Simon Chappuzeau is the Founder and CEO of StoryLux, a company that implements LinkedIn, email, and podcasting marketing strategies primarily for business coaches and smaller companies. He is also the host of the How I Went Viral podcast, where he breaks down viral posts on LinkedIn and the Scripted with AI podcast, where guests share strategies and tactics for becoming a better marketer. Simon has been a member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) for over a decade.
In the fast-paced world of digital marketing, how can entrepreneurs and thought leaders leverage LinkedIn to maximize their global impact and foster genuine connections?
According to Simon Chappuzeau, a seasoned marketing strategist, mastering LinkedIn involves much more than mere presence. He emphasizes the strategic refinement of LinkedIn profiles for SEO, the importance of producing consistently engaging content, and the necessity of embodying authenticity in every post. By implementing these strategies, Simon asserts that businesses can not only enhance their visibility on LinkedIn but also establish deeper, more meaningful connections with their audience, paving the way for significant global impact and business growth.
In this episode of America Open for Business, Cameron Heffernan talks with Simon Chappuzeau, Founder and CEO of StoryLux, about leveraging LinkedIn for global business growth. They discuss the intricacies of SEO optimization for LinkedIn profiles, the art of crafting engaging and authentic content, and the importance of a strategic approach to posting frequency for maximizing audience engagement.
This episode is brought to you by Your B2B Marketing.
Are you a mid-market B2B company facing challenges articulating your value proposition to customers? Without a well-defined strategy, allocating marketing funds may not yield optimal results.
Your B2B Marketing, a team of experts specializing in devising and implementing plans, helps entrepreneurs and leaders understand what makes them invaluable to customers and puts that front and center in their messaging for scalable growth.
Discover how strategic marketing and communication approaches can drive your expansion by visiting www.yourb2bmarketing.co or contacting us at info@yourb2bmarketing.co.
Narrator: 0:03
Welcome to America Open for Business, where we talk with high-growth entrepreneurs and leaders who have found success in one of the world’s most important markets.
Cameron: 0:17
Hi everybody. I’m Cameron Heffernan and I’m host of America Open for Business, where I talk with high-growth entrepreneurs and leaders who have found success in one of the world’s most important markets. Today’s episode from our Founders and Owners series is brought to you by your B2B Marketing, a truly global marketing agency. Many mid-market B2B companies face challenges as they enter new markets or expand across borders, so we handle the end-to-end marketing from a strategy through execution, so our clients can be free to focus on customer growth. Discover how we can drive your expansion by visiting yourb2bmarketingco. That’s co, not com Past.
Cameron: 0:59
Guests of the show have included Brian Smith, the founder of what became a billion-dollar consumer brand, the UGG Boots and Slippers. Ben Tietje, founder and CEO of Earthly Wellness, a $21 million-plus direct-to-consumer e-commerce brand that’s trying to change healthcare naturally. And Paul Jarrett, the founder of BuluBox, a curated online subscription service and 5PL company. We have today on the show a guest I’m very excited to introduce. His name is Simon Chappuzeau. He’s joining us from Cape Town, south Africa, and Simon is a seasoned entrepreneur and marketing expert with over two decades of experience at the intersection of film, print event management and digital marketing. Simon has been the managing director of Storylux for over 20 years and they specialize in assisting business coaches and thought leaders developing customized marketing strategies that focus on a lot of important things. I’m going to mention list building, content creation and profitable, enjoyable marketing funnels. Welcome to the show, simon Chappuzeau.
Simon: 2:15
Hey, thank you. Thank you for the nice welcome, Kevin. It’s good to be here.
Cameron: 2:19
Yeah, I’m glad you could join us and I tried my best on the name, but it is a tough one.
Simon: 2:24
It took me a long time to get that name right, especially when I was challenged to write that.
Cameron: 2:29
I’ll bet. I want to jump right in and ask you a question that I often start the show with, which is how do you help people, how does Storylux help companies and help clients?
Simon: 2:43
We help individuals and companies in a very simple way. We help them develop a LinkedIn strategy, and we’ve identified there are seven main strategies you can run on LinkedIn, and so we look at these seven strategies together and decide what strategy, or what mix of strategies, is best for you. Then we help with the habit building to execute these strategies, and then top of that always comes content. So we help people develop their own unique voice that they need on LinkedIn to resonate with a target audience, and we do this with two workshops, mainly, that we’ve run with these companies that are interested in it.
Cameron: 3:28
Okay Now, LinkedIn is kind of a. It can be a polarizing channel for marketing, and for B2B marketing in particular. Polarizing in a sense that my experience with LinkedIn, talking with people and I’ll use a US example we talk about a very polarizing thing is pineapple on pizza. Some people love putting pineapple on pizza. For others it’s the most disgusting thing ever. There’s a specific one called Hawaiian pizza which has ham and pineapple on it, and some people go crazy about it, and to me, LinkedIn’s a little bit like that. I’ve been a fan of it. I’ve been one of the earliest adopters of LinkedIn, going quite a ways back. But tell me your feeling of working with clients, what their feedback, what their experience is with the channel.
Simon: 4:13
So I would assume that many people struggle to see how it can work or work for them. Then probably there’s another thing that a lot of people get the dreaded cold outreach messages from people trying to sell you something which probably doesn’t help to endear people to LinkedIn, and so I can see that a lot of people don’t really like LinkedIn or don’t get it or don’t see the value in it.
Narrator: 4:49
Yeah.
Simon: 4:50
So I think it needs to. So one thing we do with our clients is that we show them examples of what is a good thought leader in your space or your industry, to give them an idea of what is possible. And then when they see what you can do, then it becomes more interesting. And very often these people come from the point of view that they did a post, maybe they posted something from the last company retreat, or that they hired a new person, and posts that we’ve all seen that we, I think, all agree are quite boring because it’s always me, me, me and I don’t care about your company. So they probably tried a little content based on what they see other people do and they get no traction with that. And then they try it themselves and they’re disenchanted of what they’re getting out of it.
Cameron: 5:44
So if that answers, answers your question yeah, I mean, I think, um, it’s boring stories, boring headlines, boring content is totally agnostic or removed from the channel that you get it from. I mean, there’s boring postcards, there’s boring billboards, there’s boring television shows. So I think it’s about what you put into the message versus LinkedIn itself.
Simon: 6:14
compared to any other channel, linkedin is just a tool. As you say, it depends on what you put in as a channel. You have bad TV shows and you don’t want to watch them. And you have good TV shows, but the underlying medium remains the same, so it’s the TV.
Cameron: 6:27
So what would you advise and I’ll get into the workshop in a minute but what would you advise clients looking at? We’re open to discussing Simon using LinkedIn for outreach. What’s your approach? What’s your philosophy? How should we do it?
Simon: 6:42
Well, I think if somebody is interested in doing marketing on linkedin, I think the the first thing to sort of think about on brace is to be comfortable with putting yourself out there. So what I very often see is that business owners are not really comfortable because they don’t know, maybe, how to present themselves, what they can talk about, what is sort of I don’t want to use the word permissible, but what is safe. And that is very often already the wrong starting point, because if you do what is safe, then you’re probably not gonna get much traction. Um, so one thing is to to be really confident, comfortable with who you are and what you do, and not to be afraid to talk about that in public to the point that you’re happy to offend 20 of the people um which I think is a good thing, because if you’re happy with what you do and successful with your business, you work with people who align with you and your values.
Simon: 7:52
And if you don’t show them on LinkedIn by being authentic and knowing who you are, what you stand for, people don’t know whether they resonate with your values, and then you don’t get any traction.
Simon: 8:03
So it’s really important to be authentic as a starting point for LinkedIn. Resonate with your values, and then you don’t get any traction. So it’s really important to be authentic as a starting point for LinkedIn. And yeah, so that is a very philosophical answer. I think that applies to a lot of marketing areas. If you’re not authentic, it’s very hard to gain any traction.
Cameron: 8:21
Could you give us an example of that type of authenticity that you would recommend to your clients or have seen on LinkedIn?
Simon: 8:31
Well, I mean, there are a lot of people who are killing it on LinkedIn just by being who they are, and they usually do a mix of content styles. One is to be personal. I personal. Let’s talk about Gary Vaynerchuk, who is a very well-known brand and, yes, he puts out tons of content. That’s his philosophy. But he’s just a very blunt, outspoken guy. That is who he is and he doesn’t hold back. So that’s what people have come to like about him, and I’m sure there are other people who don’t like his content, which is fine, because the ones who like it, they love it the more. And he really is himself. I would think, if I I’ve never met him in person, but I would assume if I met him, he’s exactly the same.
Simon: 9:24
He acts in the YouTube videos that we all know.
Cameron: 9:28
Right, I think I had heard years back there was a big mainstream consumer brand that he was working for, working with, and the CEO didn’t like Gary V’s salty language and he sort of not only didn’t apologize, he doubled down saying this is me, I don’t need to work with, whatever the company was. This is me. I’m not going to. Not only will I not change to you, know, to please or appease you, I’m not capable of it. So that is, to me, the ultimate of authenticity. Just like you say, there could be 20% of the people who really get turned off by that, and I think that’s a big difference. Within the last I don’t know generation within marketing companies, brands were really more about playing it safe let’s stay out of anything relating to politics or social issues, let’s just play it down the middle. And now you’ve got brands that are deliberately, you know, really leaning into that strategy, knowing they’re going to alienate or offend a certain amount of the audience. Hey, this is our audience.
Simon: 10:26
Absolutely. There’s been a huge shift over the I don’t know 20, 30, 50 years. Back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, you didn’t have this variety of service suppliers and offers, so you just bought what you needed. Also, the needs, I think, were that differentiated. Today, in our highly specialized world also, the brands have to be very unique. Spoke to that underlying business. I think that one was Gary saying that it can’t change. It’s totally true. You can’t because that’s not you anymore.
Cameron: 11:12
Right, and then would you want me if I did hold back and pulled punches and delivered a half-hearted keynote address or something that’s really not going to be relatable and authentic to who I am?
Simon: 11:26
One thing that I wanted to add.
Simon: 11:27
I had a very nice feedback from a client recently.
Simon: 11:32
I was only trying to understand what we gave him or what he liked about what we did, and we worked with him on some different processes a couple of years back and he said that the one thing that he really took away from us working together was the sense of who he is and how he can present himself and what people want to see.
Simon: 11:58
And I think that is a very important thing in the relationship of marketing agencies and businesses that you and I know that as a marketing agency, you have a very fine-tuned sense of what, um, the market sees or thinks, whereas the company that delivers goods or services that you help that market they’re very good with the service of product that they do but we can help them understand how the market will respond to the messages they put out. They have to trust us that. We are good at that and I think if, like this example you gave with Gary Vee and the company that didn’t like that, if they don’t trust the marketing agency to know what is the message and tonality that will work, then the whole relationship between the, the client and the marketing agency is fraught yeah, I completely agree.
Cameron: 12:55
we always work. When we work with clients, we don’t just start off, jump out of the gate. Hey, let’s go do stuff, let’s make posts, let’s create videos. Let’s go do stuff, let’s make posts, let’s create videos. Let’s go do two white papers, let’s do this great email campaign to promote that white paper.
Cameron: 13:10
We always start with a foundation setting. We call it a brand positioning workshop. You guys probably have a name for it of some type but we want to understand who your company is, what you stand for, what makes you different and unique in the market. And that’s particularly important if you’re entering a new market for the first time. So if you’re coming over from Europe the DACH region and you’re entering US for the first time or maybe you have a small team here and you say I want to do more in the US we would always want to start with an exercise, a workshop, to ask how do you fit into the market? What would be different about what you’re offering here? And support a client in that way, because without asking those questions, you’re really just shooting in the dark.
Simon: 13:56
Absolutely, and the good companies already know this. I think that’s one of the learnings that I’ve made over the last couple of years that if a company can’t really tell you who they are, what is their brand positioning, then you first need to do homework. That is not your job, because you have to figure out what is their brand positioning. Is not your job, because you have to figure out who. What is that brand positioning? Yeah and um, I mean there’s always a bit of refinement, so I can see why your workshop makes sense but I’ve had.
Simon: 14:32
I’ve seen companies that had zero idea and, um, then I fell into the trap of helping them to figure out who they are, which was very tedious because it’s not my speciality, and the reason why they didn’t have that was because they also didn’t understand why they need it and never did that before. So I started to work on something that they didn’t really see they need.
Cameron: 14:58
And then you can have issues and pushback. Why are you getting me to do this? That’s outside of the scope of our engagement and I completely agree. I mean, I think the companies, the clients you choose to work with, really should be a partnership or a fit like any relationship, almost like working with an employee. And there are clients that you know, you see over time, this isn’t the we’re not the right fit for them, they’re not right the right fit for us. That okay, and you find that out working over time. What I want to ask you about is walk us through how a LinkedIn workshop would function. What’s that look like?
Simon: 15:33
Yeah. So with the LinkedIn workshop, it is a very hands-on presentation and analysis presentation of what is possible on linkedin and, if you break it down, there are essentially seven main strategies that I see you can do on linkedin, starting with the much dreaded cold connection request outreach and ending with with doing webinars monthly webinars and weekly webinars. And so in this workshop you first look at what is it that is, what is it what you want? What of these strategies can really work for you? And also what is a strategy that you can actually execute on, because no point in having a fancy strategy when you realize you can’t really do this. Let’s say there’s a webinar and you don’t really feel comfortable doing webinars in front of camera. That probably is the right strategy. Or with a direct, cold outreach it’s much dreaded, I know, but it can work reasonably well.
Simon: 16:45
if you are not in a very told outreach, it’s much dreaded, I know, but it can work reasonably well if you are not in a very competitive market if your market is not flooded with other LinkedIn people and you can assume that if you reach out with a good message, people will accept that. The other day a client of mine. They specialize in software for audio, so they build software to measure the audio levels in cities. It’s a very uncompetitive space. There are only three suppliers worldwide.
Simon: 17:18
The solution is so cutting edge that anybody that they reach out to says oh, frank, tell me more. That’s exactly what we need. So in these cases, a cold outreach makes sense and you can easily do this. So in this workshop we help people to figure out what is the strategy that makes sense for their market, for their resources, and then we put together a plan on how they can do the strategy.
Simon: 17:42
And then there’s a second part of the workshop, but then there’s more like the traditional marketing. What is the content? How do you write a post? What is post types that make sense for you and, in the end, ideally for linkedin? You want to have it as easy as possible and the goal would be, if you have content, then start with a library of content, pieces that you have that you can recycle after three, six, twelve months, so that over time, you spend less and less time writing new posts because you always use old posts that have proven to resonate with the target audience so there’s a lot of things interesting on there that you said I want to explore a bit more.
Cameron: 18:23
So I I think again, linkedin is just the channel
Cameron: 21:48
I know I was going to ask you about the core content. Still has to be there, all right. So All right. So let’s pick it back up again with LinkedIn. Again, like any channel, the core content has to be there. So we would partner nicely together, my agency with yours. Yes, we do linkedin strategies too, but but the content’s got to be there to drive the linkedin posts and the and the information. So without that core element, those stories to tell, the channel has got nothing to say. Right.
Simon: 22:21
Yes and no, I would add on. Okay, I see like there are two sides and I definitely agree that content, good content is a game changer. One thing that I would add is that the LinkedIn profile in and on itself if you fully optimize that for SEO relevant key terms for your industry or whatever you want to sell that has a huge impact on you being seen. You can get people reach out to you. It also depends a little on the industry and how competitive that is, but just having a very keyword optimized SEO profile and LinkedIn profile, and so I always see like two sides of the same coin.
Simon: 23:10
You want to have a profile that is optimized for your target audience as a landing page.
Simon: 23:16
So you can be found by people Googling or searching on LinkedIn for certain services and then when they come to your profile they get what you do. Then they can reach out. Then I call to actions book a meeting, whatever, and the content you do is more like the hooks that you can throw out. So if you have lots of good content and you post daily with the people with stuff people like to see, daily with the people, with stuff people like to see, and it’s like hooks.
Simon: 23:44
you’re throwing out that people get hooked on and then pull them to the profiles and landing page so you can convert them into engaging, talk to you, inquiring about your services and products.
Cameron: 23:55
Okay, what would you recommend as a frequency for posting on LinkedIn?
Simon: 24:00
There’s no rule and um I think um it depends, as always, it depends um yeah so, just to give an idea, I’ve seen people that do a weekly around their core topic of expertise and that one weekly post that Guy has been doing for, I think, two or three years.
Simon: 24:29
It’s about rhetoric tricks or rhetoric techniques, and it gets hundreds of comments and likes every time because it’s a very insightful, valuable piece of writing, and so he does invest some time into this not too crazy, but some yes, and I think it works quite well for him. Then you have other people who do daily posts, which you should only do if you get people to read those posts, or gauge these posts.
Simon: 25:05
So there’s no hard and fast answer to that question. In the end, what matters is are you able to drive business from that? The best way to measure that is not to count your precious likes or comments, but whether people book meetings with you. It’s as simple as that, and all these vanity metrics don’t matter. If you don’t book a meeting, then it was probably worth the time.
Cameron: 25:32
That’s right. So that’s an element you look at with clients. How is this driving ROI? What metrics do you look at as most important?
Simon: 25:41
What metrics do you look at as most important? It’s yeah, ideally you would look for are people booking meetings with you? Sometimes that is not that straightforward. So the second best metric is a bit fuzzy, but it’s if people see you, if you meet them in real life and they say, hey, I keep seeing you all the time on LinkedIn, then you know that you have the visibility and you probably stay on top of people’s minds. Then a side effect of that is that you save time in the sales process because you don’t have to explain everything, because you already know what you do and who you are, how you take sort of the details of your service so you save a lot of time and the explanation of the sense of the service product that you offer which is a thing that is hard to measure, but if the linkedin content, then that is the thing that you see.
Cameron: 26:42
Yeah, another interesting thing that you had said is about the concept of recycling and reusing, repurposing content onto LinkedIn, and I know we mentioned Gary Vee earlier. That’s one of his big philosophies, one core element a piece of content that you break up and reuse and repurpose in X number of different ways 11, 20 different ways. And LinkedIn I see it as a it’s not a channel of immediacy. I may browse my feed later and see oh, here’s something interesting from Simon, let’s take a look at that. You may have posted it days ago or a week ago or something, but it’s still. It pulled me in, it’s engaging, it’s relevant. I think, when I advise my clients is that the content has to have value. It’s got to be something relevant to me and I’m willing to take the time to stop, maybe download it, perhaps, if it’s really good, even fill in my name on a form, something like that. What? What advice do you give clients in that sort of area?
Simon: 27:41
I think it’s um you, you have to consider the payment your clients make or your prospects do. Yes, it’s free content, but they’re paying with their time, and if they stick around and are willing to read that, then that is a sign of it’s good content, because they’re willing to pay you with their time, which is surprising if you think about how much bad content is out there.
Simon: 28:15
And then people are like I don’t know why nobody’s reading my stuff or why we don’t have any engagement on these posts. You ask me would you be willing to invest five minutes reading that?
Simon: 28:26
thing, that’s usually not really because you’re not willing to invest time in reading that. So to your question. I think the main thing is to consider what is so insanely interesting and valuable that people are happy to pay with their time reading this piece. And to maybe take it one step further, just reading the Alex Sambosi One Million Leads book, he has a brilliant way of sort of clarifying things, and he said the thing that really resonated with me your lead magnet has to be so good that people would pay for that. Then it’s a good lead magnet.
Cameron: 29:06
Okay.
Simon: 29:06
What I see very often white papers and all this stuff. It’s that boring Sort of like I mean maybe you’ve sort of like accumulated your tech specs on whatever you’re selling, or it’s a great handbook, but it’s nothing that anybody would pay reading for. That is sort of the mindset that I think is really game changer. But thinking about lead magnets or white papers what is it that you can’t give away? That people are insanely crazy about that. They would pay for that.
Cameron: 29:39
Yeah, alex Ramosi does great content, that concept of the value that’s in this piece. I would even say that they’re not willing not only willing to take the time to read it, but to give up information to get it. It’s that valuable and to me, it’s rare enough that when I see something that’s like that, I stop and think, okay, that good, that’s good, I click on it, I’m going to read it. The other day it was something about how much money it was. It was a financial services company. Here’s how much money you’re going to need to retire, and it was about 11 words or even less, on a small JPEG. Yeah, that’s interesting to me. I’d like to know what that is. What do they think I’m going to need to retire? So, um, and it was content that that I didn’t even think of being an ad or pushy, because it has value exactly you know, instantly understand what that value is, and you can make a quick decision yes, no, yep um let’s not come right.
Simon: 30:37
That’s not the problem um.
Cameron: 30:42
So tell us about you. You made a transition from you were in europe or or london area and you made a move down to south africa. How’s that experience in that transition gone, and and how do you like working in in the country?
Simon: 30:56
so, yeah, I mean talk about the jackets that we wear and, uh, sort of like homage to the country I am in at the moment, south Africa. Yeah, so I moved from London to South Africa, or, by coincidence, because I had the luck to meet a woman here, that sort of like lured me to South Africa. And so, yeah, it’s interesting to for once not live in the Western world and see how the economy works here or how it’s different or similar, and how human needs are always the same. I mean, good quality always wins.
Simon: 31:47
And being able to accommodate your customers is always a work strategy, and I think South Africa is an interesting place for a number of reasons, because you can find incredible talent here. It’s not very much on the radar in a lot of countries and it’s at the same time, depending on what segment of the population you work with, it’s very aligned to the Western world, so you can find very reasonable priced talent that does work to Western standards, and that, I think, is certainly one of the hidden secrets that not a lot of people talk about South Africa sure, a very negative uh perception for a lot of people, but I think it’s amazing, amazing yeah, people on the audio version can’t see, but we’re wearing, uh, south african made shirts, both simon and I, and uh, mine’s probably a lot older than his because it’s been a while since I had lived and spent time there but, uh, I found that first of all, it’s convenient from a time zone standpoint, so that’s really just a practical matter.
Cameron: 32:58
Um, it’s a long flight to get from london to to johannesburg, cape Town, but it’s not jet lag. It’s not jet lag heavy because you’re heading down and then from the US six or seven hour time difference. But I feel I agree with Simon in the sense that some cultural affinity and influences from West, from Africa, kind of comes together and today’s global marketplace is much more diverse people coming from all different kinds of backgrounds and and clients, companies, are more able and willing to use providers from all over the world. So it just kind of works and it fits these days, um, you, you had spent time working in in europe, in in london, places that are known, not known, for uh, cost effective, cost, competitiveness. Necessarily, there’s high quality, very high value. What was that like from your, you know, career perspective?
Simon: 34:05
Well people always talk about the high costs that you have in Europe, especially in some Western European countries. I was just thinking about the famous price what you pay in values what you get. I think that’s a very lopsided view of things. We think about the hidden champion phenomenon.
Simon: 34:28
I’m sure you’re familiar with that, with these highly specialized companies that fly under the radar, mostly coming from the Germanic European countries. So these companies are not very prominent, nobody knows them, highly specialized in one niche, usually the most expensive supplier, and yet dominating their niche. And the theory goes why? Because the value that they offer is so much more valuable than the price they charge.
Simon: 35:00
Yes, you can always find somebody who does a cheaper job, but then the costs are probably hidden because the quality of the product or service is that good. Then you have to pay more by fixing problems that came out of this thing not being that great, and so it’s interesting you’re asking that. I’m just thinking about another client of mine who does software development in Berlin, and he has an outsourced company in Chile and Chile is sort of kind of a western country.
Simon: 35:35
But the observation that he made is that in these highly developed countries, the observation that he made is that in these highly developed countries you have great engineering, great thinking, great building capabilities, but it’s too expensive to build the stuff, but you don’t have these skills. In many developing countries, complex processes build complex products can also be, I would hypothesize, be expressed in being able to build highly specialized products that Europeans are good at because they have this ability and this training to think in a very complex manner.
Simon: 36:12
So, in champions who build high-quality products. A high-quality product means that you have really understood your target market. You’ve really mastered the technology that analyze whatever you do to a degree that just works. It’s high quality engineering, and so the price you pay for good European work is probably still cheaper than the value you get at the price you pay if you have a cheaper alternative, but then the value is just better. So I think there always needs to be value and price to be balanced.
Cameron: 36:47
Yeah, I love that quote. I’ll say it again. Simon mentioned price is what you pay, value is what you get and you see it every day. We had some repairs done at the house recently and they had to come back. They came twice. The price was reasonable, but the fact that they come twice I had to pay them twice because they didn’t do the job right the first time is that the best provider you know. So, uh, the saying I think is penny wise, pound foolish. It applies to business, to business work. It applies to services, it applies to products. You know you do get what you pay for.
Cameron: 37:21
And we had recently on the podcast interview last I think it was last week a friend, thomas Sugar, whose company is called Pink Square and they’re an agency and they do 3D animation very high quality. They’re in Denmark. Again, scandinavia is not a place I would point to as cost competitive, necessarily, but the value, the quality is there. It’s exceptionally high. They do very detailed 3D animations for industrial processes and technical needs. Expectation that we know the quality is going to be high, we know it’s going to be good. We’re in a place that has a very high tax base, has tax structure, but a lot of things are paid for and provided by by the state in that case, whether it’s health care, education, whatever it might be, so we’re accustomed to it. We have a very high expectations for, for quality, whatever it might be.
Simon: 38:17
Consumer goods or services, whatever so interesting, just this, this example with the danish company, and I can’t see the complexity of what they do. Um, and yeah, the minute you manufacture something that can be easily manufactured a country in a cheaper country, and there’s nothing you can add value because it’s not a very complex thing and it’s really hard to be competitive from you. And just think about, like, the copywriting talent. I mean, you find a lot of copywriters around the world, but what they usually lack is the understanding of the complexity of European culture or American culture.
Simon: 39:05
So, they can write and they can follow certain frameworks, but they’re sort of missing certain marks just because they have not been trained in that. And I don’t mean that in a judging way, it’s just they cannot see certain things because they haven’t absorbed the complexity of that society. So it’s very hard to be competitive from this place. From this point of view developing world, looking to Western Europe or Western world these people, western world copy copywriters, who sort of stand with the complexity of the US society. They can’t do a job that somebody from India probably can’t do, even if they read for 20 years about American history.
Cameron: 39:53
I think the context is missing and you even make the same application with age or phase of career. You could be the best writer, you could be an Ivy League trained writer. You come out you’re 22, 23,. You have no life experiences to draw on, so you don’t have. Let’s say you’re doing writing for a B2B company, a services company. You can do lots of research and have really good, compelling, well-written content, but you’d need to have some more experiences to draw on to make that content really contextually relevant.
Simon: 40:28
One of the challenges you have in good content.
Cameron: 40:31
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s a part of it. Again, it comes back to the core we had on the podcast last week Ben Tietje. He’s the CEO owner of Earthly Wellness, and he said something on the show which I loved their content their campaigns are all about sharing information. Here’s what goes into our products, how we make them. If you’re here and you like something, by the way, we also sell these products. We also sell. You can buy this, but we’re going to pull you in with talking about healthcare issues, skin creams and things that you want to do to improve your life and, oh, by the way, we also sell some of these things. I like that approach, what we’ve had today on the show Simon Chappuzeau, the founder and owner of Storylux in Cape Town, south Africa. Simon, it was fantastic to have you share time with us today on America Open for Business and we look forward to the next episode. And thanks for being a guest on the show.
Simon: 41:36
Thanks for having me.
Cameron: 41:38
Thanks so much.
Narrator: 41:43
Thanks for listening to the America Open for Business podcast. We’ll see you again next time. No-transcript.
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