Category Creators: Launching a Brand, Defining a Market Segment

Announcer:
Hello and welcome to the XTech webinar series, brought to you by Fox Agency and hosted by Ben Fox, Global CEO and co-founder of Fox Agency. Join us as we explore the challenges and innovations facing global B2B technology organisations, as well as the brand and marketing strategies driving growth.

Ben Fox:
Today, I’m joined by Michal Harris, who’s SVP global marketing at Beyond Now, and our very own Nelson McConnell, who’s chief creative and strategy officer here at Fox Agency. So, welcome to you both.

Nelson McConnell:
Hello, Ben. Great to be here.

Michal Harris:
Great to be here.

Ben Fox:
Michal, really excited about this conversation. It’s been a while since we’ve last spoke, so really looking forward to hearing about what’s been going on in your world and everything at Beyond Now. But before we get into what’s going on now, maybe we go back to the beginning or set the scene, what is Beyond Now and what’s your role within Beyond Now?

Michal Harris:
Okay, so Beyond Now is a technology company. Basically, we’re selling platform or SaaS solutions for telecommunication and technology providers, a solution focusing on enabling them to sell their own product as well as partner products in automated way, all the way from a digital selling through the provisioning and the monetization part of it. Our main focus and our unique differentiation is the ability to enable them to orchestrate or to automate the ecosystem relationship like it was their own product.

In marketing terms, you could think about what we do is actually selling into a very large corporate with a very complex sales processes, always involve many personas from business to IT to procurement, very long cycles but at the same time very limited market. So, I can literally, not counting on one hand, but I can name all our customers in this target segment.

Ben Fox:
So I guess you are a few years into the growth journey now for Beyond Now. So, let’s go right back to the beginning. Nels and myself and the rest of Fox Agency, we were involved in that origin, the origination of Beyond Now, but for everybody that doesn’t know, let’s explore that origin story. Where did Beyond Now come from?

Michal Harris:
So Beyond Now was until three years ago we were owned by BearingPoint, which is a management consulting company. Originally, Beyond Now was a standalone software company based in Austria. It was acquired by BearingPoint and was operating under BearingPoint for a few years. However, a few years ago, we understand that there is a massive shift in the market. There is a great opportunity for the Beyond Now solutions and we saw a shift in consumption behaviour, which we’re going to probably explore and discuss later.

We thought that it might be a good time for us to move from consulting business model, consulting led by partner business model to a SaaS technology business model. That was the time that we started to think about the separations and the time to spin off Beyond Now to become an independent technology company.

Ben Fox:
Nels, just because you were around, you were involved in that spin-off and also taking Beyond Now to market and communicating the new exciting proposition internally and externally. Any memories or what was the drivers back then?

Nelson McConnell:
Yeah. Well, I do remember it being a very interesting and challenging, exciting, exciting time and the main thing certainly from my point of view was actually trying to get my head around what their proposition was. What was this platform? What was the ecosystem? Because there’s a lot of new language actually coming into play here. So, it would be interesting I think just to develop those thoughts you had just now, Michal, about leaving the previous incarnation, becoming this SaaS business. What were you able to do and what informed the proposition?

Michal Harris:
Yeah, so I agree it was a fun and exciting journey. It still is by the way. But yeah, I mean we had something that was quite unique back then. We understand that the market is about to shift. The consumption, as I said, are going to change. We’re moving to a world where both as consumer but more importantly in the context of Beyond Now, SMBs and large corporate, moving to a world of consuming product like a car to something that is solution-based. Let’s stay with the car for a minute. If you think about the car that you bought a few years ago, you go to BMW or anybody else and you just go and buy a car. Today, if you think about what the car means and the experience of riding a car, there is a lot of software over the air. There is a SIEM.

There is operating system, whether it’s Google or iPhone. There is Waze, into navigation. There is entertainment, Spotify or anybody else. So, suddenly, there’s a lot of partners and a lot of third parties that are involved in this experience of riding a car. We realised that this same thing that has happened to consumer will hit small and medium businesses and corporate and basically in a world where so many technologies are coming, right? Think about it. If you think about yourself as a business owner, small business owner, then you hear that there is IoT and there is cloud and there is edge and there is security and there’s 5G and there is AI. All I want is to serve great dinners in my restaurant, right? Great dish, that’s what I want.

Basically, you yourself are going to a world where you’re going to ask, “Okay, hold on, hold on. I cannot manage all of that. I need a partner that will come and help me to have the smart restaurant or connected restaurant and this connected restaurant needs to include the marketing solution. How do I promote my restaurant?” It needs to include the booking system where I can put the restaurant. It needs to include a WiFi for my employees, mobile phone for my employees, WiFi for the people in the restaurant. I want somebody to bring it together and to help me manage it. So, we as Beyond Now saw this shift coming. We also identified that there is a unique opportunity for communication service providers because they have the relationship.

They have the capabilities or technology providers because they already have some of the technology to step into the role of becoming this ecosystem orchestrator and bringing this smart restaurant solutions. But because this needs to happen in a scale because there are restaurants and there are hotels and there are offices and there are so many of them, they will need an underlying platform that will automate the selling, the provisioning, and the monetization of the solution to make it super simple for the SMB or the large enterprise to buy, but also very easy for partner to be part of this ecosystem and very easy for the communication service provider to orchestrate this ecosystem.

This is where we come into play because this is where our software is unique and our software excel. So, coming back to marketing again, basically as a marketer, it means there is a fantastic opportunity, a great market that is coming, still not there, still not mature. We will explain what does it mean and why is it important? If you think about communication service providers when we started five, six years ago, most of them were very focused on the consumer business still and we need to tell them, “Hey, guys, start thinking B2B. Hey, guys. When it’s B2B, think ecosystem. Hey, guys, we can help you.”

So there are a lot of things that we wanted to do from a marketing perspective, but obviously, as a company to get to the level where our solutions are being actually considered and used by the target customers.

Ben Fox:
I think there’s some really interesting language that you’ve just used there that will pick up on again, ecosystem and orchestration and all those sorts of things, which back then and probably still is today all feels quite visionary, quite future, quite innovative. To what extent did you need to educate your internal audiences before you start going on this new journey as Beyond Now with a whole new proposition?

Michal Harris:
Yes, so definitely, there was a lot of internal debates around the journey, if this is the right way. The market is here, why are we going there? All of this debate where it’s the right way, what’s the right positioning and why can’t we stay the way we were in the past? At the same time, there was excitement about this vision and that’s the right way and it is coming. So, there was a lot of interesting dynamics internally and very interesting debate and there was a need to bring on this journey and to do also a market education internally.

If you think about a software, a technology company and the different roles that it has, it’s okay that maybe the CEO gets the visions, but you have developers and you have HR and you have finance and everybody needs to get it and everybody needs to understand why this is exciting and why this is the right way and why they should stick with us because it’s going to be great.

Ben Fox:
Yeah, I think super important, especially when you’re launching a new brand into the market, you’re launching a new category, which we’ll get onto in a second, and to really set that clear new vision, which was a big piece I recall at the start of the origination of Beyond Now and that really setting a clear vision and making it exciting for everybody because there’d be a lot of hesitation around where we’re going as a new entrant, as a new entity really. Nels, you recall those days and the language that we used but then to take Beyond Now out to market.

Nelson McConnell:
Yeah, absolutely. Actually, just thinking about it, it’s similar to the journey that you’re asking your customers to take, I think. That’s always been one of the challenges. If you remember some of the campaigns that we did or remember the start something campaign was actually about getting people to understand that they had to take the first steps and in this new way of working if you like, the ecosystem. It’s like trusting that the ecosystem will work and in a way what you’re asking your internal audiences to do is the same as the proposition to the marketplace. It’s the same. There’s the sense of it’s a stepping into the unknown but trusting that it’s going to be okay. One of the things, I don’t know what you feel about this, Michal, but the name.

Well, naming is always interesting, isn’t it, when it comes to branding and especially nowadays when finding available names is a challenge in itself. Clearly, we evolved from beyond to Beyond Now, which in hindsight seems perfect, but I just wondered what your thoughts were about how important that name change, retaining what you had, but adding to it, changing it? How important was that in telling the story?

Michal Harris:
Yeah, so I think maybe just before I’m addressing the name, just to get back to the internal communication, actually, we did work together and we spend a lot of time to try and craft the message and how to get it excited because basically, it’s almost the first audience you test. It’s with your own internal people. Can you pass the test? Can they buy into that? We spend a lot of time on things. How do we going to make it exciting? How are they going to buy into it, how they feel that they are part of… I don’t want to say a movement, but part of something bigger that there is thinking behind it and there is trust. Trust, Nelson mentioned it, but trust is a big thing, right?

If you think about it, as an employee, I used to work with this company which is big at some scale and suddenly I’m moving to this company. I need to trust that the journey is correct and what it’s done. So, we did spend a lot of time and craft up carefully the message. I’m glad it worked, and yes, the name was a critical part of it. So, when we came to think about the brand, that was the first step. I mentioned the vision. I explained where we wanted to go, what we thought was right, but you start with the name and the name was… It’s true. We played in the past. Even under BearingPoint, we played with the concept of beyond because we knew something about what we’re saying that is taking you.

Now, Beyond Now was perfect because it took us a while, but once we got there, it was perfect because first, it’s the promise. It’s the promise that we’re going to take you beyond where you are today into the future. You’re going to be future proofed. So, remember back to our audience, we’re talking about communication service providers. Already then they started to struggle with the growth engine. It was starting to be clear that the consumer business is going to be flattening. While there was some excitement towards 5G that is in the horizon, they were already thinking about where they’re going to bring growth engine and coming with a concept of we know how to do it.

We know how to take you forward because we know what you need to do is part of the name. It’s the Beyond Now. We can take you beyond where you are into the future, but we also like the now because it was a call to action. Don’t underestimate. It’s also you need to take an action and you need to take an action now. You cannot wake up one morning and become this ecosystem player. You have to start preparing yourself and the name was very important part of it. At the same time, we needed to create a logo and our entire logo was around the concept of this ecosystem. So, ecosystem working together, different elements and they creating the whole.

So, basically, if you think about it, already the name and the logo that we chose is already teasing into the fact that we are a thought leader and we know the direction and we know how to take you there. Then, of course, we needed to think about, “Okay, so how is it going to work from visual?” Obviously, to think about our software had just become a technology player, of course, I’m going to sell some great technology. That’s the default.

No, we have to stand out from the crowd. It’s very crowded area being a software provider into the telephone industry. So, we need to stand out and it needs to align with what we want to say and therefore we decided to go for epic landscape, natural ecosystem as the big theme and already this combination as well as the colour that we chose, which also have a special meaning, created a lot of excitement and curiosity outside and inside.

Ben Fox:
I want to pick up on the word that you just used there, ecosystem. I know you’re using it in the term of explaining the visual identity that was brought to the launch, but also, that’s important when we talk about essentially launching the Beyond Now proposition, category creation, and some of the language that you use around that. Just talk to us about the decision or whether it was an actual decision or whether it just happened naturally, organically to almost define a new category and create a new language.

Michal Harris:
So it was a decision. It was a decision and not a simple one, again involving internal debate but also a lot of work. Because as I mentioned, BearingPoint acquired a software company that was already selling some level to the telecommunication market. We do have a solution that exists in the market and is well known. So, option number one was just to continue on the back of this solution and to say that this is an evolution, but we didn’t think it’s an evolution. We thought it’s almost a revolution. It’s a new way of thinking and it’s a drama. We decided to change everything from the language, the concept of ecosystem orchestration, partner ecosystem. It wasn’t clear.

The platform business model, people were starting to play with it because Amazon brought it to the market to some people. We’re starting to understand what it means. But all this concept of you need to work, it’s no longer just about your own business, but in order for your business to grow, you need to bring partners and you need to orchestrate it and you need a platform that will orchestrate. That’s a new language and it’s a decision. This decision was across the board. We needed to educate the market, we needed to educate the buyer, we needed to educate analysts.

Analysts, we’re not talking about our segments. So, we needed to spend time with analysts and to say, “It’s okay that you talked about this solution. It still exists and it’s still great and we still have a great roadmap for it. But guys, you need also to start monitoring that and to start reporting on this because it’s coming.” We did invest a lot of time in that. We spend a lot of thought leadership in terms of talking to the market, bringing the voice of the market, talking to SMBs and enterprise themselves, showing that they are already going through the changes. So, it’s time to catch up as a tool to do that.

We knew it’s a tough journey, but it was also a differentiated journey. It also got the attention. When you want to get the attention of C-Suite, it’s something I need to start educating myself about and we wanted to be there. We want to be the voice that help you to be educated, to learn, to feed you, to be there, that by the time you decided to buy, we are there supporting you already.

Ben Fox:
I think you’ve done wonders to establish that category and also the language that you used now. I mean Nels, we see it now. It’s almost like some of the terminology and the language that Michal was using three or four years ago is now almost every day in our briefs and the work that we’re doing across technology. It’s just common language now, right?

Nelson McConnell:
Absolutely, and while I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve used ecosystem to explain ideas, co-create, to explain ideas, which is great and it’s right. In many cases, it works. This whole concept of partnership, I think, is interesting and collaboration. Beyond Now is a very collaborative brand. That’s one of the values I think that was part of the brand from the outset. Developing the brand from experience was a very collaborative process, which is great, hopefully very true to yourselves and us, but I’m also struck by a lot of the marketing that you’re now doing. It’s a partnership with customers, with future customers, with potential partners and so on. How much of it is the business evolving as you work with partners?

Michal Harris:
I think it was a journey as well. At the beginning, we were almost a lone voice. So, the thinking was, “Okay, it’s not yet on the C-level priority list, but we need to find a way to get into the priority list because we are not just a university. We are here to make money. We are SaaS business. We are measured on revenue and profit and ARR and everything that the SaaS company is being measured.” So we need to find a way from a marketing to get into their agenda. What we did, we looked into, so what are the hot topics, what are the things? I think a great example was the 5G. 5G was a hot topic in many C-level discussions. We decided to say, “You know what? We are going to build a whole campaign around 5G.” It was a very dynamic and diverse campaign, which we used a lot of tools.

We pulled in analysts. We pulled in influencers and we pulled a lot of people and market researcher, talking to enterprise, comparing the inside the telco, comparing the view of the B2B leader versus the CIO. We used a lot of that tools, but the notion was, guys, it’s so great that 5G is coming, it’s an amazing opportunity, but only if you’re going to consider 5G for B2B. If you are not going to be hooked too much into the technology of the 5G but you understand that what B2B customers are looking to buy, they’re looking to buy a solution that one element of it is 5G, but it has to include all the other. It has to include the edge and it has to include the AI and the IoT elements of it and therefore you need partner ecosystem.

It was a very, very strong and powerful voice and it was great to do some work with the leading analyst firms. It was great because as we’ve been doing similar to what we’ve done together, in this session with an analyst, we almost needed… Guys, but look at this, this is the actual reality. They said, “Actually, yeah, you’re right. That’s the right direction.” Suddenly, we were not only a sole voice. Suddenly, our message was amplified. Then in a similar way, it’s something we developed with you. We were the first one to come with this concept of the 5G podcast and we start identifying influence, customers or not, that understand the 5G the same way we are. This time the same message came from them as market leaders, as the people who are doing the job and already see that.

That was important because suddenly, we started to see it more and more in the market, this message being echoed. 5G is not only about the consumer. Actually, it’s the B2B and it’s the solution part. So, things like that were critical. If at the beginning we needed to do a lot of the thought leadership and we needed to craft the market and the messages and to influence, today, and this is also a dynamic thing as a marketeer, is that the live and breathing brand or marketing message is today, what you see is, and Nelson mentioned it as well, many of our competitors are saying the same messages, clearly the same message, copycat. Now you need to take a different role. You need to say, “Okay, guys.
So, everybody is saying ecosystem and you’re saying it as well, but it’s very confusing. So, let us help you understand what you actually need.” Now that we have also the proof points from customers and partners, very strong partners, we’re starting to bring this voice together jointly. We partners with customers who are telling their stories and we are explaining what good looks like. In a similar way, actually, we evolve it also for messaging. Because we set it together and said at the beginning, we wanted to convince people just to start something. So, we came up with the start something concept, just do something, just move into that direction.

Then a year later or two years later, because the market was starting to copy, we said, “Let’s evolve it. Let’s start with something like you mean it.” Okay, ecosystem like you mean it. So, this is the right way to do the ecosystem. So, that was also an interesting journey in terms of not only watching the market evolution but constantly evolving the marketing messaging, the marketing position as the market mature.

Ben Fox:
I just want to come back to what you’re speaking about there. It’s almost the journey. It’s almost like now increasingly, it’s a validation of that visionary ideas and messaging and language that you were using three years ago and it’s almost being played back to you now by everybody else in the market, competitors, analysts, medias, partners, to let you say now it’s a case of you are adopting a different role and almost showing what best practise looks like within that new world and that new category that you and Beyond Now has been pivotal to creating. How do you change your approach with that new role? Because you’re no longer telling, “Hey, guys, this is where it’s going.” It’s almost like this is what it should look like now.

Michal Harris:
So now it’s about break it down, break it down to the small pieces. If for example, people are already saying partner ecosystem and are talking about marketplaces for B2B and we’re saying, “Yes but,” marketplace for B2B, it’s still not enough that you just onboard somebody’s service. It’s still about a solution. So, we are evolving the message to explain the details, the details, the executions. First, we needed to explain the vision and why you need to buy into this vision. Now, we are very focused on the execution and the proof points. So, bringing our voice in terms of this is how you execute it, these are the things you need to think of, these are the things you need to measure, these are the tools that can help you.

But also bringing alongside customers who are saying, “We’ve done it. We’ve done it. This is what it’s created for us and this is the improvements we see. This is becoming a critical part.” If at the beginning we couldn’t put customer next to us, that’s why we need to go out to do survey with thought leadership, talk to analysts, today, the analysts are still very important part of the story, but every customer next to us, it’s helping to amplify and to make it a much stronger story.

Ben Fox:
Nels, just thinking of when we’ve been crafting the messaging over the time for Beyond Now, there’s the whole collaboration, ecosystem, partnerships, but also speed was a big part of the story, right?

Nelson McConnell:
That’s right. I think what I would call it’s the fail fast model that we were talking about both in terms of developing the brand but also the proposition for customers, that concept of do something, find out quickly if it’s going to succeed, and then crucially, if it is succeeding, scale growth quickly or if it’s not working, end it. Which I think probably is still part of the story and part of their psyche that people have to understand, I guess.

One of the things I was just thinking about there when you were talking about helping people to really understand the full potential and thinking in terms of solutions is that whilst you have a SaaS brand, you also have a lot of expertise to bring to the party as well. That’s in people and how you work with people, almost like consultancy, dare I say. So, I’m just wondering how you balance that equation. We’re offering a SaaS platform, but we can help you do this really well.

Michal Harris:
This is part of creating categories. When you create categories, you know you need to do a lot of hand-on-hand and you need to be there with the customers. It’s a challenge. You need to be there with them looking at the challenge from their perspective, understanding how they can actually be successful. First, because you want a customer to be successful, but also, it’s almost embedded in the SaaS. When your customers are successful, you are successful. So, it’s part of the SaaS value proposition. But for us, it was critical. It was critical. We knew market education is important and therefore breaking it down very fast in the conversation, we started to get to, okay, so we bought into this concept of ecosystem, but now what do we sell?

Because if you think about it, it’s a massive potential market for who do you sell. If you think about you want to sell into SMBs, so many different SMBs, how do you start the journey? That required from us to step into this role of being advisors without being a consultant, right? We’re not a consultant company. We’re working with our customers. We’re advising a customer as we go along. In similar way, we also use marketing tools to help this. So, for example, again, in the start something, we literally went out and talked to the SMB. So, we talk to our customers’ customers and we try to understand the world in order to bring information that help us into the conversation with our customers. So, that was very important, it still is very important part of what we do and of who we are.
Maybe on another note, because then you talked about the speed. Back to our beginning story, the speed wasn’t just critical in terms of our customers. They need to act now, Nelson also said. Speed was always part of how we operate as marketing. We needed to launch a brand in no time. I mean we had less than three months to be out there in the market, right? Convincing internal audience that that’s the right thing to do, convincing the market we exist and being there in three months, we needed to do a lot of things that a lot of company takes a lot of time to do.

So, this concept of speed and spinning out the brand while we’re already crafting the 5G message, while we’re already understanding how we do, it’s part of… I mean now we see there is agile in IT. So, for us, there is agile in marketing, constantly working like this, right?

Ben Fox:
Love that.

Michal Harris:
Very fast, very dynamic, trying things, moving fast, looking at results. If it’s working, let’s keep doing it. If it’s not, let’s change.

Ben Fox:
Yeah, that’s true. Well, that’s been an experience and I think that keeps it exciting, but it also keeps it moving forward fast and everything progressing. I think if we look back over that or if you look back over that last three to four years of Beyond Now on the journey, and if you think about it, the spin-off, launching a brand, creating a new category, growing the business and all the stages within that, are there any standout moments or even big lessons that you’ve learned that you perhaps underestimated or overestimated the importance of along that journey?

Michal Harris:
So on the positive thing, I think this concept of thought leadership, influence on marketing, validating your assumptions all the time with customers, with analysts, with partners, right? I mean going to partners, AWS, Google partners, and seeing that they see the same thing, that we are all aligned. This is critical and it’s great. On maybe some lesson learned, I think I underestimate the importance of keep bringing the internal organisation on the journey constantly. It cannot be a one-off. It cannot be even two times.

It’s like a constant, constant work of doing marketing internally as well. Because as the market evolve, as there are constraints on the business, there is a recession, there is a growth, there is a scale-up, there is budget process every time. It’s so critical that the internal organisation will get it and will understand the true value of marketing and will be supporting it.

Ben Fox:
Yeah, you’re right. That internal piece is just massive, right? I mean we’ve seen that, Nels.

Nelson McConnell:
We do see that. We live and breathe that, I guess, and helping people to understand the story that you want to tell. So, it’s so important and needs constant reinforcement because people come and go as well. There’ll be new people in the organisation who didn’t hear the first time you told them the story and they may have heard a different version. But I guess what comes through all the time is that vision. If you’ve got that clear vision, the North Star, I think people call it now, don’t they, that you can work towards because things will always change.

I guess John Lennon wisely said, life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans. Things will change. But if you’ve got the clarity of the vision, and I think you have, I don’t know what you feel about that, Michal, there’s been a vision from the start for this brand, which is still shining through, I think, that everyone can hold onto.

Michal Harris:
Yes, for sure, the vision is still there. This is something we are consistent. For example, I’ll give you all this. In a technology company, also bringing people the why you do thought leadership, why you pay to analysts, why you do the survey, and talking to SMB, how is that important? Why aren’t we talking about the feature and function or balancing how much feature and function versus what customer? It’s a constant education that you need to do internally in order for people to be completely on board and on your side in terms of what you’re trying to do in marketing and of course showing results and dashboards and explaining that there is a bigger picture than just leads. There is different ways to influence people.

Ben Fox:
Which I guess takes us really nicely into the future. So, where does Beyond Now go beyond now? I mean across proposition, across business strategy, business growth, meeting the needs and the evolving needs of customers, where do we go next?

Michal Harris:
So yeah, it’s the stretching marketing. We’re becoming very elastic as marketing. So, obviously, there’s a whole track related to existing customers. So, going deeper with ABM practises and how do you make sure that your existing customers are getting the love from marketing and happy to tell the story together with you. It’s becoming something very critical. At the same time, we are expanding on geographies. We’re adding more propositions and we’re also expanding on relationship with partners. So, not a dull moment.

As marketing, we need also to cater for that and to make sure that we’re starting. We have partnership marketing. We have ABM to customers. We’re crafting the next proposition, but also the next segments because we’re expanding. We want to expand not only in terms of geographies but also to meet traditional verticals. So, yeah, it’s going to be very busy in time for us.

Ben Fox:
Yeah, always busy, always at speed, always fail fast, always learning and adapting and then seeing where the market’s going. I guess just one thing, because you’ve been on this journey now and we spoke a minute ago about some of the things you’ve learned along the way, just imagining somebody else about to embark on a similar journey, thinking about and creating a new category versus becoming a player in an existing category, launching a proposition, what are the two, three big things that anybody needs to be mindful of or learn from your experience before embarking on that journey?

Michal Harris:
Plus it’s fun.

Ben Fox:
Good.

Michal Harris:
It’s fun. It’s exciting and I love it. I mean the fact that you have a vision and then you see it’s coming to life. Wow, it’s not an experience that the marketing has… It doesn’t come up in every day to a marketeer. For me, it was an amazing journey. So, first, it’s fun. Second, I think you really need to think this through and having something to say and having the proof point. So, the amount of time I was challenged by influencer, analysts, customers about show me the proof, show me the proof. When you’re creating categories, it’s very odd because it’s a new category, nobody talked about it before. So, showing the proof, it’s requiring very creative ways.

Engaging with the people, you need to identify who is on your side in terms of who has the problem, who suffer from that, and can you recruit them to help you tell the stories? Like I mentioned as we did, for example, with going to our customers’ customers and talking to them or inside the organisation going to decide that need to grow revenue and suffer from the pain point and get them to voice our message and to align to what we’re trying to see or to pitch. So, that’s a very critical thing.

So, when you’re creating a category, you need really to think this through and to make sure that you have a way to confirm the story or at least that there is something there that this is real. Then making sure that as fast as you can, you collect a bunch of influence around the story and the brand to help you tell the story and amplify the story. Amplifying the story is critical because to being a lone voice, as you build new category, it’s very, very hard, or make sure you have tonnes of money to invest.

Nelson McConnell:
So just looking back really or imagining yourself three or four years ago when we started, have you got to where you thought you’d be?

Michal Harris:
Yes. I have to admit that there was a little bit of a hiccup in the last year and a half. I mean after corona, the market seems optimistic and then it went down a bit. Now it looks promising again, but that was a bit of a hiccup that makes everything a little bit more challenging and obviously more challenging to the marketing by default. But I think it’s working. As much as I don’t like it because I said that was ours, we know how to say it, we said it first, it’s also great to go and to see that everybody is telling your story. Okay, so we did it. We did create a new category.

Nelson McConnell:
Which is cool, isn’t it? Then I guess back to the brand now, the challenge is to make sure that Beyond Now is always the foremost brand in this hopefully burgeoning category.

Michal Harris:
Yes, exactly. Keep thinking ahead what is the next challenge? Does somebody realise their vision story? What does it mean to them next in their journey? Be ahead of them and explain to them that how you take them on the next step of the journey is critical in staying ahead and continue to be the voice that stand out a little from the crowd.

Nelson McConnell:
Further, faster, Beyond Now.

Michal Harris:
Further, faster, Beyond Now. Exactly.

Ben Fox:
To what extent does that further, faster speed put pressure on a business and you as an individual to always be thinking, always be moving at pace?

Michal Harris:
So it’s a very funny one because I still think it’s a very strong combination like slogan, further, faster, Beyond Now. It’s still very powerful and it still stand out to our promise. Sometimes it’s funny to see how you are challenged or expected to be the first, but once it goes to decision making, the customers, then it’s a different time.

Ben Fox:
Yeah, time stands still in that instance.

Michal Harris:
Exactly.

Ben Fox:
One more for you. That’s really interesting. I think it’s a great story. I can tell just by the smile and the beam on your face, how much you’re still enjoying it and still got the energy for the next phase of the journey. It’s exciting ride by the sounds of it.

Michal Harris:
Yes, it is exciting ride and we are looking ahead to what’s coming next and it’s brilliant because we literally made it from scratch, right? We build it.

Ben Fox:
Michal, it’s been great speaking to you and it’s just amazing to hear the story of Beyond Now and hear about what’s coming next and where you and the organisation is going. It’s just a really fascinating story and thank you for sharing the insights of the journey so far. Yeah, thanks for speaking to myself and Nelson. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

Michal Harris:
Yeah, it was a pleasure. It was fun. Thank you.

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