How Who Gives A Crap finds creativity in the conventional
How do you take a seemingly boring product and create a distinctive personality that balances serious environmental and social issues with irreverence?
On this episode of The CMO Show, Mark sits down with Vanessa Morrish, Head of Creative and Brand at Who Gives a Crap to discuss the brands personality, creativity, and all things toilet paper.
What does it take to develop a style and brand personality that cuts through and creates genuine moments of delight?
For Vanessa Morrish, Head of Creative and Brand at Who Gives a Crap, it has to look good, feel good, and do good.
The challenge for world-changing toilet paper company Who Gives A Crap was to take a seemingly boring but necessary product and make it interesting.
The added bonus is that the company donates 50% of profits to build toilets in the developing world.
However, rather than leading with this as the primary narrative of their brand story, customers are more likely to recognise their distinctive marketing and creative boxes delivered to doors around their neighbourhood.
As Vanessa explains, they go out of their way to stand out and connect with their customers. “Something that we see is that people say, ‘I can't believe I got this excited about toilet paper,’ Vanessa says.
“We realised early on that there was something magical about the brand and the brand experience, and all of these people suddenly becoming advocates for toilet paper and being excited about it.”
Vanessa believes the magic of the brand is that it feels human, and moments of surprise and delight are sprinkled throughout the customer experience. “That kind of ridiculousness and delight is something that you can't fake and everyone in the company is ridiculous and delightful and thoughtful and driven by the impact that we can make as a company,” Vanessa says.
“It's imbued everywhere in the brand, and in the company, and the experience.”
So how does Who Gives A Crap give a crap? Tune into this episode of The CMO Show to find out.
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[Credits]
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The CMO Show production team
Producers – Candice Witton
Audio Engineers – Ed Cheng & Daniel Marr
Got an idea for an upcoming episode or want to be a guest on The CMO Show? We’d love to hear from you: cmoshow@filteredmedia.com.au
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[Transcript]
Participants:
Host: Mark Jones
Guest: Vanessa Morrish
Mark Jones:
As marketers, there’s something we need to keep at the forefront of everything we do: Tell your story.
It’s behind the decisions we make, the messaging we put out, and the way we build our brand.
The challenge for some CMOs and marketing leaders is that our storytelling can look and feel very much like the competition. From a customer’s perspective, it can feel a bit same-ish.
So what if you took a different approach? What would it take to develop a style and brand personality that really cut through and created genuine moments of delight?
Hello friends, Mark Jones here. Welcome to The CMO Show. It's great to have you join us. Today my guest is Vanessa Morrish, Head of Creative and Brand at Who Gives a Crap. Yes, that’s right, the fun, world-changing toilet paper company. This is a company that donates 50% of profits to build toilets in the developing world, and you probably know it for distinctive marketing and creative boxes delivered to your door. Well, Vanessa is here to tell us why she gives a crap, and what the company is up to. She has a creative background and the story she tells about joining the organisation is straight out of a sitcom. Enjoy.
Mark Jones:
Hello, Vanessa. Thanks for joining us.
Vanessa Morrish:
Hi, thanks for having me.
Mark Jones:
I want to start at the top and your LinkedIn bio is just fantastic. I'm going to read it to you and then you can respond however you like.
Vanessa Morrish:
Oh, please don't. This is horrifying. Sure.
Mark Jones:
I'm going to go there anyway.
Vanessa Morrish:
Okay.
Mark Jones:
"I like coming up with ridiculous ideas that do good for the world that drive change and make people realise small things can lead to massive change. I'm also a woman child who likes fart jokes."
Vanessa Morrish:
That's very correct.
Mark Jones:
It's so good. Well done. And I would expect nothing less from somebody who works at Who Gives A Crap. Tell me a little bit about your background. How would you describe your style?
Vanessa Morrish:
Woman-child style, laughs at fart jokes still? I like to find fun in everything I do. My background is a creative. I worked in advertising for many years and like many people, I felt I was selling my soul a little bit and I wanted to use my creative skills for good. So, I stalked Who Gives A Crap. I loved the brand. I loved the company from the outside and I applied for a job that I had no business applying for, which was growth marketing. I knew nothing about growth marketing. I wrote some growth marketing terms on my hand and tried to pepper them into the interview. One of the co-founders Danny, he recognised immediately that I was not qualified for the job, but thought that I was funny and I could do some work in a creative capacity. And yeah, I started consulting with the company. Then they offered me a job and I've been with them for six years.
Mark Jones:
Well, congratulations because that sounds like a sitcom script, where you are just strategically mentioning growth marketing every few sentences.
Vanessa Morrish:
Yes.
Mark Jones:
Is this the bit where I say growth marketing again? Yeah. And then that never works out and yet somehow, here you are. But I got to say, and this is what I wanted to really understand because everybody, I think, almost everyone knows the brand Who Gives A Crap. The thing that I find fascinating about that through a brand and marketing lens and even in just the story you've told there, is personality and style, and that tone of voice is everything from a brand perspective.
Mark Jones:
And if you think about many brands, particularly in the consumer segment where you're in, it's a pretty much a monotone type environment, right? There's a look and a feel where we try to be the same in order to compete where this is actually not only structurally different from a business point of view because you give away 50% of your profits, but you are materially different in the way that you look and feel and sound. So, it's not surprising they hired you with that approach. But tell me about how you've thought about that and process that in terms of the work that you do.
Vanessa Morrish:
Well, toilet paper is a really boring product. No one ever thinks about their toilet paper and nor should they because it's toilet paper. But what we've tried to do is take a boring product to make it interesting. And so, something that we see on our social and through our customer letters as well, is that people say, "I can't believe I got this excited about toilet paper." And we realised early on that there was something magical about the brand and the brand experience and all of these people suddenly becoming advocates for toilet paper and being excited about it and telling their friends about it.
Vanessa Morrish:
And I think the magic of the brand is that it feels really human and delight is sprinkled everywhere. And I think that that kind of ridiculousness and delight is something that you can't fake and everyone in the company is ridiculous and delightful and thoughtful and driven by the impact that we can make as a company. And it's imbued everywhere in the brand and in the company and the experience. And so, I think that's what makes the brand magical and authentic, which is a word that is overused a lot in marketing and creative, but it's a good way to describe it. What you see on the outside is what you get on the inside and you can't fake that.
Mark Jones:
And by the way, that's my definition of integrity, right? The sense of being together and whole. And I just got to say, this is happy coincidence because I'm a customer as well. I get a big box, delivered to our house on a regular schedule because I got a large family and this is, pretty important, I got to say. But you've even got messages on there, congratulating the delivery person for bringing the box to the house.
Vanessa Morrish:
Yeah.
Mark Jones:
Those sorts of things, who would've thought, right? So that the issue is, how do you do that in a consistent way? I think that's the challenge, a lot of people find is, that tone, that spirit, the integrity, it's actually hard to sustain in a consistent way. How do you approach that dynamic?
Vanessa Morrish:
Well, I think the important thing is to get customers from A to B really easily, and then you sprinkle the delight around it. And so, you shouldn't make things hard for people. You shouldn't make the experience hard for people, but once you've created the structure and the framework, whether it's packaging, whether it's an email, whether it's a campaign, you get people there and then you look for the opportunity. And the thing is, looking for the opportunity, sometimes it's right in front of you. Sometimes it's underneath. Sometimes it's on top. Sometimes it's in a tiny crack that no one will even look at. And it's about looking in all different places to be able to inject that moment of delight or ridiculousness, or just looking for a place that no one would ever think of putting a message there or a little Easter egg. Yeah. I think it's about finding that opportunity and making sure that you're looking for it because not everyone looks for it.
Mark Jones:
So, you are head of creative and the brand. So presumably, you are thinking quite often about these delight moments?
Vanessa Morrish:
Yeah, that's all I think about.
Mark Jones:
Right. Yeah. Obviously, the fart joke thing makes a whole lot more sense now that we think about the creative side of this, but in all seriousness, tell us about the creative approach that you use? Where do the ideas come from? How do you work within a team to bring that about? Because as you say, it seems to be an iterative process, as you think about my example of saying cheers to the delivery person. There's got to be tonnes and tonnes of scenarios, right? So, how do you work this through?
Vanessa Morrish:
I mean, this is something that I think about a lot and it's also hard to explain, so I'll try and do my best. A lot of it is gut based. And so, when you think about creative rigour, you look at a piece of work and you critique it and you look for opportunities and you say, "Is this good enough?" And so, it's part of injecting the delight or the moment of ridiculousness is in that creative rigour. And sometimes, it's at the beginning and sometimes it's in the middle and sometimes at the end and it's not usually the same each time. And so, it's making sure that the team understands that there's a job that we need to do with the customers and with our communications. And we make sure that job is done and we work really closely with our growth marketing team or our cross-functional teams to make sure that we're answering the business brief, but then it's our job as well to look at the piece as a whole.
Vanessa Morrish:
Is it doing the job that we're asking it to do, but then is there anything different that we can do to make it that extra... Just that extra 5% of effort or 10% of effort is worth it. Even if only if a couple of people see it, it's still worth it because you don't know what those couple of people will do. They might post it to LinkedIn or post it to their social. And then another person sees. There's a whole trickle effect of this little extra effort that you put into things. And I think, we have to be careful not to over engineer and over egg, everything that we do, because then it becomes a bit much and it's not delightful anymore. And so, I think it's about identifying those right moments to do it.
Mark Jones:
So, couple of things I'm picking up is this 5% more and is it good enough and almost not being too good like we've over engineered it, we've almost been too clever by half as they would say, right? So, there's a fine line. There's a creative, I guess, approach that you are applying there. It seems hard to teach that, is that right? How much of this is gut and how much of it is experience?
Vanessa Morrish:
Yeah, it's both and you don't always get a riot and I still don't get a riot. There are moments and we do a lot of campaign reflection and reflection on all of our channels and all of our creative work every month, where we look at it and we look at the things that worked well, the things that didn't work well and the things that we can improve upon. And inevitably, there's always stuff that we can improve on. And there's always stuff that didn't quite hit the mark. And sometimes you just don't know until it's gone out in the world and you see it. And you're like, "Ugh, that wasn't right."
Vanessa Morrish:
Or an example of this is, I was in a Uber in LA recently and he was asking me where I worked and I explained, and he started... He was driving and looking at our social feed and he pulls up this particular post, which after we put it out in the world, we're like, "That didn't really make sense. It wasn't the best thing we did." And he's like, "I just don't understand this." And I said, "Yeah, I know. It's not great." And it happens all the time, but I think you have to constantly critique the stuff that you do and then evolve it. And as long as you're evolving and you can see that evolution and that improvement, then that's all you can ask for. You're never going to get it right all the time.
Mark Jones:
There's so many problems with that driving while looking at social story. Layers of complexity there. So, there's an interesting dynamic which I see with organisations that are doing a really great thing. Tell that story. That's the primary narrative of look at the great thing we're doing. And obviously, at a very simplistic level, the 50% of profits that I referenced, which is a big part of your story is, or could be that big thing that we're doing. What I have observed with many organisations, both in the social sector and the B Corp community and more broadly, particularly the corporate space, but a focus on the Captain Obvious story, as opposed to look for the delight moments or perhaps an analogy or a different type of expression that would actually, probably work a lot better.
Mark Jones:
And I see a lot of creatives and brand people struggling with that because internal teams think you've got to tell the Captain Obvious story over and over and over again. It's different for you because I imagine your team has already aligned at an executive level around that style and tone and approach to market. But if it wasn't the case, what would you do? How would you bring people around to a different way thinking about that? An approach which sometimes works and sometimes finds you in awkward situations in the back of an Uber. So why don't you lead with the impact story as your first thing?
Vanessa Morrish:
People buy the product for many different reasons and as much as we, in a perfect world, would love it that everyone in the world has values aligned and they just buy it because they want to do something for the planet or they want to do something for people. It's never going to be the main reason. And so, we want to make sure that the experience of just buying our product is great. And then the cherry on top is the fact that it does good. And that creates this well rounded, feel good experience for people. And so, people are buying something that looks good, it feels good and it does good. And those are the things that are important and it makes it this whole experience.
Mark Jones:
How much more are people prepared to pay for that experience do you think?
Vanessa Morrish:
I think they're willing to pay more because it makes them feel good and it's an easy way for them to do good. There are a lot of barriers for people to make a monthly donation or choose a charity that they want to make a monthly donation to, or for whatever reason, they won't go to a climate change rally to show what their beliefs are. There are a lot of barriers to doing good and we want to break those barriers down. And so, by just switching one thing that you have to buy normally, it opens up a world of good to people in a really easy and accessible way.
Mark Jones:
I love that. I also was thinking about that broader dynamic around the product has to do what it says on the tin. When do you need to tell people how this product works, as opposed to why you should buy it?
Mark Jones:
Because sometimes, it's not enough just to say, "Well look, 50% of our profits go to the charities," but also it's materially different. And I also see, this is a challenge too which is, organisations quite often want to tell the story of what we do and get into the nuts and bolts and logistics of the step by step process that we take, or the fact that all of our product is now sustainably sourced, or we've got an ethical supply chain. They want to lead with that story. And so, you actually have seeded that story, but again, it's not a primary narrative. So I guess the question really is, when was it the right time to tell that story for you?
Vanessa Morrish:
Yeah, well, when we started off, we were talking predominantly, about the people side of the business. And so, we were talking, there are billions of people in the world without access to clean water and proper sanitation. And so, that was the main story that we were telling, but we always had eco credentials and this desire to make a difference to the planet in everything that we did. And the public consciousness has changed in the six years that I've been working at the company, which is great. And so now, we tell both the people side of our impact and the environmental side of our impact. But in terms of your question as well, there is an educational aspect that we need to do because a majority of people don't realise that they're actually wiping their bums with virgin trees. And so, we need to do a better job. And this is something that we have been thinking about, "How do we alert people to the problem?"
Vanessa Morrish:
Because I really think if people knew, they would realise that, that's a ridiculous thing. But, going back to what we were talking about before, people don't think about their toilet paper. And of course, they don't think about how their toilet paper is made and the materials that are made up. And the fact that, a million trees are cut down every day just to make traditional toilet paper. That fact is astounding and it's one of the leading causes of deforestation.
Vanessa Morrish:
And so, as a company and as a company that wants to contribute to making a difference to the world, particularly to climate change in the environment, we need to let people know, so they can make a conscious decision to switch and to do something. And then, it leads back to what we were talking about before. This is an easy way for people to do good. When it comes to climate change and the world's problems, people want to contribute and to make a difference, but it feels hard and they don't know where to start. And so, the easier we can make it for people and we can explain the problem and then provide a solution, it'll empower people to make change.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. So, there's so much going on there. The change management, how you connect to people and I'm going to confess, I didn't know it was a million trees a day. I don't actually know what to do with that information. That's staggering. You would hope that there's a million trees or more being planted every day, which I suspect the answer's probably, "No." Yeah. Right? So, okay. There's a problem. I'm just going to park that big problem for a second.
Mark Jones:
I guess this is the challenges we face in business now, when you think about the ESG movement, the sustainability movement, ethical supply chains, exploitation of workers in different countries around the world, there is a massive demand. And it's only increasing, that organisations will tell the story that you're openly talking about, obviously because you're in a position of strength. How do you see that evolving from the lens of somebody who's responsible for brand and marketing, the reputation of an organisation? If there's not already a reckoning, there is going to increasingly become a reckoning over time. So, as a leader in this space, what would your advice be to people who are standing there, possibly aware they don't have a great story to tell, and they need to start making the right steps? What would your advice be?
Vanessa Morrish:
Well, I think it's about having a clear mission and clear company values that ladder up to that mission, and then rallying the company around it. And once you've rallied the company around it, then you rally your customers around it and make your company something that they can believe in with confidence. And this is assuming that everyone is putting their money where their mouth is and is fully buttoned up when it comes to whatever their mission is. But yeah, I think as a company, we believe that business can make a meaningful impact on people on the planet. And this opportunity to make a difference is why we exist.
Vanessa Morrish:
And we want as many companies out there to follow the lead of, whether it's a 50% of profits donated, whether they become a B Corp, whatever their mission is in how they contribute to making change in the world, that's a really exciting thing. And the ripple effect of businesses being led by purpose over profit, well, I guess marrying purpose and profit together in a way that's really successful, it's such an exciting space to be in. And it's something that really motivates me personally. Like how can we inspire more people to start businesses like, Who Gives A Crap?
Mark Jones:
What about the green-washing issue? So, to look at that, there's a lot of people out there who historically, we've seen them recognise and pay lip service to these ideas, but not actually follow it all the way through. I'm fascinated by obviously, the question of impact measurement, how you're going to, not just prove that you're doing the right thing, but demonstrating that, and then constantly improving your organisation, I guess, with a sense of integrity around what we discovered? Our supply chain's not as ethical as we thought it was, or whatever the scenario might be. And I guess you've just touched on that. So, how do you approach that? How do you think organisations should best move towards a measurement reporting model that actually drives that ongoing change?
Vanessa Morrish:
Well, I think it depends on what size and what point your organisation is at, because it looks different for a organisation of 10 versus an organisation of 300. But I think having external measures like becoming a B Corp or having a life cycle assessment or whatever it is, depending on your industry, those are the things which help keep you honest as a company. And again, it goes back to your values and what's important to you. There will always be hard decisions to make and trade offs that you have to make when it comes to running a company and scaling a company. But as long as you're clear on what your values are and how you make decisions based on your values, then that's the thing that will keep you on the straight and narrow.
Vanessa Morrish:
But it's a complex thing and it's a difficult thing. And we're lucky as a company because we've been able to grow and now, we can hire a head of sustainability and a head of impact who really have that specialty. And so, we can go deep on the things that mean a lot to us as a company, but for a company that is just starting out, it's a harder thing. But I really do think that it comes down to a clear set of values and making sure you make decisions based on what those values are.
Mark Jones:
I agree. And as you say, make the decisions constantly improve your decision making based on the discoveries that you make along the way. That also then ladders up to thought leadership and how you communicate that. But also, how you advocate further for change. The wonderful thing that we see with so many social sector organisations is the greater your awareness of an issue grows, the more you learn about something, the better position you are in to educate others and to bring them along the journey. Whether it's the million trees story or another story in your own sector.
Mark Jones:
This is probably one of those cases where, in many corporate circles, senior executives think about thought leadership as a bit of a panacea for marketing. If only more people knew how smart we were, they'd engage our services. In the consumer space, that's not always the case. And it's that more holistic perspective that I think that you've unpacked, but to the extent that you can create content that changes the narrative, that you present ideas to the world that haven't been thought about, how powerful a driver do you think that is for your business?
Vanessa Morrish:
I think it's a massive driver. I think there is the education piece to alert people to the problem about deforestation and toilet paper and making changes. There is the education piece around the fact that lots of people, billions of people don't have a toilet. Again, this is not something that most people think about and well, it's being thought leaders in terms of making easy change. I think that's what it comes down to. And I think the balance that we need to strike, is alerting people of the problems, but not being downers about it because there is climate change anxiety, it's a real thing. And people don't want to be lectured to. People care and they want to care, but you need to get them to care, but doing it a way that makes them feel empowered and makes them feel good and make sure it's entertaining at the same time.
Vanessa Morrish:
And that's not to discredit any of the education that we need to give to people. It's more just understanding what makes humans tick, really. None of us want to be lectured to. We don't want to feel bad about things. We want to feel like we can contribute and make change. And we want to be entertained. We're basic. Humans are very basic people.
Mark Jones:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Also, wildly unpredictable.
Vanessa Morrish:
Yeah.
Mark Jones:
One of the things I've learned through studying behavioural economics is that, we expect consistency and it turns out we're really not. And so, having that approach is really key. What I like about what you just said there is, maybe don't always over-complicate it and use your best intuition about how people would probably respond to the message that you're pushing out there. It's almost that creative balance piece again, isn't it? Oh, that's too far that we were over egging that where, again, that intuitive sense. It's where leadership meets creativity and understanding. Yeah. That empathy, right. The customer empathy. That's fascinating. This is the great unspoken. I don't know to what degree this should be a greater part of marketing team's strategies. Is this a normal conversation for you and your team, getting that balance, right?
Vanessa Morrish:
Yeah. It is a normal conversation. And it’s something that we talk about a lot, it's about finding the right balance for the things that we really care about as a company and making it interesting to people. So they can come along on the journey as well and feel they're a part of it.
Mark Jones:
Yeah.
Mark Jones:
That's exactly right. I'm wondering about the legacy impact here, of fixed messaging approaches. It's where I'm going with it, right? So we only say these, "Here's our structured lines for these target audiences. This is how we'll always talk." And maybe that's okay as a guide, but there's an agile approach, sorry for the jargon, but there's a flexible approach to engaging with audiences. And I'm borrowing from the social media, be in the moment kind of approach, right? There's a bit more freedom required, but I actually see us all heading in that direction. It's very hard to escape the sense that we need to think and feel and operate like the actual humans we are and less of that former structured model of marketing and comms. Right?
Mark Jones:
But of course, there's a tension here, which is that, how do you do that at scale? How do you have multiple people, thinking and behaving in ways that are consistent? When if you probably look at across your large global marketing team, if that's a multinational scenario, they're all going to be wildly consistent. We're setting ourselves up for a mess.
Vanessa Morrish:
Yeah. It's something that I'm also thinking about as we scale our team. And as we broaden our types of campaigns and thinking and messaging across different markets, like, how do we make sure that we're talking about the things that are important to us, and that are important that our customers need to know about, in a way that's consistent, but also, opens it up for creativity and also localization as well. And I don't know what the answer is other than to simplify our messaging and make sure that it's consistent, easy to replicate and has some interesting treasure trove territory of creativeness within it. But that's where I'm at with it at the moment. But, let's talk again in six months and I'll let you know how that's gone.
Mark Jones:
Yeah. Look, I wouldn't mind that. Before we break and just loving the conversation. When you think about where you're going and where the brand's going, one of the things that I see many brands doing is product extension. Is that going to be part of your story? How do think about the future? What's the growth mindset like for you?
Vanessa Morrish:
Well, this is the theme of the conversation. It comes down to the company values and our end goal is to get clean water and sanitation for everyone in the world. So for the billions of people who don't have it. And so, every decision in terms of, like product extension to the brand to production, it all ladders up to that. Like how can we get to our end goal the quickest way? And so, that's part of it.
Vanessa Morrish:
And also, how do we make sure that we're not putting more crap out into the world because that's something that's really important to us as a company in terms of our sustainability goals as well. We don't want to make stuff that people don't need or want, because we're not contributing positively to the world. And so, those are the two things that we think about when it comes to scaling the brand and scaling our offering. And so, yeah. Those are the two things that we think about. And that's something that we're really thinking about as we go into the next financial year of, what are our product extensions and what is scaling the brand as well?
Mark Jones:
Mm-hmm. That makes a lot of sense to me. And I guess... I don't know if guardrails is the right way to frame that, but certainly, when you've got the value centric mindset, which is those two things, as you say, around the water and sanitation and what will actually contribute to that. There's actually a lot of freedom in that because you can say no to stuff with a lot more confidence, right?
Vanessa Morrish:
Yeah it's like a good creative brief has a very clear objective and a tight framework, but within that framework as a playground. And so, it's the same thing for us as a brand. We have a clear end goal and we have those clear frameworks around what our objective is, but you have the opportunity to innovate and to be creative and so the tightest brief brings the greatest amount of creativity.
Mark Jones:
That is the perfect way to end Vanessa Morrish. Thank you so much for your time today. I really enjoyed hearing your story and getting to know the brand behind the box of toilet paper that turns up on my front door, every so often. So thanks for your time.
Vanessa Morrish:
Oh, thank you for having me. I enjoyed it.
Mark Jones:
So there you have it: toilet paper – absolutely not boring.
There’s some really astounding facts in the conversation, including this idea that every day, more than 1 million trees are cut down to make traditional toilet paper.
It’s interesting to think about how Who Gives A Crap convey messaging like that in a way that’s not catastrophising, but instead both playful and serious. It’s a unique balance.
I really think one of the big takeaways is how do you lead with your brand story? Do you take the path well-travelled and lead with the most obvious?
It might be an impact story like Who Gives A Crap, or a founder story, or do you engage your audience through moments of surprise and delight? Let me know – if you’ve got a story to share I’d love to hear it.
And don’t forget to subscribe to The CMO Show on your favourite podcast app, so you never miss an episode.
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That’s all from me this time, thank you for joining us on The CMO Show. As always, it’s been great to have you with us. Until next time.