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We're chatting about:
→ Why Canon has shifted away from a campaign-first mindset
→ Building a consistent brand identity across multiple platforms
→ The future structure of social teams within brands
→ Why creators and storytelling are reshaping “traditional” B2B marketing
Plus, plenty of thoughts on social strategy, audience behaviour and how brands can stay culturally relevant.
Can you tell us a bit about your background?
I work at Canon, and I've been the Social and Digital Lead for about a year. I've been in social media since it started. I was a journalist many years ago, working in print forever, and then I transitioned to social media. I've been very lucky to work for brands such as TUI, Garmin, Microsoft and now Canon. I'm leading social and digital across EMEA and looking at how we can change our approach, stay one step ahead of our competitors and engage with our audiences.
Canon speaks to both professional and consumer audiences. How do you think about balancing B2B and B2C messaging across your social ecosystem?
It's a really big challenge. We talk about everything. We have cameras, which can be consumer-focused, with people going out at the weekend taking pictures of their kids, all the way up to the professionals taking pictures of sporting events or filming movies. That's one element of it. And then we have our B2B space, which is printing, but printers that fill a room, printers for Amazon. A lot of the books out now are actually printed on demand, which we're involved in. And then we have medical activity. From a social media perspective, we want to speak to all of those voices.
We have what I like to call the standard social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok. The perception we're looking to develop across the business is that people think LinkedIn is for B2B, Instagram and TikTok are for young people, and Facebook is for the in-betweens, which obviously isn't true.
There are two elements to working that out. The first is looking at the data and the audiences and how people consume content. That's quite tactical. But there's also the bigger piece, looking at it from a consumer behaviour perspective and thinking about what human beings actually do. The lines of B2B and B2C aren't how they were. People don't really want to consume an infographic or be chased for leads when they're on their phone looking at LinkedIn, having just been on TikTok looking at puppies swimming in a lake.
Part of my role leading social media is trying to understand and educate the business about what that content is. It's essentially talking about people and making sure you can explain how they would actually consume that content, and how you can take them on the journey to convert. Those B2B elements within LinkedIn are still there and still valid, it's just about how you get them on the journey.
We use LinkedIn for both B2B and B2C: for brand awareness at the top of the funnel and for conversion specifically on the bigger print side. But we also look at how Instagram, TikTok and Facebook can support that B2B and B2C journey. We then use the data and attribution models to take it on the journey, improve it, and explain to the senior leadership team, who are people too, what that journey is and why it actually matters.
One of the big things about social media is that everyone thinks they can do it. Everyone has an opinion, and it's so visible. We've all had those texts from a boss or a director at 10 o'clock at night seeing a picture and going, "oh, what's this?" You need to keep calm, carry on, it's only printing. It's about how you can educate them and take them on the journey. That's what we're doing at Canon, and that's how we want to use all our channels to tell that story.
The additional point is that everyone is doing it, so how do you distinguish yourself? Canon is a heritage brand and, by the very nature of the products, considered in its tone. That means the content will reflect that and the brand identity will reflect that. How do you actually make it sing? How do you make it thumb-stopping, whether on Instagram or LinkedIn? How do you do it in a way that stops people without going against the brand values and the identity of the business? People buy from people, and that's what we're trying to do. If you like that person and you subscribe to their values, that's even better.
B2B marketing has historically been seen as a corporate and traditional space. How have you approached B2B social content and made it more creative?
At Canon we're trying to empower our influencers and our senior leadership from an advocacy perspective, and educate and inform them about what social is.
I've been in roles where it's just been "create infographic", "do a video", all that sort of stuff, and going back to the previous point, people are people and they'll just scroll through it. We're on this journey too, and I don't think anyone's cracked it completely. Making sure your brand identity is correct is about thinking, first of all, how you can optimise for the platform. LinkedIn is a great example: it's moving much more to video. We say Reels but everyone's doing them, and we're using our data and insight that tells us people like faces, they like events. So we're going to lean into that. We're going to move away from just having a picture of a big printer with someone standing next to it, because it doesn't mean anything. It's about what the application is and what the stories behind it are from a storytelling perspective, which are relevant to those audiences, but also about how it's actually going to help people and make a difference.
We're shifting our whole identity. We're very lucky to be working with LinkedIn to make sure we're much more video-optimised and to have many more people involved. I really want to explore and lean harder into the B2B influencer space, because people are more comfortable buying from those sorts of people and being inspired by them. LinkedIn by its very nature has those people involved with it, so it's an area we're definitely exploring.
An additional point is that it doesn't have to be polished. That's a challenge for a brand that wants to create the best cameras in the world, and I get it completely. But it means when you're creating this content, the lead times, the reactions, the approvals, all of that takes a very long time to get to a polished point, whereas it doesn't really have such an impact for the audience as you would expect.
From a brand and a Canon perspective, it's about what the ROI is. You want to live and die by the data you have. If you look at the fact that this investment is X and you've got Y, and in some cases the one that is quick actually performs better, that's how you do it. You should be data-driven in your creative solution.
If you had one piece of advice for brands on balancing B2B and B2C content in their strategy, what would it be?
It's people. People and phones. All people are the same and they will consume things, and they will either purchase or move towards the things they like and actually enjoy. So you need to think about how they would consume that content and what they'd actually be interested in seeing.
The identity of your brand on a device, compared to everybody else and compared to the platform, is completely blurred. It's all the same formats and all the same content. The advice I'd give is that you need to think about who that audience is, not just as an industry saying "this is pharmaceutical, this is this", but what age demographic and what wider audience piece you're trying to reach. Try to get across the key elements, but also think more about the consumer ideal of it. You can't just be this really stuffy thing, because it's just going to be isolated from the content they'll actually consume. That's the huge challenge: you could have a really dense email or infographic or white paper, but they're going to be looking at different elements throughout their day or their week, and that isn't really going to stick. So the big advice is thinking about who those people actually are.
Do you approach content for platforms like LinkedIn differently now that B2C storytelling and creators are increasingly appearing there?
Yes, definitely. We're leaning harder into that on LinkedIn than on any of the other platforms. LinkedIn is our best channel, with the best engagement at this current point. What we're striving for is to do more, and to think about what the objectives and metrics really are. Is it just about engagements? Are we looking at reach or impressions? Because we're trying to take them on a journey, and what sort of content do people actually want to consume?
We always try to think of content for the channel specifically. The content is part of the targeting apparatus for each piece, which is a heavy lift sometimes, but it works better. You get better content and better performance from it. On LinkedIn specifically, we spend a lot of time analysing our data, looking at what those audiences are reacting to and trying to take advantage of that.
An interesting point from the Canon infrastructure side is that we have one channel. From a European perspective, we service all the multiple languages across Europe with geo-targeting, so we need to be aware of what that content actually is. One of the really interesting challenges, given the passion we have, is that we have a lot of employees liking and commenting on the content. So you almost have to strip that area away when you're thinking about the performance piece, so you can really see what the true performance is. When a product comes out, all our advocates and our teams love it, and we absolutely love that, but you're not comparing oranges to oranges in terms of how it's actually reaching the correct audience and how it's resonating.
When developing campaigns today, how do you ensure they translate across multiple social formats, creators and platforms, rather than living as a one-off activation?
It's a difficult challenge to have, because social, by its very nature and by the very nature of algorithms, creates its own campaigns. Seven minutes on TikTok, one-and-done content, possibly on Meta. So as a business, we try not to talk about campaigns at all. We have launches and we have activity. We always try to think about what the point of this content is, where it'll sit, how we can actually extend its life and how we can keep returning back to that piece of content.
One of the challenges I observed when I first started at Canon, which we're changing, is that a lot of the content just came up and then was never seen again. It was published, and then they published another one, and another one. There was no idea about what that content actually meant, or whether it was successful, or whether you could use it four or five different times. For us, it's almost like a language piece internally that we just eradicate the word "campaigns". We have concepts of what our marketing activities are and what our launches are, but we try to think about how we can support that, as opposed to saying we have a specific campaign that will last.
It also leads to the fact that editorial calendars don't exist any more. You can't have a spreadsheet with "this product, this activity on Tuesday at 9 o'clock, this piece of content on Thursday at 3 o'clock". People won't be served that content at that point. So even the very essence of product launches or activities happening at the moment the product is available doesn't mean anything, because people are being served that content three weeks later. In my previous life, dealing with sport was a really big challenge with that: you'd announce something and then it would come out and never really marry up.
So that's going back to the essence of what we're trying to do at Canon, which is the education piece. You don't treat social like a magazine, you treat social like social media. That means thinking about the consumer and what their behaviours do to consume that content. My favourite thing, which sounds a bit odd, is when I can catch people looking at Instagram on the train, because you can see what their algorithm is and how they scroll. You never really get the chance to see what people are actually doing. It's about thinking about what other people are doing, because you can be very inward, thinking, "this content looks good, this is what the profile looks like, this is what my manager likes", and that means nothing because they'll never see it. That experience is completely for them, whereas you need to think of the experience for everybody else.
A key part of this is working closely with people and building confidence. A lot of this within social is people having the confidence to do the right things because they're informed and they know what it's going to do, and the powers that be being comfortable with that, and being okay with whether they see it or don't see it. It reminds me of a story from a previous role where there was a little bit of money left in the paid pot every month, and this was basically to help promote posts so that some of the senior leadership could see them. This was a big brand. That was the job this money was doing, so that everyone could be happy. You need that confidence to be able to do those cool things.
Social media now covers so many disciplines: creators, community, paid media, brand storytelling and even customer service. How do you see the structure of social teams evolving within brands?
I don't think a social team will exist in the traditional sense. I don't think you'll have the model of a social media manager with four social people working underneath them creating that content. You can't create content and activate in isolation, and social is so important. I know I'd say that, but it's true. It's more about how that works with all the levers in your marketing business. Historically it was an addition, but now it's the go-to. It's the most important part of it. It's the opinion-formers. It's where everyone talks about political activities and any element that's happening in the world. It's on social media in one form or the other.
What that means for us as brands is that as a role it has to be intrinsic in everything. It has to be intrinsic for a designer, it has to be there for senior leadership to understand it so they can do it. The storytellers and content creators need to think about that first. By its success it means that it doesn't exist as a separate function, but it does exist and it has to be plugged into everything.
As for the role of the social media person, I think it's about being able to help educate, evangelise, support and consider what those different elements are. The classic of reporting, posting, throwing it on Hootsuite, happy days, leave us alone, they're gone, that doesn't work. What you need to think about is how it can be embedded directly into the core of your marketing department. That's what social media will be, and will forever be now.
Are social teams becoming more central to the overall marketing strategy rather than sitting as a separate channel?
Yes, absolutely. Their identity is different, but it's incredibly important, and they touch every single aspect of the marketing journey. Social is not just the first touch point, it's every touch point. It might be the first time you become aware of something, you could be on a journey of purchasing, you could decide they're good or bad and develop brand affinity. From TikTok to Instagram to Trustpilot, Google reviews and Reddit, all of it is social media now. That is the whole scope of what we're dealing with.
Favourite book or podcast you'd recommend?
My favourite book is Great Expectations. Funny story: I've probably only read about five books in my life, and my wife always says, "just imagine how much smarter you would be if you actually read books."
My favourite podcast is Steven Bartlett's, which is supported by Canon. He's just the best, and I think it's really good. I actually consume most of my podcast content via TikTok and just scroll through things. I'm more of an algorithmic-led podcast consumer on the video format.
Best piece of advice you've received?
It was from someone who used to run a Formula 1 team. Before I started work, he told me, "work is really easy, you just have to keep everyone happy." I didn't really understand it as a starting point. I just thought if you could be an entertaining human being, that was enough. But it isn't. The more I've learned and the more I've worked with different people, the more I've realised he was so right. It's just about your stakeholders, your team, your peers. If you do the right things and you can help them and keep them happy, that's all you need to do.
