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In this episode of Connected Thinking, Niamh Green, Account Director at SEEN Connects, sits down with Tom Fenwick-Smith, Senior Conceptual Creative & Strategy Social Lead at VodafoneThree.
With a career spanning film, digital and social, Tom brings a unique perspective on how storytelling, culture and technology intersect. After helping make Three the most engaged telecoms brand on UK social, Tom has been pivotal to the VodafoneThree merger and building their social strategy.
As the creator economy continues to grow rapidly, this conversation explores why audiences are increasingly seeking connection and how brands can respond through more culturally relevant, social-first strategies.
Together, they discuss:
→ Why audiences are craving human connection
→ What a good creator brief looks like
→ The power of sharing relatable stories
→ How brands can move beyond ads to create engaging content
Can you tell us a bit about your background?
I've had quite a weird career. I started in the film industry working as an assistant director, because I always wanted to be a director, so I started out making big feature films. I've basically been on the journey we've all been on, with the screen going from big cinema to mobile phone. I started in big films, then moved into social, then into augmented reality, virtual reality, more social innovation, and now I'm spending a lot of time working with creators as part of my marketing and strategy plans.
The key thing through all of it is that people are still really after storytelling. It doesn't matter the size of the screen, they just want connection and a story to be told.
You helped make Three the most engaged telecoms brand on UK social. Talk us through what that looked like.
It was a really interesting opportunity. At the back end of Covid I was looking for a role and I was approached to join Three to help build their in-house agency. The power of in-house is a growing conversation in advertising at the moment, and there are a lot of standout in-house agencies, with Specsavers being one really great example.
When I joined, I recognised pretty quickly that I could push my talents towards social. At the time we had a brand proposition of "life needs a big network", which translated into real people doing real things that matter, with the phone at the heart of it, as I interpreted it. At the same time, TikTok was really on the rise, and micro and nano influencers were starting to gain traction because they had better engagement and better authenticity. So it was a really interesting moment where you could make a strategic play to put them more front and centre. Where they might have been the peas of the Sunday roast, now you could upgrade them to the beef and build creative platforms around them that laddered up to the proposition.
One of our test cases was a partnership with Gogglebox where we tested out "real phone-isms", things that people generally do when they're second-screening and watching TV. So we worked from a strong insight, like we would in traditional advertising, but built a creative platform where we could bring in multiple creators of all different shapes and sizes and comedic flows, and they all fit together to create an ecosystem that went out in conjunction with the TV show itself. That was our test case and it absolutely smashed it. The budget was way less than the above-the-line spend, but the brand recognition after that was way, way higher. It showed everyone internally the power of social, and gave us a really good foothold as an internal agency and as a voice of authority.
We've built on that as we've progressed over the last few years. We do a lot of work with creators because that brand proposition, although we're in mid-change at the moment post our merger with Vodafone, gave us a really good platform to build off for any of our propositions, whether that was working with Chelsea, partnerships with phone manufacturers, or anything else.
Many years ago I worked at a great campaign called The Wembley Cup, when influencers on YouTube were massive. It was a very pivotal project for me because it showed the power of what creators can deliver. It was quite ahead of its time, and I don't think it quite got the recognition in the industry, but as a business KPI it absolutely smashed it. Because of those older YouTube influencers, the Sidemen and so on, who went skyrocketing up to multimillion views, you could feel that people were really crying out for smaller creators who felt more personal, more like your mate than a celebrity.
What I notice is that we often look for a very relatable story but very divergent talent to tell it. That's where the creativity in the casting comes in, and that's what makes it watchable. That's also what makes it fly organically, because it's an interesting voice telling a relatable story.
Telecoms isn't the easiest category for cultural relevance. What's your playbook for turning a functional brand into one that people actually want to engage with?
I'd argue differently. The difference between telecoms brands is the thing that makes it really interesting, because we all sell a similar thing, which is wobbly air, but we also sell connection. The thing about connection is how, as a brand, you bring it to life.
With Three, we've been really lucky with how "life needs a big network" translates into something quite meaningful. If I scroll through my phone, it is the last seven years of my life now. There are genuine stories in all of our phones. It's at the centre of our lives. It's part of how we tell our stories to each other, and how we generate the story of ourselves. I know that sounds quite lofty, but telcos is actually such a rich space to tell very meaningful stories. If I look out at our competitors, a lot of them are doing very good jobs as well. It's anything you want it to be.
How do you bring those connection moments to life in your content?
Everyone's mobile behaviour is slightly different, but it's always quite identifiable. You may use Substack more than I do, but I kind of recognise that behaviour. It's always a bit relatable. And because of the way everyone uses their phone differently, things like "dad mode" are a classic. Everyone gets dad mode off the bat. Those are the little stories you can pull out and talk about. They're totally relatable. You can build campaigns around them, take the mick out of your dad with it, and they work on a lot of different levels.
We did a campaign for George at Asda, their back-to-school campaign, that was all about the parents' WhatsApp chat and everything that happens in there: "you've not bought the uniform", or "they needed the particular shoes", or the age-old thing of white-soled trainers rather than black-soled trainers if you're wearing them inside. It would have been typical that if you'd done the schoolwear shop and bought the ones with the black sole, they were going back, and they had PE the next day. It was a way of tapping into culture that no one had really done yet, but was so relatable. Whether it's dad mode with the thumbs up or the panic in the PTA WhatsApp chat, you can tap into cultural moments where the phone is being used, that have probably already been talked about on social.
What's your philosophy on choosing creators, and what role do they play in your marketing mix?
At the moment they're a really strong part of the mix. One of the reasons is that they're very good at delivering a message in an authentic way, so they generate connection really strongly. They're cost-effective for that. And there's always something different that you can find. It's about finding an interesting voice to tell a relatable story.
There's a philosophy I touch on a lot. I feel like being a strategist or creative in this space at the moment is almost like being a TV commissioner in the 90s. What you're looking to do is find a platform that you can bring to life, and then it doesn't matter who you cast in it, they can own it in their own way. We've been saying for years that the power of a creator is to let them be authentic. If you think in that mindset, you're always going to be delivered something quite unique. There are always a few hits and misses when you work like that, just like there is with TV shows, and I think this is where my history in film and TV before this comes through. I see these similarities where you're allowing these guys to work together, and that's where the authenticity comes from, so you get a good result.
With everything that's changing in our ecosystem, and I know AI is on every podcast at the moment, one of the reasons the creator economy is booming so much, something like 480 billion next year according to Forbes, is because people are searching for connection. Some of them are using AI as therapists, and we're finding our way through this cognitive overload and looking for some connection. So as a brand, it's really important to be able to speak with some authenticity and deliver conversations that are worth people's time. Sitting on the train, you've got 20 minutes, that's sacred time when you can't be touched. So it's quite important to have those authentic voices coming through and let them tell the story, and they then sell your brand really nicely.
On AI influencers and the synthetic creators that are coming through, they were a really good thought experiment, but they are what I would call an engineer's solution to a creative problem, a bit of a Rory Sutherland thing. People would have said working with creators is quite tough, so let's make a fake one. But they miss the whole point of the reason, which is that people want to work with real people. I think we're going to see this come to a head at some point. It's why creator marketing over influencer marketing is becoming such a dominant force, and not everyone's particularly happy about that, but I don't think it's going anywhere. I think it's going to go from strength to strength as AI continues to build and as traditional media continues to shrink, because we're moving more and more towards mobile.
Many years ago, social was the side piece. Now social is the piece, and rightly so, because that's where the action is. It's a different mindset, a different way of talking with people, a different way of negotiating with them for them to spend their time with you. It's not like an ad any more.
With the growth of niche communities, how do you decide as a brand where to show up?
It really depends on the business problem. That's where we always like to come back to from a strategic point of view. What is it that we're trying to solve? Some of it is entertainment, and you're leaning towards your TikToks and Metas. Some of it could be more partnership-based for LinkedIn. Some of it could be more partnership for Reddit or Substack. It all depends on where you want influence, or where you want conversation.
As a brand we do a lot of work where we sell what we offer as a service. We have partnerships with other people, and partnerships with phone manufacturers where we develop content for the launch of their phones. A lot of that in social heads towards your more TikTok and Instagram style content, but that doesn't limit us at all. It really depends on the problem we're trying to solve, and if we can find a really interesting niche insight, then you might want to do a more LinkedIn-based campaign, or consider Substack.
It all depends on that initial problem and the insight you can grow out of it. Those fundamental rules of advertising are still really important and not to be skimmed over, especially the strategy of what the problem is and how you're trying to solve it.
What's the next big opportunity in the creator economy that brands are underestimating?
I think there's going to be a high watermark for creators coming soon, where there will need to be a decision on where they really play within marketing and how important they are. That's going to change the ecosystem of how we deliver marketing.
What I don't want is for the creator industry to move towards adopting more AI, because I think it needs to stay what it is. That's not to be a dinosaur, but if anything it needs to double down on the human and on the connection, and allow all the people doing AI to do AI and work out what it is innovation-wise.
It's going to be quite bricks-and-mortar how the world functions, why we get our information, where we go. So not a particularly sexy answer, but where people are searching for information matters. These platforms now, especially TikTok, are search engines.
Some of the interesting stuff that's come out recently was a really great Nivea campaign. They were talking about how scratching underarms became a trend that kicked off the back of a campaign because they got a lot of data back. This kind of reverse cycle of understanding data, viewing habits and engagement to create more content and generate more ecosystems, I think that's underplayed quite a lot. But it only really works when a client can commit to an ecosystem, and that's really fundamental in creative marketing: creating an ecosystem of different voices and seeing what engages, and also what insight comes out of the community.
Coming back to Reddit, that's basically "ask me anything", which they used to have on Reddit all the time. The other thing which could be something to grow is brands building creative stables. I think that might be a trend that starts to grow in the coming years, a collective group where you would potentially use those creators en masse at any point. I think it would be wise to sell that to brands, because they'd want them on tap, to upscale that reactiveness. Not everyone needs to be reactive, but everyone needs to be in the zeitgeist of that conversation.
Favourite book or podcast you'd recommend?
For podcasts, the Edelman podcast is really, really good. For audiobooks, I'm very dyslexic, so I do a lot of audiobooks, and I'd say Kathy Burke's autobiography is phenomenal. Well worth it. I listen to a huge amount of autobiographies because I find people fundamentally interesting. Jimmy Carr's is incredible, absolutely incredible. It's not a full autobiography, but it's just a very interesting read, so I'd recommend that massively.
Best piece of advice you've received?
If it's easy at the beginning, it'll be hard at the end. But if it's hard at the beginning, it'll be easy in the end.
