#28 How To Win International PR Coverage with Charlie Clark

Stella:

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Louise:

Today, we’re chatting with Charlie Clark from Minty Digital, a search marketing agency that specialises in travel, leisure, and lifestyle brands. We’ve got him in as his agency is based in sunny Barcelona, and he is therefore the perfect person to talk about his experience of digital PR in Europe. If you follow any digital PR agencies or teams, you’ll likely see them securing great international coverage from Spain to Slovenia. But we want to dig a little deeper into what the digital PR industry is like on the continent. So let’s get cracking.

Steve:

Hi, Charlie. Thanks for joining us. It’s a pleasure to meet you and we’re very excited to jump into checking about digital PR in Europe. Let’s start off though. Could you give the listeners a little introduction to yourself? Who is Charlie Clark and your career path?

Charlie:

Hi, well, thanks for having us on the podcast this week. It’s great to be involved. So I’m Charlie, founder of Minty, which is a search marketing agency who specialises mainly in the travel, leisure and lifestyle sector. I’ve been running the agency for eight years, this month now. And before running the agency, I was actually started my career in Brighton, search visibility. I was a trainee SEO there. My majority of experience came in the SEO field for quite a few years. I ended up being an in-house manager for home improvements company in the UK before moving out to Barcelona, where we then kind of evolved on our services, built things out and eight years later, got the agency around 20 people in the team now. And yeah, looking forward to what the future brings.

Louise:

Obviously, digital PR is part of the offering that you offer out there in Barcelona. In terms of digital PR in Europe, where is the kind of adoption at? If you’re thinking of it more like a link building tactic, obviously there are other benefits to digital PR as well, but from the link building side of stuff, do you find that there is a bit more kind of buying links over in Europe still or is that all gone now?

Charlie:

Yeah, so it depends on the regions. And I think one of the big differences I see, for example, is like we work not only just in Europe, but also in the US and the UK as well with our clients. And some of what I’ve seen in definitely in the UK markets over the last year or so is it’s become more difficult, I think, to secure definitely the links. And then if we start breaking down that further into, you know, like the follow links, the unsyndicated links, it all gets into a whole new game completely. But in Spain, for example, specifically, we’re seeing that the PR landscape and just how journalists kind of react to our stories is a lot more like what it was back in the UK a few years ago, or what we used to see. So I wouldn’t say it’s a relatively new concept, the term digital PR, but it’s definitely one that isn’t, I’d say, so used over in the European market. So when we’re pitching our stories to whether it’s you know regionals or nationals or more of the like relevant topical publications paid opportunities I would say like we do get that from journalists or webmasters sometimes there’s definitely still people that ask for that but we are seeing more and more journalists kind of adopt to traditional style digital PR that we see in the UK. And we’re following the same processes. So if we’re creating a good relevant source for them to link to, if we’re creating a good campaign, strong methodology, all those kind of tactics that we use back in the UK, yeah, we’re starting to see more links. But if some of the countries that we’ve worked in before, I don’t want, I just want to name any specifically because I wouldn’t want to like just single a specific European country out. But there’s definitely certain ones where like paid seems to be the game. And if it’s not paying the webmasters directly, we’re still getting a lot of like links to what would be like newswire syndications and it’s much more difficult to kind of break into the markets and more of like one-to-one relationship based like what we can do certainly in Spain and in the UK and the US as well.

Steve:

That’s really interesting I think we’ve seen similar from our experiences of pitching again not going to name any specific countries but yeah kind of across the board and in a variety it does it does definitely hold weight what you’ve just said. Let’s zoom in on Spain a little bit more in a bit more detail. How do you think digital PR in Spain differs from the UK? Are you having to present stories differently? Are you having to think about them differently thematically? Like, do you have to pitch them differently to how you would in the UK? Give us a little bit of intel on how you approach that specifically in Spain.

Charlie:

Yeah, so something that we find that works in Spain specifically, definitely over the last two years, which is something I’ve seen more difficult in the UK, which used to work really, really well, is data-led campaigns. whether it’s the surveys, whether it’s third party, first party data that we’re collecting ourselves, putting those campaigns together and providing a really relevant, useful, insightful story for journalists is really, really successful in the Spanish regions. And it still works in the UK, it still works in the US, it’s definitely still a model that we follow. But the comparisons and the results we get in regions such as Spain compared to the UK now are worlds apart. For example, maybe like two or three years ago, I’m sure you remember, it wasn’t uncommon to launch a campaign in the UK markets and, you know, once in a while you get like a 50 linker or sometimes even like a 100 linker and it would be like the best, you know, the best feeling in the world.

Steve:

I’ve seen… I remember the days well, Charlie.

Charlie:

I remember the days well. And like you know I’m happy being completely transparent because I know that you see a lot of self-promotion on LinkedIn and Twitter but I mean I know what it’s like and I speak to agency owners and I know it’s not the same anymore in the UK and the US. Yeah you might still get it you know you might get your regional syndication from PLC but it’s not the same as it was two or three years ago. Whereas what we’re seeing in Spain is that sort of coverage and pickup naturally is still happening and you’re still getting that unique you know, that unique coverage. It’s not syndications, like it’s real journalists writing about it. And it’s the same sort of tactics, or sorry, the same sort of results that we used to see some years ago. A good example was actually looking before the podcast, just us kind of like comparing our UK and Spain campaigns. I think last year, the Taylor Swift tour, I think everyone did a campaign something around that. But we did one, it was around Swift Dynamics. So it was, you know, how much desire is the tour bringing to the economy? So we did Madrid and then back to the UK as well. And then it was a very similar campaign. It was pretty much the same methodology, just depending on the stadium or where the tour was, we’d just, you know, replicate the data and push it out. We had the same percentage of like coverage to links, but like the amount of coverage we got was three times higher in Spain than it was in the UK. And the campaign was pretty much, you know, not copy and paste, but more or less the data set was the same. The methodology was the same. So I know you can’t always compare, like you can’t reference like the success just on one campaign, but I’ve seen a few cases of that where we have run similar campaigns in the different countries and we’re seeing different results or more results in countries such as Spain. So I think that’s for a number of reasons. There’s definitely been a massive rise in I think obviously of AI pitching in the UK. I mean every guest poster seems to have become a digital PR expert in the last 15 months as well. So there’s a lot of that going on and I think I wouldn’t say the market’s like it’s definitely getting more saturated, but I think the approach you have to take is different, right? You have to really curate those media lists, get those pitches, really speaking to those journalists one-to-one, and it’s just a different approach that you have to take, I think, now, or more of like an evolved approach to something, what you’re used to maybe a couple of years ago. Yeah, I guess that’s some of the main differences that I’ve seen. And it’s something that I guess PRs are always going to have to adapt to, especially in the UK. I’m sure eventually we’ll start seeing as the service becomes more popular in regions such as Spain, I’m sure we’ll start seeing some more of the same things happen. But I guess it’s our job as the experts to keep on top of that as well and adapt.

Louise:

Yeah, exactly. It’s also such an argument for diversifying your media lists, potentially outside of the UK or outside the US, wherever you’re based, and looking at the rest of Europe and the rest of the world, because not every journalist is the same. And it’s such an interesting, you’ve got a kind of an A/B test there of like a similar story from the UK to Spain. So you can really show that the results can quite widely differ. When it comes to outreaching in the rest of Europe, because obviously you’re predominantly in Spain, but I imagine you are pitching in some other European countries as well. Do you change up your tactics there depending on other European countries? Are there any tips or advice that you could give outside of Spain?

Charlie:

Yes. So we always try to use what we do. We don’t, of course, have a digital PR for every single country that we work in, in Spain. So what we usually do, and it’s something that I’d advise other PRs do, is work with a native from that region. So the way that we process, we run up workflows in-house for that at Minty is that we’ll have our same workflows in terms of how the campaigns are created, how they’re ideated, how we build the media list, et cetera. But then what we’ll try and do is work with someone that’s within the region. That could even be, it doesn’t necessarily have to be someone that does link building, outreach. It can always sometimes be a journalist as well. Try and get some insights into how we should approach the market there. And then we use translators, localisers to localise the press releases, outreach them. And in some cases, we even do the outreach in English as well, depending on the publication that we’re looking to target. In Spain, for example, a lot of English speakers, there’s a lot of purely English-speaking publications as well, so in that case it makes sense to pitch to the journalists in English because you’re sure they’re going to understand. But if you’re going for more of those dedicated national newspapers or certain countries where English isn’t so predominantly spoken, France is a good example. If you try to outreach to French media lists in English you’re not going to get much of a response. in our experience anyway so depending on the region it’s always best to localise where you can but there’s definitely room for reaching out in English as well and there’s definitely well usually in most cases I can’t speak for every single country in Europe but there’s usually a number of English-speaking publications that you can go for as well and the competition to kind of hit those will likely be less than what it is in the UK.

Steve:

Yeah It’s really interesting that because we definitely found the same. We actually, at the start of this year, hired a native German speaker as a digital PR pro who also operates in the UK, but she speaks German. She’s from Germany and she’s improved our German outreach exponentially just by being able to translate, but also the key is that she was like, she gave us loads of insights, like don’t follow up as often with German journalists. They hate it. Don’t sort of do all the pleasantries or sort of, you know, like pretend you know them. They want like a really robust methodology, a quality story that’s tailored to their audience, which is no different to lots of countries. But specifically for Spain, have you noticed anything about the journalists themselves? Obviously we don’t have to name any journalists, but you know, like how each country almost has like a slight variety. Like we had a US PR expert on from Journey Further who was brilliant at talking about US journalists. So in Spain, is it pleasantries? Is it you get to know them a bit or is it like straight into the story? How often do you follow up? Like anything around that that you could tell us?

Charlie:

Yeah, so I definitely think, like I was saying before, that the story we’re seeing, for example, reactive doesn’t seem to be super popular in Spain. What the journalists seem to like is a more traditional approach and a solid story. Not really anything that’s some of the more common things that you see in maybe like, you know, the Daily Star or a Lad Bible publication where it’s more like clickbait style articles. We don’t really see as much of that. What we do is we usually prepare, say whether it’s a survey for example, say really good, solid first party data, something that’s relevant to the audiences and something that I know is very popular in the US for example, works in Spain as well, like that regional breakdown you know, there’s nuances between the different cities or different autonomous regions in the country are really good ways to kind of break up and find angles for your campaigns. I guess a comparison for the UK is like there’s always the North-South divide, for example. You do have those nuances in Spain as well, depending on whether it’s like Catalonia, Aragon, like depending on what region it’s in. So that’s something that for myself, I mean English, I’ve been here for eight years, I understand a bit about it but I’m never going to understand as much as some of our team that were born, raised and really integrated into the culture here in Spain. So I think when you’re approaching journalists in Spain, you need to understand that because if you’re lacking that nuance in your pitches and I find that’s the accuracy in the story that you’re telling, that that needs to be right. Because if you pitch something and it’s completely off from a cultural standpoint, then it’s just not even going to get picked up. We’re probably not even going to get a response.

Louise:

You already touched on how you can outreach in English, but obviously having that native, obviously language, but the native understanding as well is really, really important. For people who are thinking about branching out, do you have advice on where to find these people? And do they need to have a background in digital PR and links? Or can you find a lovely Spanish PR who has traditionally worked in traditional PR? And is that still like a viable route to be able to get some really good kind of native insights into how to pitch and how to get that coverage?

Charlie:

Yeah, so going back to the point where digital PR isn’t, it’s not so much of an established service, it’s still relatively new. Like some of the companies that approach us, for example, it’s maybe their first time seeing it from what we post about with our case studies. It’s just not as widely adopted as it is, especially in the UK where, you know, it’s the buzzword, right, for link building. It’s something that people are learning about more. They’re being educated on it more. And I would say that the majority, people when we’re hiring, like from the job ads I’ve seen that we put up before, it’s very difficult. We will never find someone usually that has that digital PR background experience. One of our top outreach executives in the Spanish market was an ex-trip advisor. He just worked in the PR team there. And then what we did was kind of adapted our SEO approach, you know, worked that into our workflows and then combined that knowledge to fit to more of like the traditional approach that I guess we all know and work within. So if I was looking to hire, well we do hire here regularly, but if I was an agency from the UK looking to find someone, I would say that trying to find someone in the traditional PR landscape would probably be a best bet. I would just make sure that they at least have an understanding of digital landscape and what benefits that can bring. Because, you know, if we’re just going to plug into that, whether the objective is links, brand mentions, online coverage, we just need to make sure that those KPIs and metrics are really understood. When it comes to briefing the PRs, because there is a disconnect with traditional and digital that we all know. So I think just coming together and aligning on what the success metrics are for digital PR is the way to go. But yeah, I would say if you’re looking to hire out here, then definitely go for the traditional.

Louise:

I think we’ve said it on the podcast before, it’s probably easier to teach SEO or the information about SEO that you need to know about links to a PR than to teach an SEO how to do PR. The learning curve is much deeper that way. So it makes a lot of sense to be going to the people who already know how to pitch to media, how to form a press release and things like that, and just layer on that SEO knowledge as well.

Charlie:

Yeah, I’d say so because, you know, without trying to like discredit, it’s really just plugging in the SEO value of it to that traditional workflow. There’s things that you can do, for example, like one of the reasons that we do always try and push for those kind of first party data study type campaigns as well here in Spain is like you’ve got that linkable asset. So explaining why we do that as well and the reasonings why we do that and don’t just push it through a newswire, for example, is really important to communicate.

Steve:

But yeah, something that we can do. Picking up on that, that word you choose explanation or let’s let’s like broaden out to education. I’m really interested in this because it seems like I think I’m being accurate here, probably like a few years ago or just before COVID, we used to have quite a lot of conversations with UK-based clients or potential clients about the value of getting coverage and links from European publications. And often it would start with like, why would we do that? We’re a UK business. We want to target UK consumers. And it was quite an easy conversation to have because it’s like you get these links and it’s going to benefit you in the long run. Do you have lots of those conversations? How do they go? How do you approach them? And I guess the final part of the question is, do you get businesses, because you’re renowned at Minty for doing some fantastic, impactful work, do you get businesses who approach you specifically to break into the Spanish market and get brand awareness in Spain? Yeah. A question in three parts there for you, Charlie. Sorry about that.

Charlie:

Yes, okay, I’ll try and break it down. So when we have businesses approach us, if it was a purely UK based business where the sole operations were in the UK, I would say we don’t usually get anyone that comes towards us that would want coverage outside of the UK. Now, if you were immigration lawyers based in London and you’re looking to people for working visas in the UK or something like that then sure right there’s definitely that relevancy there and you can push some stories to relevant media like whether that’s people trying to migrate from Germany or Spain over to the UK post Brexit. There’s things you can do there and the relevancy factors there. I think there’s definitely, rightly so, been a lot of movement and a lot of conversations in the PR world over the past year as well about just being more relevant and looking at metrics just outside of the links as well. I think we got to a point last year when things like link targets and link guarantees I think they still have their place, but as a baseline kind of metric for the PR world, I just think it ended up becoming a bit of a race to the bottom in regards to the quality of service you can offer and also the value that that’s actually going to bring to the business. It needs to be relevant, right? Going back to the story, as long as we’ve got a client who’s, if they’ve got a genuine interest, all those links are actually going to provide value from regions outside of the UK, then yeah, we’ll pitch it. But if someone came to us and they said, hey, look, we need 20 links. We don’t really care where they’re from. You can get them in Spain, Germany, France. And then we push back and say, look, that’s not how we’re going to do things. And that’s not how you should be kind of measuring your success from PR as well.

Steve:

To remind me, second question that you had there, the end point. How those conversations tend to go, but then it was also like, do you get businesses that approach you specifically to break the Spanish market? And by that, I mean, they want to raise their brand awareness in Spain, as well as get links from Spain, build visibility in Spain, that kind of thing.

Charlie:

Yeah, so yeah, so we do have those sorts of projects. So a recent project we just completed was e-commerce, a well-known one in the UK actually that was looking to expand to Spain. So one part of that project was SEO, where we did all the localisation, translations, keyword research, etc. Built the site strategy, got that launched over in Spain, and the second part of that was digital PR strategy. Again, we’re looking at some foundational links there, but that wasn’t the main metric. We’re just trying to get those publications secured, get some brand visibility, get some good publications that we can put on the website as well so consumers can see that it’s trusted and seen in these top publications. It’s definitely becoming more and more common. We’re seeing a few companies approach us to expand into wider regions, but only if they have a solid business use case for it. Like I say, it’s not, that’s the only real way that we’d kind of push for that as well with clients as well. And we’d always advise that, you know, if it’s just something like a link KPI or link quality metric, then probably not the right agency for that.

Louise:

In terms of running your agency, so less about the services and more about you starting your agency, you chose Barcelona. Why did you choose Barcelona and not Manchester or Brighton or London? What brought you there and what’s it been like?

Charlie:

It was completely by chance if I’m being honest. I started the agency as I was working in-house for an actual brand in-house as the marketing manager for a few years before I decided to go and work by myself. I went freelance to begin with and the agency happened over time but I was running it from the UK actually the Isle of Wight at the beginning where I’m from and kicking my feet a little bit back home, as I think we all do sometimes in the UK. And I had a friend that just moved out here about two months before, and he invited me out to stay for a few weeks and just kind of see what was going on in the city. Came out, loved it. We ended up working from a co-work here that was really busy. It was a Spanish one, so it wasn’t like a WeWork or anything like that, but it was around eight floors and started working there for a few weeks and people started talking to me about SEO. We did paid ads at the time as well, so started working with a few customers there. I mean, within a month, I was like, okay, there’s a lot more business here than there was back home on the Isle of Wight. Even though we had a few kind of London based clients at the time, I just decided to see if I could give it a go out here. And then before I know it, eight years pass and, you know, built a team out of here and got the office and everything else. So it was completely by chance. It wasn’t a strategic decision from a business perspective. There’s definitely a lot more costs in Spain than there are in the UK and when it comes to things like taxes from just from employer personal to also employee taxes. Bureaucracy so it takes things like a lot longer to get done here so I definitely would say it’s not the most business friendly country but it does work and you know what I’ve always found about running the business in the UK is we have two companies with the UK one and the Spanish side everything in the UK seems to run like clockwork when it comes to bureaucracy and tax returns and everything. Spain takes a little bit longer. But yeah, it’s overall when you balance the quality of life versus the business side of things, there’s a good middle ground there. happy that we stayed here.

Steve:

Yeah for the listeners benefit we talked before we went on air about the weather which can’t go without a mention and um we’re based in Brighton, Mainland we haven’t seen the sun for about 12 to 13 days getting up for two weeks whereas you know it’s November and you still got you said it was hoodie weather Charlie but you know it’s still nice and sunny so that sort of style of life and everything like that I imagine it’s a really nice added benefit as well. I wanted to touch on Spanish employees versus those from the UK as well. If there’s any noticeable differences, because we tend to hire people. I mentioned we’d hired someone from Germany earlier this year, but we tend to hire people from the UK. So what are your experiences there?

Charlie:

There’s a few things in that. I guess one from the agency culture perspective, from the actual employee perspective, there’s a lot less agencies in Barcelona than there is in the UK. So I know in the UK, I think the average kind of retention for team members is something around two years. And you’re probably doing quite well if you have the team members that stay in the agency for a few years. I know here in Spain, for example, that with our agency that our average staff retention rate is a lot higher than that. In regards to pay, the pay in Spain is traditionally lower than what it is in the UK, I would say by a considerable amount. We’ve always tried to kind of match the UK salaries out here in Spain as well. So I think that’s always like, it’s not just about the pay, but also tying that in to everything else. Like that’s really helped us with retaining staff out here and being able to like really build a solid team. In regards to the actual employees themselves, our team’s quite international. We have a number of Spanish speakers, but we also have English, French, Ukrainian, South American, American, like there’s a bunch of us at Minty so it’d be quite hard to kind of pinpoint down any like individual aspects when it comes to like cultural differences but I guess challenges we’ve had to face or kind of overcome is holidays for example because we’re really international not everyone celebrates Christmas. Bank holidays are different, Easter is different. So we’ve had to adapt to that. In that specific case, for example, we’ve removed bank holidays from our standard holidays and just added it on, like an extra 14 days per year as annual leave. So if people want to work on a UK bank holiday, they can do, but if they want to book it off, then they can as well. So people can just chop and choose which bank holidays they want.

Louise:

That makes a lot of sense.

Charlie:

Yeah, so there’s a few things like that we’ve implemented. It’s been really nice as well, actually, as an agency owner as well, like having a lot of different cultures within the company, because it’s just enabled us to be able to, I guess, learn a lot more and grow, to become a lot more knowledgeable, I guess, as well around the different regions that we work in. So I’d say overall, it’s a positive having such a diverse group of people within the team. But there’s definitely like operational areas that you have to adapt to here.

Steve:

Lot to consider like what what in terms of like culture you fully if you don’t mind me asking because we’ve we debated this quite a lot you know fully remote hybrid you know again we’ve had this discussion the podcast but how do you do minty how do you make sure that the agency culture is kind of flourishing over there in Barcelona.

Charlie:

So we’ve got an office space, which is a really nice spot. Sorry about, again, rubbing it in about the weather, but it’s on the beach. Of course, of course.

Louise:
We’re on the beach too, Charlie. It’s just a pebble beach.

Charlie:

It’s a nice terrace and stuff, but we’ve got an office and we say like once a week in the office, but that’s for the people that are based in Barcelona. We have a team in Madrid, UK, over in the Americas as well. So for the people that aren’t in Spain, obviously they don’t have to come into the office once a week, but what we’ll try and do is quarterly meet up, annual team trip as well. Like normally we get somewhere close to Barcelona, like a villa and do some kind of activities which would be trying to get the team together. So I’ve been trying to find the balance of this because people don’t want to go back to the office five days a week. I don’t think that’s really ever going to go back to how it was. But also I want to try and keep that culture slightly because I know I definitely see the value in that face to face, and you know making sure that we’ve got a team that actually know each other and not just behind the screen.

Louise:

Yeah it’s a real challenge like especially now we’re a number of years after the kind of imposed working from home it’s working out yeah what do people actually want what do businesses want and yeah it seems to be a thing that’s constantly flexing and working out what’s best for everyone.

Charlie:

I think you have to adapt and do it on a case-by-case basis especially like nowadays as well. Some of our team, well a couple of them, have never worked in an office before because they started their first job in COVID. So mad, I can’t get my head around that. Yeah, so I guess all those reminiscences we have of that office culture, the after work activities, that’s not there. So they don’t have anything to base that off. So it’s kind of like, okay, well, I’ve got to commute, I’ve got to pay X amount per week, stand in the cold, wait for the train. I wouldn’t want to do it if I was used to working from home. So I guess we’re just trying to navigate that to case by case basis. And we always try and review it as well. So every few months, like, okay, are you using the office? Are you happy coming in? Yeah, we just try and be flexible. You have to be nowadays because I think if you’re going to try and force people to do certain things, there’s a lot of options out there with which agency you can go to, whether you go freelance or anything like that. So you need to have that flexibility.

Steve:

Ultimately, the work we do can be done remotely as well. That’s the thing I always come back to. It’s not like we have to be somewhere but it is just it’s really interesting that you kind of constantly review it and ask questions of your of your team to see how they’re finding it because i had it recently where i’ve got two kids now my wife went away and took the kids with her for like a few days so I had a couple of rare evenings free and i just said it wasn’t like the old days usually I’d be able to go out for a beer with someone after work and there’d always be someone going it was like who fancies a beer after work and I’m aware this might just be me as a character people just just for like, they went for separate beers. But like, that made me feel a little bit sentimental and sad, like that kind of culture is quite nice, but then actually… it’s more about, as you say, Charlie, quite eloquently, it’s more about like not just meeting people behind a screen and like face to face. So it’s not about the beers afterward, it’s more just like having that quality time together as much as you can, I suppose. So it’s great to hear you’re doing that.

Charlie:

I think so, yeah. And the culture changes as well over time, right? I think I’m definitely from the background where like after work you would go for a beer some years ago, like don’t do it so much anymore now, but I’ve noticed that the younger generation that we work with, like those after work, first day beers have kind of, a lot of people don’t drink anymore. So like, you know, there’s a big, big percentage of Gen Z, pretty sure, I won’t say a number, I’m pretty sure it’s from the campaign we did recently, but it’s like, there’s something like 60% of Gen Z have like cut out or completely minimised their drinking.

Louise:

Yeah, 100% we have a similar thing where it’s like, okay, let’s make sure things aren’t centred around alcohol. What other fun things can we do that breaks the ice? And yeah, gets people to know each other.

Steve:

You could always get the team, fly them back to London for a quick Nando’s and then back like Mark Rofe did recently. There’s a team bonding.

Charlie:

I saw that. We were in a WhatsApp brief and I saw a picture, I saw that happening and I thought, I’m not going to ask any questions about that one, I’m sure I’ll see it in a newspaper in a few days and lo and behold.

Louise:

Yeah, there it was.

Steve:

Extraordinary scenes.

Louise:

Lovely. We have a question that we’re going to ask everyone at the end of the podcast. It’s actually two questions and you get to pick which answer. So it’s either, have you seen a really interesting digital PR campaign or marketing campaign that you wanted to share because you thought it was great? Or which is the brand that you would love to work with the most?

Charlie:

Brands that we’d like to work with the most, I think would definitely be more of one that I’d like to focus on. So we actually had a bit of like a dream client list that we wanted to work with. We’re always, you know, trying to eventually position our marketing towards them. I’d say it’s not one specifically, but one, but definitely like Strava. Strava is one that I’ve been trying to hunt down for a long time now. I think I even, when their marketing manager was, I had one of their marketing team in communications once and I actually like ran Strava on the map, on the Strava map.

Louise:

Oh that’s very nice. Lovely work Charlie.

Charlie

Yeah and then I think I DMed it and he was like amazing effort but we’ve got an agency and we’re very happy with them.

Steve:

So it was all for nothing.

Charlie:
It was all for nothing yeah. But I thought it was a pretty good way to pitch. I think Strava is definitely a big one that I’d love to get in the bag. And I know that a lot of the team would love an Airbnb-style client as well. So I’d say they’re on our list. But fingers crossed, keep positioning ourselves. Maybe they’ll drop in in the inbox one day.

Louise:

Maybe they’ll listen to this podcast.

Charlie:

Yeah, who knows.

Louise:

You can give us some kind of kickback.

Steve:

Amazing touting for business. Kickback just in case Strava are listening. That’s a verbal agreement now, yeah. We’ll get the paperwork done after the show, talking of which, um, we have come to the end, Charlie, it’s an absolute pleasure to have spoken to you. If anyone wants to get in touch, either to work with you at Minty or to be a client of yours, like how, how should they best get in touch? We don’t want to give away all your personal details and stuff like that, but yeah, you tell us how should they get in touch with you?

Charlie:

I mean, we’ve always got the website, mintydigital.com. You can contact us there. I’m also quite active on LinkedIn and X, Twitter, however you call it now. Not so much on X nowadays, but yeah.

Louise:

I was going to say, you’re still plugging away on there.

Charlie:

Trying to. You know what it’s like. It’s tough out there at the moment. You can find me on there, Charlie Clark Minty. LinkedIn is probably best, to be honest.

Steve:

Thank you so much, Charlie. Pleasure to chat to you and really, really interesting to learn about the agency and how you work in Spain. But yeah, appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you.