've been where your role models are your bosses because you know, you're in such a close contact with them, you can learn everything you want to from them. That's amazing. So tell us a bit about your career. You've spent quite a big chunk of your career in the financial industry. Is there something that attracts you in that space? What's the insight that you're taking from looking backwards at it?

To be honest, it was a case of I worked at this first company for perhaps four years, there was only two in the marketing team. So it was a good opportunity to get a broad understanding of marketing, both on the strategy and communication side. But after that period of time I'd kind of outgrown the company, outgrown the role and I was looking for something else and this particular position at the London Stock Exchange came up. So it wasn't really a case of me focusing on the financial services industry, although obviously that is big in London. So yeah, true, there's plenty of opportunities to get involved in it. But there's this particular position that came up. I went for another great boss, we hit it off straight away and yeah, the rest is history in terms of that role.

What I find interesting about your path is that you founded an agency 20 years ago and you had it on the side of your marketing career and then finally in 2013, seven years ago, you decided to make it, you know, make it a full time thing, focus on it. How did you come up to making this decision?

It's a good question. And I might say the agency has really helped the main career. What I'd say to any marketeer who's wanting to get ahead in their career to have a hook, something that I guess differentiates you from other people. And I realized quite early on that mine was kind of a technical knowledge, an ability to kind of code and design and use the software at the times, Dreamweavers, Quarks, Photoshop, that sort of thing. Having that knowledge really enabled me to kind of get my hands dirty and get the work done if it needed to be done. I was able to challenge agencies, particularly on prices, but it also enabled me to kind of start to bolster my own agency in the background. And to answer your question, why did I eventually go from corporate world to agency with the stock exchanges? I was made redundant with the whole team twice. It seems to happen quite a lot in stock exchanges. First of all, with the lse, it was a whole change of structure and the entire marketing team, the area I was heading up and the area my colleague was heading up was made redundant. Same thing with the New York Stock Exchange when it was bought by ICE Intercontinental Exchange. So at that point I felt that I had enough experience for working in the corporate world and I had enough contacts and that's absolutely critical and enough knowledge of an industry, that being financial services, to finally take the plunge. And the agency, it always been kind of going in the background. I mean, I've been picking up a number of contracts each year. It was, you know, it's ticking away nicely. So it wasn't the case that I was going to something completely fresh. It was a. It was a business that was there, ready to be grown. So it wasn't a particularly difficult decision, to be honest.

Got it. Tell us a bit more about Blue Flamingo. How big is the team? What are you guys focusing on in terms of industries? Is it financial services or not? What type of clients you have? Tell us a bit about the work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. So Blue Flamingo is, we call it a digital enablement agency. So effectively we help companies to reach their objectives through digital means and we look at everything through a marketing lens. So these things, we feel, differentiate ourselves a little bit more from a traditional web design or even a digital creative agency. So some of the things we might do are, for example, for read business information that they came to us wanting to explain to one of their audiences quite a dry topic, about which export goods have a dual use. So ammonium nitrate can be used for fertilizers as well as explosives. So instead of giving pamphlets out or sending them to a website, we suggested a game. So we built them this nice game where you kind of drag and drop to show whether the good is dual use or not. And it worked really, really well. We built a whole suite of other games for Read as well. But alternatively we've built kind of trading systems for retail Brokers to help them achieve low latency derived feeds from stock exchanges. So in that respect we're kind of verging on their trading development side of things. But then we produce a lot of pretty websites as well. We do Anthea Turner's websites, you know, so it's, it's a real variety of different things, but all digital. Originally we applied this model in the UK and it worked really well. And having my background in financial services and a lot of contacts there really helped to get some recurring revenue ticking over. But then we did the same thing in Canada, in Toronto. And the reason behind that, if I get back to the Venezuela story before the chap that gave me that recommendation to go to Venezuela, ended up being one of my best friends, moved over to Toronto, had a 15 year marketing career over there and now has quit that. He's heading up our Toronto office and has been for the last two years.

So it's quite nicely how things connect beautifully in the end. That's amazing. I'm curious, you know, you mentioned the fact that the agency was rolling on the side of your marketing career. So it's not like you started from scratch once you decided to do this. I'm curious, what changed when you moved full time? What was the surprising thing that you discovered when you started doing this full time?

I think when you can dedicate your entire day on something rather than just evenings and weekends, so to speak, it just takes it to another level. So if anyone made an inquiry while I was at work at the stock exchanges, I wasn't really able to follow it up as such, I had to wait till later. But when I'm working on it full time, somebody makes an inquiry, you speak to them straight away, you meet up and business gets done. And I think also just having the headspace to think about how you want to develop the business, setting objectives, what directions you want to go in. I guess it's largely down to time, just having a lot more time. Right.

For people who are considering or dreaming about starting their own shop, their own agency, at some point in time consuming, can you describe your day to them? What does a typical day in your life look like? You know, what's the first thing you do in the morning? How many meetings do you have a week? Describe a typical day in your life.

Yeah, I mean, it's a bit cliche, but every day is different. I don't have a typical structure as such because, you know, things come up all the time and I'd like to be sort of responsive to that. But typically during the day, I'll spend an hour or two on your business following up on the new leads. I'll have a meeting with the manager of the Toronto office so we can discuss leaves in Toronto and any kind of ideas that were bouncing off each other. There's a lot of processes we've been putting in place, so there's a lot of structural things we need to discuss. We have a monthly meeting about where we are against our targets, hitting revenue targets, hitting objectives, that sort of thing. But the other thing that I do spend quite a lot of time on and is perhaps a bit self indulgent is the design work. You know, I've always liked to actually do the design work, so for a lot of our projects, I will design the homepage, if it's a website, and then pass it off to one of the designers to finish the site. So in my average day, I reckon I spend two hours designing, which is fun. It's like painting a picture, if you like.

Why do you say this is indulgent from your side? Do you see this as not something that you should necessarily focus on as, you know, the founder of the agency?

Yeah, exactly that. I almost see it as a guilty pleasure. I've got designers, I'm paying designers both here and in Canada and I'm kind of doing their work and I can because I'm the boss. So honestly, it just feels really, really self indulgent to do that. But. But it keeps me sane. Yeah.

I resonate with you on such a big level on this one. I'm also a designer at the background, or at least I love to design a lot. Yes. So I find myself, you know, being a founder of a tech startup with so many things to do, but sometimes I just, I ask someone to give me a design task just so I can spend some time designing it. And I know that that's not necessarily what I should be working on, but. But I think it's refreshing. I think it's important to do things like that from time to time, even if it's not what you should be doing as a CEO or a founder.

I'm so pleased you said that. It's not just me. It's not just me.

Not just you? No.

I think also that because I've had this sort of marketing career and I do tend to look at everything through a marketing lens that should flow into the design. You know, a lot of, I guess, designers that are perhaps in their early years just want to make it look great, want to make it look pretty, but because I Have this, this experience. I'm able to sort of think through the user journey and let that flow into the design. So I think in some respects I'm using my, my experience and knowledge to, to help the design process rather than just being totally self indulgence. That's itself.

Yeah, that's a good excuse.

Thank you.

What's an unexpected thing that you discovered when you started building your agency, about having an agency? I spoke with someone earlier last week that he built an agency, digital marketing agency. And one of the unexpected things for him and also for myself, because I had an agency before planable was just the amount of admin work. And I'm curious, what's the unexpected thing that you discovered when you built the agency?

That's a good question. I'm definitely with you on the admin work. I guess there's two other things. One is the, the need for regular work. So as you know from your agency in your previous life, there's a lot of big projects and a project comes, a project goes. But it's really important, especially when you have, you know, staff to have a regular stream of income coming in and especially times like we have at the moment, when things are less certain. So I didn't think I'd have to focus so much on generating that recurring revenue, whether from a maintenance contract or hosting or, you know, search engine optimization work. But we focus so much now on just building that recurring revenue just to see us through, you know, difficult times. And I never thought I need to focus so much on that at the start. But the other thing which I should mention is that although most people are great in business and, you know, play very fair, there have been a few instances where, you know, people are just not ethical. And I'm just surprised at that. When you're dealing with someone in a business interaction and they just treat you badly, you know, they, they pull the contract, they just don't operate how you think business should be done. And that kind of surprises me as well.

Right. I wanted to ask you, what do you think it takes to start an agency? Is it about the connections, the network that you've built? Do you necessarily need to have a corporate career before? Is it about the executions, the skills, the creativity, the strategy? What would you know, what the three things that you think you need to be able to start an agency at some point in life?

So this is just for me and I know for your agency, you obviously started it a lot younger than I did and that's absolutely fantastic.

My first job.

That's brilliant. You know, I didn't feel ready when I was. I mean, you must have been early 20s or when you started yours.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow. Yeah, I didn't feel ready at that point. So for me, I think it's important to have a kind of corporate career first. Just again, for me, just to really understand how business works. So that's thing one, thing two is contacts. I almost regret when I was in the stock exchanges, not making more of my networks, because I see now that when I'm running the agency, a lot of the business does come through those networks. All you need is a few to start off, just a few that are going to give you regular income, decent companies, regular income, and that's enough to get going. And then I guess the third thing is having a differentiator. And again, for us, it's this kind of digital enablement thing where we see things through a marketing lens and we're not as focused on just websites. We focus on a number of different things. It's like finding a niche, I guess.

Yeah. I am often asking myself if I missed anything by not having a corporate career and starting an agency so soon. But then, you know, it worked out in a way and it is what it is at this point, you know, things are going well, I can't really complain. So, you know, but it's. It's curious sometimes I'm thinking, you know, is there anything I missed out there? And probably it would have been different, but hey, it's going well, so it doesn't really matter. I wanted to ask you, you've been working with lots of companies in the UK and you've been in this marketing world for such a long time and you've probably observed other companies, not just in the financial services industry, but overall. And I'm curious, what companies, what UK companies do you think are doing great marketing and why?

Well, that's a good question. UK companies.

Yes. I focus on the UK because I usually ask people and they give me global companies. There's so many great companies in the UK as well. Since I spent some time there, I've noticed some of the brands, they're doing a really great job, so I want you to highlight a few of them.

So, I mean, I see a lot of financial services companies and I've seen quite a bit of change within that industry. I mean, when I first entered it, a lot of the banks, for example, were fairly uninspiring with their marketing. But I think that the banks, particularly the retail banks. That's right, the high street banks, have really Picked it up. So Lloyds, tsbts, tsb, I think, do really good marketing. I think their messages are well crafted. You can see exactly who they're targeting. I think their branding is very much stand out against their competitors and I think that their executions are excellent in the mobile apps front, Fantastic. So out of financial services, I'd say right up there.

Right. So kudos to Lloyd's. They seem to be doing a great job. Going back to your career, I want to ask you if there's anything you wish you knew when you were just starting out in your career, like if you'd be able to go back and give yourself some advice, what would it be?

That's another good question. The things yet there are a few, particularly with London Stock Exchange. I don't think I got under the skin of the business enough or quickly enough. When you're working in a big company like that, with quite technical products, you have a lot of very smart people in the product side that you're supporting as a marketeer and it's really important that they take you seriously, that they feel that you know their stuff and it's pretty clear to them if you don't. So I think that if I could go back and tell myself how to improve what I did back then, I'd say get a much better understanding of the areas that you're serving quickly. They do a lot more reading, a lot more research. I think that would have really helped. In fact, when I moved to the New York Stock Exchange, I did identify that and got under the skin of the business a lot more. The other thing which I spoke about earlier is contacts. When I first joined lsc, I didn't realize the importance of networking, generating contacts, the fact that those contacts would be really important in the future. So again, if I could go back and tell myself, I'd say really build those networks, build them early, nurture them, because you're going to need them in the future. Right.

This actually connects me very, very well with my next question because that's great advice and it really ties well with what I wanted to ask you next. And that's about, you know, personal development and our, you know, own professional development as professionals. And if you had what was, you know, the habits or skills that you struggled the most to develop in yourself across the career, because it's not all pink. Right. So what did you struggle the most? What was the biggest challenge with yourself and what's something that you're currently trying to improve?

So one of, yeah, two different things. First of all, the thing that I think I could be better at in the past is going back to these contacts again, actually developing deep relationships with people. I think that's. That's an area that I've got a lot better at. But I was. I was not great at it back then, for sure. I can admit that. And I think nowadays what I do do is make a lot more time for me and the kids and my wife. But I guess when I was back having the corporate world and the Blue Flamingo, the agency, out of hours, that was more difficult. But it was, you know, a lot of hours spent working and not enough hours spent on me, just relaxing, you know, not doing anything, going out, going to the park. But now when I get home after work, I don't open the laptop really. Maybe a little bit later when the kids are in bed. But I spend a lot of time with them, with my wife, and I feel a lot mentally more healthy because of it.

Yeah. Has the lockdown helped you improve this skill more or the other way around? Work life balance has moved, the lines are blurrier.

It's just a mess at the moment. But no, I mean, it's really, really nice spending all this time with the kids. They're both not at school and we're trying to homeschool outside of doing our jobs. And it is nice. It can be a bit much at some points, and it comes down to fixing a schedule, but it's just very difficult to keep to that schedule.

Right, I can imagine. So, going back to your agency, a question that I forgot to ask you when we were talking about it was that you started it first, you know, in 1999. So that's a long time ago. Did your. How did your vision for the agency change across all those years? Marketing has changed a lot since that time. You know, the way companies operate, branding, digital, everything. So how did your vision and what you wanted to do the agency in the first place changed across all those years?

Yeah, I'd like to say there was a grand master plan, but there wasn't really. I just knew that I needed something for the future. Web design at the time seemed like the right thing to do. So the agency was a strict web design agency.

Definitely a right path. I mean.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. But then over time, I guess sort of changed the agency. As I learned more about app development with apps at one point, quite a bit. And then as I got more into my marketing career, we did more marketing consultancy work through the agency. So I guess my kind of corporate life influenced the agency all the Way through. So when it was time to break it off, all the experiences and knowledge that I'd had from the corporate world fed into the agency to create this digital enablement angle that we have now.

Amazing. So I have one last question to ask you before we head out for our rapid fire session. And my last question is about the industry in a way, but about yourself as well. And I always get great results. So I'm excited to ask you. This industry of ours is super filled with buzzwords and new trends and it's always, always changing. What is one popular thing, a buzzword or a trend today in marketing that you think is massively overrated or that is annoying you?

Annoying me?

Oh God, yes. Controversial question. I know.

I mean, I'm not sure this is going to end up in the, in the podcast, but cookies drive me crazy.

Who? Cookies?

You know, I.

Not the real ones. Not the real ones.

No. Not that they're great.

Yes.

I just feel sometimes that we've gone a bit too far.

I mean GDPR and privacy or the other way around.

I just always having to click accept.

When you go through the pop ups.

Yes, I completely get it. I mean, I fully understand gdpr. I've been to many lectures on it, but it, sometimes it just feels we've kind of gone a little bit too far. I mean one, one example, we use Xero as our accounting software and it can link credit cards and because of GDPR at the moment you have to manually upload all the bank statements if you use amex, whereas before you just kind of clicked in automatically, brought all the, all the records in. Right. So it does frustrate me a bit, but I do get it. I do get it.

This is such a great answer. Please let me use it.

Okay, fine.

I love it. I love it. I can't agree more with you on the cookies. I think like the intention of the GDPR was a good one. Right? They, you know, it's good for the users, but sometimes, especially on the mobile app, you know, clicking on those, trying to close them and trying to, you know, get around them feels like it's making my life as a user more difficult than it is supposed to do. And you know, I'm very much into tech, very much into digital, but like, God, I hate to admit it, but sometimes I don't look on, I don't check what I click, to be honest. Do I say no? Do I say yes? I don't care. I just love the content.

Just go away. Yeah. Oh good. It's not just me yes.

Yes. Good. So moving forward to our rapid fire session, I have four questions for you. Quick questions, quick answers. Are you ready?

I'm ready, yes.

Good. So if you wouldn't be doing what you're doing today, what do you think? What else would you do?

It's a difficult one, but I'd have to say a diving instructor. But I need to learn to become a diving instructor.

Yes. That's a good one. Yes. What's your favorite app or tool that you use at work?

Favorite app at work has to be Trello. We base our lives on Trello. Our working lives at Blue Flamingo.

Yes. I love Trello. I've used Trello for a while. We switched to different tools, but it was really great tool when we were using it. So my last question is, what your favorite or maybe potentially your most addictive social media network?

It's probably LinkedIn. To be honest, I'm on there a lot. I find an awesome tool.

Yes. Great. So is that the place where people could potentially reach out if they have any additional questions or they want to learn more about you?

Absolutely. That's a good place to go.

Amazing. Well, this was such a great conversation. Marc, thank you so much for taking the time to share your story. I really had fun. Thank you so much for doing this.

Great. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's been fun.

And for everyone else listening in, thank you for joining. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I had fun chatting with Mark. And don't forget, we have new episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe to people of marketing on your favorite podcast app and keep being awesome.