Thomas Averre (00:00)
people don't really make decisions based on
something that they've only just started learning about, right? When a company sends a pitch deck to a VC firm or private equity, if it's not a company that the investor has already come across, it's very unlikely they're going to pick up a completely brand new cold opportunity And so
companies need to think about engaging investors a long time before they actually want that investment,
I think there's nothing worse than a sort of company panic stage where it's thinking we have to raise this money immediately because think investors can smell the fear and trepidation at that point. And they also start to think, OK, why haven't you raised the money already?
Joachim Eeckhout (00:37)
Welcome to the Science Marketer Podcast.
Today, we are tackling one of the biggest challenges biotech startups are facing. How to bridge the valley of death between early stage founding and series A. And how the right communication strategy can make all the difference.
Raising a seed round is one thing, but securing your Series A founding is a whole new challenge. Investors expect more than just great science. They want a compelling narrative, clear milestones, and confidence that a startup can scale.
So how can biotech companies communicate effectively to attract investors and stay ahead of the fundraising curve?
To answer this, I'm joined by Thomas Averre Managing Director of Tarleton Communications. In this episode, Thomas will be sharing insights on why biotech startups should communicate with investors a full round ahead of time,
how to craft a narrative that resonates with investors and survives due diligence, and practical strategies biotech marketers can implement right now to support their company's fundraising efforts.
Joachim Eeckhout (01:38)
Hi Thomas, welcome to the Science Marketer Podcast.
Thomas Averre (01:41)
Hey, Joachim nice to see you.
Joachim Eeckhout (01:42)
So before we dive in, could you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your agency, Tarleton, and the kind of clients you work with?
Thomas Averre (01:51)
Great, yeah, thank you. So my name is Thomas Averre I am the founder and managing director of Tarleton Communications. So we are a specialist consultancy that work with science and technology businesses to help them, one, sort of understand the world and the environment that they're in.
but also to help them communicate more effectively with those really important stakeholders like investors, clinicians, government, and others. So we provide sort of political and sector insight and intelligence, and then we also provide the traditional sort of public relations services in terms of brand management, reputation management, relationship engagement, and that sort of thing.
Joachim Eeckhout (02:25)
So in biotech, the value of this between early stage founding and series A is a well-known challenge for many startups. From your perspective, why do so many biotech startups struggle to bridge this gap basically?
Thomas Averre (02:39)
Yeah, great question. A lot of them fear with it being the valley of death, but also inevitably lots of them come across that. So the first thing I think to point out is that the problem with this valley of death is that it's structural in terms of biotech generally is a risky sector, even compared to medical devices, it's considered more risky.
And so there are a lot of investors who shun that level of risk and don't want to invest in biotech. So if you think about the investment market as a whole, you've got a large number of those investors automatically out by way of they don't want to get involved in biotech. Then the investors that are left that are still interested in biotech, lots of them invest in multi-sector investments as well. So they don't necessarily have an in-house or a contractor specialist in a particular
sector, that's you know whether it's neurodegeneration or something else. And so doing the scientific due diligence is a lot more complicated and for that reason they tend to stick to sort of niches that they invest in and you might find for example
an investor focusing on ADCs or antibodies or whatever it might be, and they'll stick quite rigidly to that. So it can feel really difficult for biotech companies to find the investor that's sort of the right fit for them. This valley of death is something that I think a lot of governments in Europe and in the US recognise. And so they provide a level of support to help companies get through that. So whether it's research funding or R &D tax credits as quite popular in the UK, a design typically
the sort of ways in which the companies can bridge that gap temporarily until they can provide investors with that de-risked investment profile, which is often only achieved once they've started gathering human data.
Joachim Eeckhout (04:21)
Yeah. in, so in the case of this interview, we'll also focus on how those startups can communicate and help breach this is valley of death before the episode you shared with me, like you think many startups focus on communicating only when they're actively raising and you suggest that
Thomas Averre (04:29)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Joachim Eeckhout (04:40)
they should actually start engaging investors a full round ahead of time. So if they raise their series A, they should actually start communicating about it, maybe in the seed round. why is that so important?
Thomas Averre (04:51)
So a couple of reasons. Firstly, I think because as in every other area of life, people don't really make decisions based on
something that they've only just started learning about, right? So when companies, and this doesn't just apply to biotech, it applies to many different sectors. When a company sends a pitch deck to a VC firm or private equity, if they're further on the line, if it's not a company that the investor has already come across, it's very unlikely they're going to pick up a completely brand new cold opportunity and say, you know what, let's just start going down the track with this. And so what needs to be done is
that companies need to think about engaging investors a long time before they actually want that investment, right? Whether it's seed, pre-seed, series A or beyond. They need to start helping those investors become familiar with the company, help them start understanding what milestones they've already met, why the industry is excited, who they're bringing on board by way of...
team, management team, advisory board, whatever it might be, and start to help them do that mental due diligence before they get into a conversation. So if you think about, you know, done well when you then approach the investors, because you do actually need to raise the money, they're thinking, okay, I've heard about this company, I've seen this company before.
It seems to be going in the right direction. There's lots of interest and excitement. I'm happy to have a conversation and start moving down the track. I think there's nothing worse than a sort of company panic stage where it's thinking we have to raise this money immediately because think investors can smell the fear and trepidation at that point. And they also start to think, OK, why haven't you raised the money already? I think it's, yeah, doing it for the long term and planning and being strategic about it, I think really pays off.
Joachim Eeckhout (06:31)
And what kind of messaging and content should biotech startups be sharing with investors when they're still at the seed
Thomas Averre (06:38)
I think the temptation is for a lot of these companies to talk about the intellectual property, about the science, about what it is they're developing. And obviously that is really important. So, you know, whether it's conferences they're attending or study results or the patenting or whatever it is that they want to focus on about the science and about the technology, really important. So definitely do that. But I also think they need to talk a lot more about the team that are involved in the business. So, yes, the founder, if it's a spin out, the academic.
founder, but also who's working on it day to day, who have they brought in to look after the business development and M&A side, who have they brought in to advise on the clinical implications, who have they brought in to sort of build out that team and say we've created a vehicle for this to succeed. And also it's really important to talk about the milestones that they expect to hit in the next three, six, nine, 12 plus months.
and demonstrate how they're going to achieve those things. Because I think maybe we'll come onto it a little bit later, but a lot of investors are looking for, yes, great science, of course, but they're also looking for what is your ability to commercialize that science and how are you going to get that into human trial, get positive results in human trial, and then start to gear that up into a format that can either be licensed or required by a big pharma firm. So three things really, talk about the people and the sort of talent that you've got to do that.
talk about the science and why that science is great and how it compares to what else is out in the market and also talk about the commercial milestones that you have hit and you're going to hit.
Joachim Eeckhout (08:07)
How do you balance communicating this kind of big vision without overpromising, especially when it's early stage and they don't necessarily have so much data. So it's still like kind of hypothesis of success. So how do you do this?
Thomas Averre (08:16)
and
So the market is full of companies that use buzzwords constantly. Everything's revolutionary. It's game changing. They often throw AI in there and add that to the mix. And I think sadly, because of the overuse of buzzwords and the really big exciting language, it started to lose a lot of the meaning. So something that companies can do to help balance the...
the big vision without over promising is actually dial it down a little bit and understate how good it is. What you've really got right. So virgin modesty or as I sort of like to call it ambitious modesty and as a little bit of an oxymoron right. But I think hopefully it's allowed. So how to do that. I think you need to be realistic about the challenges and talk about what could go wrong because investors instantly know that biotech is risky right. So point out all of the risks you know.
the data could not work, the translatability from our normal models into humans might not work, et cetera, et cetera. But talk about how you're going to mitigate those risks. And I think that's the key bit to demonstrating commercial maturity and having a sort of plan to do that. Frame the big vision stuff, I think, in terms of what does the science look like in terms of the problem you're tackling and how does what you've developed fit into that?
So how are you adding that new scientific piece of the puzzle into the wider jigsaw? And why should people care about how that's different? So I think too much emphasis is put on the whole sort of total addressable market. How much money could this be worth? What's the current spend on disease X? And I think that's almost in many stages getting ahead of yourself. Yes, that's important. Put it in the pitch deck. Talk about it at some point. But you really need to engage investors.
initially with the why, why are you doing what you're doing and why does what you're developing make sense? And then talk about how you're going to get that closer to market. And then the numbers, I think, and slot in from that.
Joachim Eeckhout (10:10)
So how can biotech companies craft a narrative that resonates with investors?
Thomas Averre (10:16)
So key word there that you've used, narrative. I mean, I narrative's important, right? All good communication is at some level or another about storytelling and about explaining what motivates the team involved, why are they doing what they're doing, why now, why in the way that they're doing it.
Scientists generally have amazing stories to tell about the challenges facing humanity, progress against them, historical and present failures and hurdles in doing that, and also what they're doing differently to continue making progress. But I think it's important that that narrative is clear, compelling and universal, right? So I talked earlier about the fact that some investors are not sector specialists and they might invest in biotech, but they're not necessarily.
They sort of have a broad but shallow knowledge of biotech. And so while there is a place for complexity in jargon, particularly when it comes to the scientific due diligence, there's also definitely space for clear communication, right? And everyone understands clarity. Some people understand jargon.
And so if it can be said and told in a really clear way, I think that's all the better. And so focusing on the why and then going on, I don't want to sound too much like silent cynic, right? But focusing on the why and then talking about how and explaining how that's going to be developed. And putting a communication strategy in place really helps, I think, founders and management teams think about how they're going to articulate that narrative to investors and other audiences as well.
Joachim Eeckhout (11:43)
Yeah, and you mentioned the due diligence a few times. So think that's something we should also focus on. When an investor goes through the due diligence with a startup, is this communication plan maybe also something they look at?
Thomas Averre (11:58)
So broadly, I think no. I think what they're looking for are two things that a communications plan can convey, but they don't necessarily label it. So the two most important things that for me and my line of work come up again and again and again when helping biotech companies communicate and engage with investors are firstly, credibility. You need to demonstrate that it's...
You know, it's science that has a real shot at succeeding. And also you've got that team in place that I talked about to commercialize that and that you've got a plan. So I guess your point about the communications plan comes in there, right? Like, have you got a business plan? Have you got a communications plan? How are you going to do that? Because a lot of investors, well, bear in mind, they're also thinking about the follow on investment and maybe they can take part in that round. Maybe they can't, maybe there are...
seed only investor or a series A only investor. And so they're thinking about how you are then going to warm up the other partners further down the line to help them eventually get to an exit. Second thing is momentum, because a lot of investors want to see the milestones being hit regularly, others getting excited and to feel that the time is now. it's not necessarily the sort of fear of missing out.
environment that you want to create, but certainly, know, spin outs, for example, that have been through two, three, four iterations of product development, sometimes then are pitching into investors and the investors going, okay, but you were established a decade ago. Why have you not already raised the money? It now feels like I don't really want to be getting on board on something that's been lingering for a long time. Whereas if you can plan and have that momentum and that cadence building up, think that's something that really helps.
Joachim Eeckhout (13:33)
Are there common mistakes you see with biotech startups when they present themselves to investors?
Thomas Averre (13:38)
Yes, so many different mistakes. Some are quite common and some are dependent on the exact company and what they're doing right. I think one that's not necessarily a mistake, but I think a missed opportunity is that a lot of companies initially think venture capital and they say that we're getting money from VC. That's how you do it. That's who's going to provide the amount of money we need to raise, et cetera, et cetera, particularly for series A Right. So.
I think there's a gap in the market for companies looking to actually expand their horizon when it comes to fundraising. Think about high net worth, think about family offices, think about angel investors. Now these are quite hard to get to because in some ways they're sort of in stealth mode. It's often referral into these groups that enables investment to take place. But I think it's worth thinking about, we've had biotech clients raise money exclusively from high net worth individuals who are,
investing anywhere between you know 100,000 pounds and 500,000 pounds each and they're pulling together 10 or 15 or 20 of these people and then that sort of solves that challenge for them. The second thing is like I said focusing a little bit too much on the science and not enough on the how that's actually commercial how it can be commercialized and if you're ultimately going to license it to Big Pharma or you want to sell the entire company to Big Pharma or whatever the model is.
you need a really clear plan for how you're going to do that and not just sort of fingers crossed we'll do some great science and then it will be acquired but actually okay have you brought in someone who has worked at AstraZeneca in an M&A team and they know exactly what format that needs to be in and how to do that and that's I think really important and not communicated enough.
Joachim Eeckhout (15:14)
So if a biotech startup is stuck in the valley of death and struggling to raise their next one, what is the first communication step they should take to get out of it?
Thomas Averre (15:24)
So the first thing is put the plan in place, right? Because I think so many companies have not thought about communications in a really strategic way. They just think, right, okay, we'll have a LinkedIn page and we'll post some stuff about recent studies and we'll maybe do a press release once we've spun out or we've launched the company or when we get someone new on the advisory board. I think we really need to think much more carefully about, okay, which audiences do you have? Big pharma, clinicians, other academics, investors, government, et cetera.
how are they, which ones are more important than others and start to think about ranking those and then how are you going to communicate with those different groups, how are you positioning the company, what does the messaging look like between those different groups, so that's the first thing put the plan in place just to provide clarity and direction as much as anything. The second thing is to invest in doing it properly, it's really I think a curious
sure how to describe it. It's curious that people who often invest in
you know, doing things really properly. Like you wouldn't skimp on the IP, for example, and you invest in getting the right scientific talent into the business. Those people are often the same people think communications or, you know, reputation management or public relations can just be, you know, done by someone in a back office doing a couple of tweets or LinkedIn posts or, you know, anyone can write a press release type thing. And while there are some things that can be done in-house, I often say to clients, actually, you know what, you could probably do most of your LinkedIn stuff in-house if you needed to.
depending
on financial pressures and everything else. Some things need to be invested in doing properly. And I think there is a huge difference between.
companies that say, know what, need to do, you know, we need to have our brand managed properly. We're going to invest in that and invest in a professional and an agency to do that for us. And others who think, you know, that can just sit way down the priority list. It's not important until it gets, they get so far along the track and then it's really important. And by which point it's too late because you need to have been warming up the investors first, right? So it's a little bit chicken and egg in that situation, but I think, yeah, not investing in it properly is...
is something that is important as well and it's a mistake that I think some of them make and should correct. And then the third thing is really ensuring that they are communicating the right message and ensuring that when they are talking to investors, they are giving them the information that is going to be useful by way of.
waking them up and making them alive to the opportunity in front of them. I think if they get those three things right, putting the communication strategy in place, investing in where it needs to be done properly and delivering the right message, then I think they're probably on to a really good start bridging that valley of death.
Joachim Eeckhout (17:55)
Yeah. And when you say investing in communication, like for you, means bringing maybe someone external, like an agency most of the time, I guess.
Thomas Averre (18:02)
Yeah, for sure.
Yes. Yeah. And I think there are some things as well, like, you know, obviously I'm in the sort of business of primarily, you know, sector and political intelligence, but also managing reputation through public relations. And so the thing that public relations is very effective at is building up external credibility because you can't buy media coverage.
you it's quite difficult to secure in the first place. So if you're able to do that, third party verification is very valuable to investors. Now, if you were to say, you know what, we want to influence clinicians and patient groups.
Sure, PR has a role and it definitely can support, but there are also other things you can do, particularly tapping into online communities, going through charities, et cetera, to do that as well. So it's about thinking which tactic is most appropriate for which group. And certainly, if you're looking for investment, having a proper external reputation campaign can be very effective at doing that. And that's why bringing in someone can be really useful.
Joachim Eeckhout (18:58)
So you mentioned for instance LinkedIn, so I think that's one of the digital channels startups can use but...
Thomas Averre (19:06)
Mm-hmm.
Joachim Eeckhout (19:07)
In your opinion, is there one channel at this stage in the life of startups that is more important than others?
Thomas Averre (19:14)
I don't think so. think they all sort of come together and support one another. I think some are probably more important than others at different stages of that company life cycle. I'd often say, know, digital channels, whether it's, you know, LinkedIn or newsletters or owned content that you've got in control of your own website and various bits as well.
are really important for pushing people through the funnel and saying, know, you've already got an investor signed up for investor updates, for example, and you've got a newsletter where you communicate your milestones regularly. Really useful for getting that investor from cold through to interested, really interested, happy to have a conversation. But getting people into the funnel in the first place is really the job of, you know, sort of public relations and media relations and engagement with journalists and third parties. So
digital important part of the puzzle, but some audiences are more traditional and analog in the way that you engage them. So, you know, if we talk, if we think about political engagement, for example, which is something we do for quite a lot of clients, you're posting on LinkedIn or posting on Twitter or X or whatever it's called now, you know, isn't, isn't a very effective way of doing that.
It's often about having the relationship building and being to set up the meetings and have the round tables and engage with parliamentary officials or congressmen or whatever it might be to have that one-to-one dialogue. And that's how they are most effectively influenced. Investors a little bit closer towards the media side, patients and others much more about digital communication.
It's a mix, depends on what you're focusing on, but that's the point of the strategy, right? Like it should uncover this and help you and guide you towards the right tactic.
Joachim Eeckhout (20:48)
That's very interesting. Especially as you said, like investors are kind of in the middle, like they have to be sometimes maybe influenced on a face-to-face basis, sometimes more like from the press. Do you see a correlation between maybe like high profile press coverage and interest from investors?
Thomas Averre (20:58)
Okay.
Great question, for sure. I mean, think there's two things, right? There's an anecdote, a story that I sort of share with clients that admittedly is one example, right? But I think it's illustrative of the wider point is that I spoke to an investor who, you know, was talking about which opportunities they decide to pick up as a firm and which they don't. And he said to me, look, there's loads of amazing stuff out there, right? And he gets pitches every day. And he said bluntly, I delete them all unless...
I've either been passed it by someone I trust and it's been referred to me and that might be by a patent attorney or a university or another investor or someone within the network or I'm reading about it all the time and I think what is this? And so, you know, short of having the referral and the network to get you in front of the investor in the first place, external...
sort of press coverage is a really effective way of getting them in. Second sort of story to answer that I think is I normally caveat work that we do right with this is part of a wider
a wider piece of work that is about making it slightly easier and slightly more likely to get investors interested, to find them in the first place and to push them in the funnel. But that being said, we've had clients that have, quite helpfully from our perspective, the investor has literally told them, I only found out about you because I read about you in X publication. I want to have a good discussion.
And then for one client, they ended up being the lead investor. And they had come as a direct lead out of the blue from reading about them in the media. Very helpful for us because that client was like, wow, this does work. To which we were like, my gosh, does it work that well? I don't know. yeah, it's not that common. But I think it's certainly possible
Joachim Eeckhout (22:44)
Do you have other examples you can share?
Thomas Averre (22:46)
So I think most of the time it's not that straightforward, right? Most of the time it's about doing it over a slightly longer period and being quite strategic. So we have a client that we're working with that are developing drugs for neurodegeneration. We started working with them when they'd recently started the business, building up the profile of the team, talking about some of the challenges in developing drugs in their field, talking about the science, all of the things that I've listed to you, which helped them get from, you know,
spin out having raised nothing through to proceeding to clinical trial this year, which is, you know, obviously raising multi-millions and closing that very, remainder of that very soon. And that's an example of sort of strategic patients shown by the client in terms of we know this needs to be a 12, 24 month process, but also now we're near the end of that process. It's like, you know what? We've had a really effective investor relations campaign and that's been in
you know, national media, international media, sector media, et cetera, and has enabled them to one, raise awareness amongst investors, two, make investors more receptive to them when they do approach them, and then help smooth those conversations along. Very rarely does...
know, media coverage move you from zero to one, but very often it creates that glide path through which business development and investor relations can succeed. I think that's probably the best way to look at it. And then if it does happen that an investor pops about of nowhere having read something in the media, then that's a sort of bonus really.
Joachim Eeckhout (24:17)
How does it look like in practice? Like if you work with a company for 12 months, is it like, I don't know, like you have to a certain amount of press releases per month, of LinkedIn posts, like what do you do in practice?
Thomas Averre (24:22)
Mm-hmm.
So often a project will start with the client sort of saying, how do we know if this is going to be successful? What are the metrics we're looking for? And PR and agencies generally have a bad reputation for spin, right? Like no one really trusts anyone in PR, which is hilarious given the whole industry is about creating trust. So maybe PR needs some PR, right? But I often sort of say that you can make stats show anything.
Right, if you decide you want to say that some press coverage was great for a client, you can look at international impressions, you can look at the quality of the people reading it, you can look at how many shares and social it's had, and you can, I don't want to use the word manipulate the stats, but you can pick the stats that are most helpful for the course, right? The way in my mind and in the way that we operate as a consultancy is that basically if the client doesn't feel the benefit, then it's not beneficial.
And if we get pieces of coverage that attract millions of readers, that's not useful unless some of those readers are investors and those investors then approach them and contact them. And so we work on a really transparent, frank basis of you will know as a company whether this is working or not. And so often what we do is we start on a sort of defined piece of work with a company where we say, okay, you're raising a seed round or a series A round.
These are the, this is what we want to do and this is how long we think the campaign will take, but we're going to start with some first steps where we put the basics in place and get you going and you will see some benefit at that stage. And then inevitably we get to the end of that short first stage and.
clients say, yes, actually, we are seeing the benefit already. When we speak to investors, they've started to hear about us. This is working. Let's continue. And that's the way that, one, we get sort of satisfaction in the work we do, but also the way that clients feel the benefit of engaging with us and of the insights that we bring, of the sector intelligence that we give them that helps them then formulate some leadership and various other bits, and obviously the services we deliver on reputation management.
Joachim Eeckhout (26:25)
it's kind of also like...
building trust between your agency and your clients and feeling that everyone's just working towards the same goal, I think.
Thomas Averre (26:34)
Yeah, no, exactly. that's, mean, the useful bit about that for us is that, you know, almost all of our work is referral.
between companies. you know, because we're only relatively small, I only started the agency in 2022, there are four of us now. You know, we're not large enough that people are coming in bound because they're seeing our marketing, but it's often that, you know, biotech founder speaks to a different biotech founder and says, hey, these guys are helping me. I think it'd be useful for you. And then they have the conversation. In most cases, most life science companies I speak to do not want to engage.
with PR, they don't think they need it, they don't need sector intelligence, they already understand the sector, you know, et cetera. When you explain to them how useful it can be, how it's going to make an impact, what that might look like, a lot of them then actually do buy in because then they're typically, with being scientists, very logical people who make decisions based on evidence in front of them.
And if you provide them with quality, independent evidence to show it works. often our strongest selling point is I just say, hey, we've got all of these clients, which ones do you want to speak to? And they will tell you independently how they feel, hopefully for the best, right? But they'll tell you how they feel about what we're doing. And that I think trust is really big and important factor in them making that decision.
Joachim Eeckhout (27:48)
If you had to give biotech founders one key piece of advice for supporting their startups fundraising efforts, what would it be?
Thomas Averre (27:56)
I think think seriously about what are the barriers to achieving your objective and what do you need to do to achieve it and it's really difficult but being really honest about what skills as a founder you have and what skills your team have is a critical step in being able to assess what help you need. So you know we typically work with
companies that say, know what, we've got someone on business development who's working to build relationships with Big Pharma. We don't need help with that. They're great at doing that job. We've got the scientists that have developed the IP in the first place. We know that inside out. We don't need help on that. But a lot of them look and say, you know what, we can communicate really well with other scientists. We can't necessarily communicate really well with investors, government clinicians, patients, charities, third sector, academic institutions and internationally.
who can help us with that, who can do it well, what does that look like and how do we resource that. So piece of advice I'd give really is invest in doing things properly and that doesn't mean do everything you know to the maximum extent but think about what are the what are the bits that are really going to move the needle and make the difference and I think that
That's really a sound piece of advice going forward because poor communication has a much greater hidden cost than a lot of people think it has because some companies point to another company and say, well, they didn't really do much PR or they didn't really invest the reputation and they've raised money.
But it's like, OK, well, might that money have been raised more quickly and a better valuation and more of it raised had they have done that as well. And it's not necessarily binary, but I think it's thinking about it as an efficacy slope would be probably the best way to do that.
Joachim Eeckhout (29:38)
there any resources or books you'd recommend for early stage startups struggling with communication?
Thomas Averre (29:44)
So the best ones are the ones that stick in my mind that I have read and not actually necessarily biotech examples, but I think they're useful to read if you're interested in good communication and in the way that people think, right? So the first one I would say is The Choice Factory by Richard Shotton, which is primarily a consumer book, but it has some really interesting insights and lessons for
readers about how humans make decisions.
whether it's consumer psychology or the way that decisions are made, et cetera. I think there's some things in there that you can take and then apply to biotech and to life sciences more generally. So that's a great one. Second one, David Ogilvie's On Advertising is a great lesson in simplicity and why clarity and communication is important. there's lots of examples from the sort of 40s, 50s and 60s in there, but some of them are still relevant, which I think is, and it's quite enjoyable read anyway. And then the third, which is much more technical,
and geeky is Marketing Effectiveness by Peter Field and Les Binet which is not necessarily a book but it's sort of a report if you like that looks into how do you do marketing effectively and it looks at loads of case studies in the Institute for Practitioners and Advertising, Case Study Bank and it looks tries to plot how do you do
marketing effectively and what that finds and talks through in considerable detail is that the evidence shows that doing long term brand building.
is more effective than doing short-term activation type stuff. thinking strategically, investing in the long term, doing a campaign over 12, 24 plus months delivers a much higher return than doing something short-term and immediate and temporary multiple times. So really interesting. And I think something that B2B decision makers really need to start factoring into the way that they look for customers, look for investors, and influence other people.
Joachim Eeckhout (31:33)
Where can listeners learn more about you or Tarleton if they want to continue this conversation?
Thomas Averre (31:38)
So our website is probably the best place to start. We've got information about what we do, some case studies and whatnot on there. So that's www.tarletoncomms.com or they're very welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn where I sort of download my brain and provide brain dumps and everything to do with science, technology, politics, communication and that sort of thing. But I'm very happy to connect with people. And I think as well as there's so much.
you know, despite the sort of profession I'm in, there's loads that agencies and consultancies can learn from founders, even though the founders are focused usually on something else. So yeah, I really enjoy meeting other people and learning from them as well. So feel free to drop in on that.
Joachim Eeckhout (32:17)
and I will link in the show notes for people to find it easily as well. Well, we are at the end of our interview. Thanks a lot for your insight. It was really interesting.
Thomas Averre (32:21)
Great.
No problem, thanks for having me, Joachim
Joachim Eeckhout (32:29)
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