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Speaker 1: is the Daily This is the Daily OS.
Speaker 2: Oh now it makes sense.
Speaker 1: Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Sunday,
Speaker 1: the fifth of October.
Speaker 2: I'm Zara Sidler, I'm Sam Kazlowski.
Speaker 1: On the last episode of Building TDA, we answered your
Speaker 1: burning questions about starting your own business, scaling that business,
Speaker 1: growing a team, and everything in between. So today we're
Speaker 1: going to take it back a step and just focus
Speaker 1: on a singular topic. I must say it's the one
Speaker 1: aspect of our business that we get the most questions about,
Speaker 1: and that is font Gate. Now, Sam, if people luckily
Speaker 1: aren't familiar with fond gate, I wish I was you.
Speaker 1: What is it? Talk to me about it?
Speaker 2: Well? I think it can best be described as this
Speaker 2: moment in tdo's history where we tried to glow up
Speaker 2: and fail and it didn't go as well as we'd
Speaker 2: hoped it's worth mentioning from the outset that as part
Speaker 2: of a rebrand, and we'll get to the Y and
Speaker 2: the SEC. There were probably twenty elements that we changed
Speaker 2: across all different platforms. Instagram, newsletters, our pod aren't changed.
Speaker 2: Everything changed, and there was one point of the twenty
Speaker 2: that people really took issue with, and that was the
Speaker 2: font hence the font Gate title. But I think that's
Speaker 2: important just to set the scene from the top that
Speaker 2: it wasn't its total failure.
Speaker 1: Over now, I don't need to make excuses.
Speaker 2: And this is therapy. I don't know I have to
Speaker 2: pay for it.
Speaker 1: It's free therapy. But it was just to really explain
Speaker 1: we're talking here, TDA launched a rebrand. For anyone not
Speaker 1: in marketing or comms, that basically just means that we
Speaker 1: tried to change the way we showed up visually. So
Speaker 1: that was changing the colors, changing that, as you said,
Speaker 1: the tile on our podcast.
Speaker 2: The tagline, the things that weren't visual only but actually
Speaker 2: about how we framed the company. And the reason why
Speaker 2: we wanted to do that was because you and I
Speaker 2: hadn't done anything to the visuals or of the branding
Speaker 2: since we started in March of twenty seventeen, I came up.
Speaker 2: I used a random color generator online to come up
Speaker 2: remember colors. And so we were at this moment where
Speaker 2: we were going, Okay, these colors are being seen by
Speaker 2: millions of people every week and no one's actually thought
Speaker 2: about why they're there or including us. Yeah. So the
Speaker 2: basis of it was to try and mature as a company.
Speaker 2: And what happened, So we went through a really long process.
Speaker 2: We got experts in so long who knew what they
Speaker 2: were doing and put a lot of thought and energy
Speaker 2: into thinking through you know, not just the visuals that
Speaker 2: we were giving them to start with, but how other
Speaker 2: brands show up all around the world in media and
Speaker 2: not in media as well.
Speaker 1: And when you say it took so long, what was
Speaker 1: actually happening that took so long? Like, can you talk
Speaker 1: our listeners through? I guess what that process actually entailed.
Speaker 1: I've never been through it before.
Speaker 2: Neither, And so everyone was learning from scratch and lets
Speaker 2: the number one I think the main part of the
Speaker 2: process was that a number of concepts were presented to
Speaker 2: us and it was concepts A, B or C. And
Speaker 2: we ended up going with D and so there was
Speaker 2: this process of saying we like this bit, we don't
Speaker 2: like this bit, and then there was also a technical
Speaker 2: element overlaid onto it. So you know, the idea that
Speaker 2: for journalists to turn around the story really quickly about
Speaker 2: breaking news, it can't be complicated graphically.
Speaker 1: All of our journalists put their own work into camera.
Speaker 2: We don't have a single graphics professional in the company
Speaker 2: who is who's dedicated to making things look good on
Speaker 2: a grid.
Speaker 1: If anyone knew that, you're not allowed to say that
Speaker 1: out loud.
Speaker 2: But that's also the cool thing about canvas and the
Speaker 2: cool thing about like this new era of more accessible
Speaker 2: technology that anyone can use. You don't need to be
Speaker 2: able to code, you don't need to be able to
Speaker 2: think through the crazy photoshop elements that take years of
Speaker 2: almost like a university degree to master in saying that
Speaker 2: there's clearly a skills gap that can come up if
Speaker 2: you don't clearly.
Speaker 1: So every time I present Sam with a design or something,
Speaker 1: I without fail will always get it's a good start.
Speaker 2: It's a great starts are on, it's a really let.
Speaker 1: Me take it and change it entirely and give it
Speaker 1: back to you so you can pretend it was your
Speaker 1: own work every time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's part where all you know, whenever I
Speaker 2: give you a power, whenever I give you a paragraph
Speaker 2: of text, you say, it's a great start as well.
Speaker 2: So that's why we're the perfect team exactly. So we
Speaker 2: went through all of those iterations ye, and then it
Speaker 2: was about making sure that it worked with the workflows.
Speaker 2: And then we put it out there, and.
Speaker 1: We were nervous.
Speaker 2: We were really nervous, and that's when the reactions began
Speaker 2: almost instantly.
Speaker 1: Yet we should have been nervous. It turns out those
Speaker 1: nerves were well placed.
Speaker 2: So the summarize basically what happened next. There were tens
Speaker 2: of thousands of comments about the font specifically.
Speaker 1: So we're talking Instagram. Were very well known for our
Speaker 1: Instagram tiles. Everyone knows the colors. Apparently everyone knows the font.
Speaker 1: Didn't know that until this time we put out I
Speaker 1: think it was a story about Ted.
Speaker 2: Cruz, former Republican nominee for president.
Speaker 1: Yep. And turns out no one cared about Ted Cruz,
Speaker 1: no one cared about the Republican primaries. Everyone cared about
Speaker 1: the font that that news was delivered in.
Speaker 2: And the flavor of the comments was really interesting because
Speaker 2: there was a strong sense of I don't like the font.
Speaker 2: But more than that, there was this sense of why
Speaker 2: didn't you ask Usa and why did you play with
Speaker 2: something that we love if it's not broke or that's
Speaker 2: not broken. And that's when we really started to interrogate
Speaker 2: our own process. We hadn't done enough, if any, market
Speaker 2: research into what people liked. I mean, you and I
Speaker 2: are famous for flipping things around in a WhatsApp group
Speaker 2: with family and friends and kind of saying, what do
Speaker 2: you guys think of this, and getting, you know, see
Speaker 2: what our mums think. But for something of this size,
Speaker 2: it was clear to us and I don't think we'll
Speaker 2: ever make that mistake again. It needed probably a sample
Speaker 2: of a thousand or two thousand to really get a
Speaker 2: sense of how people would receive it. But what was
Speaker 2: also interesting was how many brands and how many you know,
Speaker 2: politicians were getting involved in the commentary.
Speaker 1: We see you just enter Alan.
Speaker 2: We were becoming a meme essentially, and I think it
Speaker 2: wasn't just about the font. It was this snowball effect
Speaker 2: of it became a funny thing.
Speaker 1: It was a moment.
Speaker 2: It was a moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a moment that we absolutely if it
Speaker 1: was another brand would have got it involved in exactly.
Speaker 2: And I think and when you read all of the
Speaker 2: kind of marketing best practice guides out there, it's all
Speaker 2: about jumping on those moments and being relevant. And there's
Speaker 2: some brands that have really built the following off responding
Speaker 2: to those moments so well. Yeah, so totally understand why
Speaker 2: that was happening.
Speaker 1: Didn't feel fun at the time, though.
Speaker 2: No, and these were massive companies, I mean, Uber left
Speaker 2: a comment I remember at one point two state premiers.
Speaker 2: It was a serious kind of sense that people were
Speaker 2: no longer coming to us just for the news stories,
Speaker 2: but like a.
Speaker 1: Brand universe almost they were coming to us for an
Speaker 1: experience and we had failed them or they claimed failed
Speaker 1: them on that experience.
Speaker 2: And what I found interesting at the time was that
Speaker 2: ownership element. And you and I spoke a lot about that.
Speaker 2: Talk me through how you feel I'm asking the question, Sorry, no,
Speaker 2: please finish your question. How did you feel about this
Speaker 2: sense of like, why didn't you ask us because it's
Speaker 2: our brand as well?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a funny one. We've never had that before.
Speaker 1: I was torn. I think, as we've said, social media
Speaker 1: democratizes information and access to information. That's an amazing thing
Speaker 1: to have, and we have built a business off that,
Speaker 1: So I want people to feel entitled to that information
Speaker 1: and entitled to partake in that conversation. However, we are
Speaker 1: a private company who make decisions about what is in
Speaker 1: the best needs of that company, and not everything is
Speaker 1: a joint ownership project. So it was Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: an interesting one for us, but I think what was
Speaker 1: more interesting was the conversations that then happened behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: So do you remember what the conversations in the office work,
Speaker 1: because they will never leave my mind.
Speaker 2: So there were kind of two camps in camp. One
Speaker 2: was this idea of we need to push through and
Speaker 2: people don't like change, and this has had thought and
Speaker 2: development and guidance behind it. Yep, we need to withstand
Speaker 2: the storm and this is a moment. As we've just said,
Speaker 2: which camp were you in? I was in that camp.
Speaker 2: I was in the camp of we need to be
Speaker 2: able to withstand whatever social media pressure comes our way
Speaker 2: and people will find the next thing and keep going.
Speaker 2: The other side of the office was saying we need
Speaker 2: to be holding true our company values, which is being
Speaker 2: respondent and listening to our audience and feeling as though
Speaker 2: we're not out of touch with what people are saying
Speaker 2: with the common man, with the common man, and if
Speaker 2: they're saying conclusively that this needs to change, then that's
Speaker 2: what should happen. And we're at a bit of a
Speaker 2: stalemate with that. What was starting to bring me over
Speaker 2: to your side, which was that we should flip side
Speaker 2: were comments around accessibility and some of those elements which
Speaker 2: went beyond just taste, but it was people saying, this
Speaker 2: is hard to read on mobile, or when you put
Speaker 2: more text on it. If it's a headline that needed
Speaker 2: a couple more words in it, then that's harder to read.
Speaker 2: And then we were having discussions editorially like how do
Speaker 2: we make this shorter so that it's easier to read?
Speaker 2: And at what point are you starting to sacrifice the
Speaker 2: quality of the reporting that you're doing because of this
Speaker 2: graphic constraint. That started to drag me over a little
Speaker 2: bit because it wasn't just about attitude then, it was
Speaker 2: about ensuring that we're an accessible product.
Speaker 1: And so, I mean, spoiler, we did change our font back.
Speaker 2: But why and how we changed it was interesting.
Speaker 1: It was it's really smart by us. It was really
Speaker 1: in retrospect, so we changed it back because we needed
Speaker 1: people's attention on a very important topic and that was
Speaker 1: that at that point. So this was months after we
Speaker 1: had first.
Speaker 2: Rebranded, about two months.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we had kept that font the same, and then
Speaker 1: one day we put up a post with our old
Speaker 1: font and it said, Hi, we hear you. The old
Speaker 1: font is back for our front covers. Now let's get
Speaker 1: on with the new And we posted that because we
Speaker 1: needed to tell people about Meta threatening to take news
Speaker 1: off its platform. We're not going to do a whole
Speaker 1: podcast episode about that. We have sat behind this microphone
Speaker 1: many a time and explained that. But what it did
Speaker 1: was used a brand moment and a moment for us
Speaker 1: to really capture the attention of our audience and to
Speaker 1: do what we do best, which is share accessible information.
Speaker 1: And from that day forth we went back to the
Speaker 1: old font.
Speaker 2: And in some ways, I remember that day feeling a
Speaker 2: lot like a bit of a defeat, because.
Speaker 1: Funny, I remember it feeling like a relief.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's I think probably back to those two
Speaker 2: original positions, because I mean, you're right in that as
Speaker 2: a company we needed to try and pick a direction
Speaker 2: and go for it, and if we responded to other moments,
Speaker 2: whether there was frustration or a lack of engagement, like
Speaker 2: we've launched newsletters, for example, that have had a slow
Speaker 2: first week and an incredible second week, and if we
Speaker 2: cut it in week one wouldn't have been there for
Speaker 2: week two, and now it's in week one hundred. So
Speaker 2: I'm always wary of that. But it was totally the
Speaker 2: right call and everyone was on board at the time,
Speaker 2: which was really amazing. And I do think that we're
Speaker 2: stuck with the font Like I think that the fact
Speaker 2: that font gate happened, we.
Speaker 1: Call it font gate because there were many articles about it,
Speaker 1: many articles about tda's fond gate and this, and that
Speaker 1: it was law.
Speaker 2: Like to give you a sense listening, to give you
Speaker 2: a sense listening of how this has taken the life
Speaker 2: of its own. There's now parts of graphic design and
Speaker 2: branding short courses that say what we can learn about
Speaker 2: branding from tda's font gate. So it's kind of got
Speaker 2: the life of its own now. So I do think
Speaker 2: it'll be hard for us to change ever again, even
Speaker 2: if the font was something that people liked and you
Speaker 2: font because.
Speaker 1: We're resistant to change more generally.
Speaker 2: Though, Yeah, and I think brands all struggle with that,
Speaker 2: and especially brands that have such a kind of a
Speaker 2: sense of co ownership and a sense of comment sections
Speaker 2: being important and all of that kind of value that
Speaker 2: we try and provide. But it's a beauty and it's
Speaker 2: maybe a little bit of a constraint.
Speaker 1: Looking back, Now, what's the key lesson you've learned from this?
Speaker 1: And I guess what's a key lesson that you would
Speaker 1: tell someone who is building brand about what this taught
Speaker 1: you about how important brand actually is.
Speaker 2: I think visual brandy actually, I think I come back
Speaker 2: to audience testing. I think audience testing was underestimated because
Speaker 2: it felt difficult to execute, Like it felt hard to
Speaker 2: be able to actually get data that we could then
Speaker 2: rely on to make decisions, because nothing.
Speaker 1: To say that people that some people would have come
Speaker 1: back and said that it was okay or with that
Speaker 1: fun and then we rolled it out and you.
Speaker 2: Know, totally it wouldn't have necessarily taken away all the risk,
Speaker 2: but at least then we would have had a sense
Speaker 2: of these are the views that are out there, and
Speaker 2: these are the different ways that people will respond. I
Speaker 2: know that sounds that we didn't do it. But the
Speaker 2: reality of running a business and a small business is
Speaker 2: that you can't take super long with everything otherwise nothing happens.
Speaker 2: And we were getting frustrated with the length of the
Speaker 2: process because we were having conversations about whether an a
Speaker 2: should have a flick at the end of it or not.
Speaker 2: And there was a sense and I drove And this
Speaker 2: is a big weakness of mine, is that I move
Speaker 2: fast and break stuff. And I drove that progress hard
Speaker 2: and broke it. It was broken. So I think that's
Speaker 2: a big lesson took away from that. What about you.
Speaker 1: I yeah, look, I'd agree with that. One feels actually
Speaker 1: quite embarrassing to admit on Mike. The only other thing
Speaker 1: that I'd say is that it's almost like a silver lining,
Speaker 1: finding the silver lining that this was objectively a super
Speaker 1: shitty moment for the business. We just spent a lit
Speaker 1: lot of money paying people to do this rebrand, we'd
Speaker 1: launched it. We had like mimosas in the office. We
Speaker 1: were really excited. No one else was. But I think
Speaker 1: what we learned from that experience was you can still
Speaker 1: make something a moment, as we saw all the other
Speaker 1: brands doing. For us, they made it a moment, and
Speaker 1: then when we decided to go back to that old font,
Speaker 1: we made a moment out of that too, And I
Speaker 1: think that there is always a silver lining. There is
Speaker 1: always something that you can do that will build and
Speaker 1: better establish your brand and might not be the obvious choice.
Speaker 1: We didn't expect that it was going to be people
Speaker 1: hating our font, but we made it a moment and
Speaker 1: people still to this day talk about it.
Speaker 2: And at the end of the day, trying to start
Speaker 2: a business and building a business is about being nimble,
Speaker 2: and I think that that was probably no more not
Speaker 2: quite broken as that, but being nimble and adapting to
Speaker 2: how things roll out.
Speaker 1: There you go. Wise lessons for your Sunday more Sam,
Speaker 1: thank you for joining me on this lovely Sunday. Of
Speaker 1: course we'll be back tomorrow with a deep dive, but
Speaker 1: until then, have a great day.
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Speaker 3: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 3: Gadigol people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Speaker 3: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
Speaker 3: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Speaker 2: Look, we got pretty lucky with our first hire, Tara,
Speaker 2: who's our head of commercial now. She actually messaged us
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Speaker 1: Well, she messaged you relentlessly. You met her for a
Speaker 1: coffee that I forgot about, that you forgot about, but
Speaker 1: you told her on the spot that she had a job.
Speaker 2: She just had the vibe of she could help.
Speaker 1: And then she met me for a coffee. She thought
Speaker 1: the job was sealed done and I thought it was
Speaker 1: an interview, and there was a it of mismatch. But hey,
Speaker 1: it worked out.
Speaker 2: It did work out. And it isn't always that easy
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