Global Brand Expansion with a Local Feel
Global Brand Expansion with a Local Feel
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In this episode of Local Marketing School, Emily Steele interviews Holly Chapman, Head of Brand at Papier, a stationery and personalized products company. Holly shares her journey from the communication industry to becoming Head of Brand at Papier. We dive deep into Papier’s US expansion and all the strategies employed to make for a truly omnipresent brand splash across the market. Listen for tips on local creator partnerships, creative collaborations, and landing earned media.
TUNE IN FOR TOPICS LIKE:
4:20 Holly’s career journey and landing a creative role at Papier
6:26 What the Head of Brand role at Papier looks like
8:09 Factors that played into Papier’s expansion plan
10:08 Advantages to having boots on the ground for your brand
12:11 Strategies to building a omnipresent brand presence in a new city
18:28 Grassroots vs. Traditional marketing approaches
22:20 Tips to finding the right PR partner
26:10 How to build your network in a brand new city
29:59 Holly’s recommendations for marketers operating on a startup budget
33:24 OK Mentor and advice for those looking to break into the creative industries
38:04 What’s next for Papier
Listen to this week’s Local Marketing School conversation!
Other episodes you'll enjoy if you enjoyed Holly's episode:
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Emily Steele (00:01)
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Local Marketing School. Today we're digging into all things small business with Holly from Papier. But before we dive into the show, I wanted to tell you something exciting we're doing over at Hummingbirds. So we built a local creator platform where they match with brands of all shapes and sizes. And we started it in Des Moines, Iowa because we wanted to see small businesses be supported by people's voices on social, right? Like think about the influencer industry and how much access brands get to bigger name influencers who can drive national or global awareness. But the small businesses, the brands that really need to drive geographic behavior do really well by working with kind of those local creators. So we are doing something in November called Small Biz November. I know super creative, right? Where instead of Small Biz Saturday, we're going the whole month, encouraging our creators inside of our platform to engage in different campaigns, to amplify the businesses they're supporting and buying from this holiday season, and just give all the love out to local communities. So we're really excited about the impact hundreds of our creators are going to make throughout this month. And at end of the day, we want it to benefit those brands and those communities that the brands play in and operate in.
It's very fitting that today we have a small business on board, Papier. If you don't know them, well, now you will. I've been a fan of their planners for the last few years, have been a loyal buyer. just, I love the whole process of getting my planner. It just feels so experiential and then it arrives and you know, I'm, I become very organized. It's funny because my digital life and paper life are basically the same, but I just, the pen to paper situation sometimes feels so right. So I look to my Papier planner to support me with that. Just to give you the lay of the land, I have Holly Chapman on with me today. She's the head of brand at Colt Stationery Brand Papier, as I mentioned. She has 13 plus years of experience in PR, brand building, and social community and content strategy. And she's passionate about storytelling. She's well-versed in finding the balance between branding, building brand equity, leveraging community, and creating campaigns that weave the Papier brand into contemporary culture. Holly's professional journey has taken her across oceans, last year spending 18 months in New York to scale the Papier brand in the US, and before that to Amsterdam while launching the Dutch flower delivery brand Bloom onto the UK market. Her experience includes time spent at fast-paced communication agencies and working with VC-backed startups. Alongside this, Holly has recently been appointed to the join the advisory board of OK Mentor, a charity that provides training and mentorship for women wanting to break into the creative industry. We touch on all of these pieces of Holly's journeys from her early days professionally to now being head of brand. We talk about the strategy Papier thought about and used to get to Australia and then to the US. And as they scale to Canada and Asia, moving forward, I think what really will be super helpful for brands that are trying to unlock some of the similarities that Papier used coming to the US and what Holly specifically has been working on is some of the strategies they use with tastemakers, creators, as well as their PR strategy. It's really solid and I feel like Holly gives some really great examples of how those tactics come into play.
We talk about that, we talk about how she built her professional network in the new city, which I find to be so brave. We talk about creative strategies for bootstrap and startup budgets, and then her experience with OK Mentor, which is the advisory board I mentioned at the start of the show. So you're in for a treat. This is a very fun episode. And let's just let's go from here.
Emily Steele (04:10)
Hey Holly, welcome to the show today.
Holly Chapman (04:13)
Hi, thanks so much for having me.
Emily Steele (04:15)
Yes, tell us a little bit about you and your background and what led you to populate.
Holly Chapman (04:21)
So I have kind of always worked in the comm space. I originally started at a PR agency, like lots of people. I think it's a great way to like cut your teeth. You get to work on lots of clients. So it was a really amazing experience and I did that in London. and I worked mostly with VC back startups. So feel like I was kind of in that startup space, like pretty early on and like always very interested in kind of growing a business and how you kind of scale it.
So I did that for four or five years and I absolutely loved it. then kind of moved in-house to a PR role there. and that was at a Dutch startup, bloomon and, my role was, kind of launching the bloomon brand in the UK. And that was really interesting launching a brand in a new market, even though it was a market that I knew very well, it was new for the brand. so kind of thinking creatively about how we would do that and how we kind of would scale somewhere that has never heard of you and often doesn't care. They don't care that you're new there, so how do you stand out? That was really interesting and I loved that. I loved working and learning about how European brands saw the UK market and things like that. It was really interesting. After a few years there, the startup was eventually sold to Bloom & Wild. Just before that, I moved to Papier.
Emily Steele (05:22)
Yeah. Yeah.
Holly Chapman (05:42)
Where I again started in the comms role and there's a lot of conversations at the moment about generalists versus specialists and all that kind of thing. And I hold my hands up and say I'm proud generalist because I have done almost every kind of role in the branding team at some point and kind of gradually acquired more and more. So I started in PR and I then kind of started looking after social influencer partnerships, collaborations, and now I kind of look after the brand as a whole, all those kind of functions. I'm really kind of thinking about our brand messaging and storytelling.
Emily Steele (06:15)
Okay, yeah, I think that was gonna be my next question to you is like head of brand, like what does that encompass and it's kind of what you just shared. there anything else that typically in the role of head of brand that you see people doing or like what goals they're tied to?
Holly Chapman (06:31)
Yeah, so I think like brand goals, I mean, it really depends on the business that you're in, but I think, you know, often a lot of those parts are kind of split up under brand. I think sometimes you can have people that look after branding creative. And I am really lucky that I work super closely with creative. I'm actually in our recording, no, creative studio at the moment. And I work really closely with our head of creative and kind of on the shoots and how our campaigns kind of come to life through our brand storytelling. But yeah, think it's kind of it's all of those areas. It's really that social and influencer community building, it's partnerships and collaborations for us, which has been really instrumental in our growth. And hopefully we can kind of cover that as we're kind of talking. And that kind of PR piece as well, which is kind of my...
Emily Steele (07:21)
Yeah, yeah, I love it. So Papier was started in the UK and was the next expansion to Australia. Is that correct?
Holly Chapman (07:30)
It was, yeah. We launched in Australia pretty early on. I actually can't remember the year that we did that. And then we launched into the US, kind of a soft launch, without like a team, without an office, that kind of thing. We launched there in 2018. Yeah. And then I was kind of on board for that. And then I eventually moved to New York to kind of grow the brand and scale. And that was in 2022.
Emily Steele (07:54)
Okay, cool. So as you think about Papier, how does the brand think about expansion? Why was the US the next on the roadmap? Do you have any intel on that?
Holly Chapman (08:08)
Yeah, think it was, you know, one of the key reasons is also because it's an English speaking country. So in terms of sort of, if you're thinking about your business as a whole, when you kind of launch into new markets like France or Germany, often you need kind of a different language site. It's very different. You'd need to kind of translations on all your emails. Whereas, you know, we really saw that the US, there's a big appetite for stationery. There's already lots of great stationery brands in the US and it's kind of English speaking too so it means that you know there are lots of things that we can kind of use similarly obviously there are different spellings and different words and things but there's nothing you know it's kind of quite similar so an adjacent market and the opportunity is bigger because it's a much bigger place there are more people so for us it kind of was a logical next step.
Emily Steele (08:43)
Cool, so Papier comes to the US, said, in 2018, but you've been in NYC for the last 18 months or so, like really kind of being like boots on the ground for Papier. Is that kind of the correct way of thinking about it?
Holly Chapman (09:15)
Yeah, exactly. we kind of, there were a few of us that moved out there at the time. And it was really kind of an important step for us. We really wanted to understand the market in a deep way. So I think, you know, between 2018 and 2022, I was really traveling back and forth, you know, meeting editors, doing kind of press relations, and doing everything that we could from here. But we really felt that, you know, we wanted to launch collaborations that were really relevant. wanted to know, make partnerships that kind of felt right and resonated with the American consumer, especially a New York consumer. And so we felt like having a team there was really important to that.
Emily Steele (09:56)
So as you kind of have more of a physical presence in New York, what were some of the things that you were able to do that you couldn't quite do kind of going back and forth?
Holly Chapman (10:07)
I think one thing is really talking to our customers and talking to people that were interested in buying our product, so our kind of community. Something that we did pretty early on is set up kind of local events where we would, at the start, we would kind of host them and there'd be like little workshops or kind of ways to really just connect with our consumer in person. And we would invite kind of our most loyal customers or people we knew were in New York. And then eventually we kind of managed to scale them. So they were hosted by like content creators and they would kind of be like, I've got this idea I want to host a book club. And then it would be kind of like collaboration, but really it was led by them. And I think those community events, they were, they would have been difficult to scale from here, but also understand who was relevant for those. So I think something I learned pretty early on is that sometimes people, you know, might not always kind of feel like the right brand fit in terms of like an influence partnership, but they really resonate with like a certain part of your customer base. And it's kind of like, when you kind of meet them and you kind of understand them, you understand that people are like, I'm obsessed with that person. I think it kind of gives you the confidence to be like, yeah, like we're going to do a partnership with this person. And that really happened. And we did also launch a bigger collaboration with The Met which took a really long time to kind of come to life and I think that would have been incredibly difficult had we not been kind of on the ground. So yeah I think a few things were made much easier from being there.
Emily Steele (11:47)
Yeah. So some of those first events, you were really looking at your initial customers. You're like, based on their orders, like they're from this area. So was that kind of your initial go at it? Like who, who on social media follows us? That's in NYC, who's on our email list and find those people and see if you can get them to experience your brand in real life. Was that kind of the first approach? Yeah.
Holly Chapman (12:11)
Yeah, that was one of the kind of, guess, one of the prongs, one of the ways that we approached it. The other way that we did it, also, we pretty quickly knew that we wanted to be connected to, I'd describe them as tastemakers in New York to kind of drive that relevance. So another thing that we did, we hosted kind of a more, I wouldn't say elaborate because we were a startup, we didn't have budgets to make it kind of this ostentatious dinner, but we hosted a dinner at a restaurant which served British food and it was very much us playing on our Britishness. And we hosted that for of tastemakers. And it was during the kind of like man repeller heyday, I would say, we kind of met, a lot of that team came along and shared us on social media. had like Eva Chen, people like that. And I think that really in tandem with those community activations and the press that we were doing. So we were really pushing to kind of you know, get that omnipresence feeling that you kind of get like, I've seen this person post about you and I've also seen, you know, this happening and I was looking at a gift guide and you were in there. So we're really trying to drive that omnipresence with our activity. So we also were really kind of going very heavy with kind of that press side. So I think that with partnerships and the kind of community feel, we're really like the mechanics that were in place for us. Yeah.
Emily Steele (13:14)
Yeah, and maybe we can get tactical about some of it. So someone who's like, okay, this seems like something I'd want to do. How do I go about it? Like you would identify with your team or maybe it's you, the tastemaker, for example, you'd want to work with. How do you think about finding those individuals? Are those the ones who are existing customers or are they sometimes not, but you think they could be?
Holly Chapman (13:55)
Yeah, it's kind of both. Sometimes it's kind of like this is like a dream wishlist. Like we would, you know, we had followed Eva Chen for a really long time. We knew she used data read. She always posts about her holiday cards. And so she was just on a dream wishlist of ours. And honestly, we just reached out to her. And, and it's amazing. Sometimes you're just very surprised by people who will reply and who will kind of, you know, this was I would say, you know, a few years ago, people didn't receive as much gifting. And I think gifting was slightly different to how it is now. So I would probably caveat that we were very lucky. We kind of were in that kind of sweet spot where people were like excited to receive things. They posted and shared it a lot. I don't think that necessarily happens now as much. But yeah, it was kind of a mix of like, here are our dream tastemakers. And then we also had a kind of like pull community who, you know, they might have tagged us a few times on social media. that they received their order and we kind of built relationships in those two ways. Yeah, which was, it was great to kind of do, I think both and to really kind of, if you're thinking about your funnel, which we weren't thinking in those sophisticated terms at the time, but if we were, you'd probably be thinking that like the tastemakers with that, know, top of funnel, upper funnel activity, and then kind of have your community and grassroots, which are really kind of that mid and lower funnel.
Emily Steele (15:07)
Yeah, okay, so you identify who you wanna work with, they're excited, they're like, yeah, I'd love to collaborate on an event or an experience and get people together. How do you think about the earned media, the press side of that, once that's a date is established or an activity or an event, then what are you up to?
Holly Chapman (15:35)
Yeah, our PR, well, at the time it was actually me who was doing it. But now we are really lucky that we kind of found like a PR partner that really worked well for us. But I think alongside that they would really be, you know, they wouldn't necessarily be pitching about the events that were happening. If it was a press event, they would be inviting people or we would be inviting people. But alongside that would be kind of pitching stories that we thought would be really relevant and really tailored. So I think in the way that we approach PR.
Holly Chapman (16:05)
We always make sure we have like an always on drum beat of product placement. And that's like the top 10 gifts for mom, for Mother's Day, those kinds of things. That's always really important for us. You've got to get those. then alongside that, we would kind of be really targeted on the publications that we would want. And we would be like, okay, what's the story for Vogue, What's the story for Harper? Like what would make them write about us? What would make us land a Wall Street Journal piece? and kind of worked from there. So we, our PR agency at the moment are amazing and we kind of sit down every couple of months and we're like, okay, where have we been in? Where do we want to be in? And how do we kind of make that story work for us? for example, Vogue, amazingly, they love writing about collaborations and things like that. So they covered, we did a collection with ROSIE ASSOULIN the US designer to drive brand events in the market and they wrote like a standalone feature on that collaboration. And we had like interview quotes from Rosie and we knew that Vogue would need a fashion partner to kind of write about us. So we were like, okay, if we want that, then we need to kind of make that happen. So we kind of orchestrate a lot of our storytelling and ideas through the lens of what is interesting to press and editors.
Emily Steele (17:04)
Yeah, that makes sense. So you're kind of doing some boots on the ground, events and experiences, getting creators talking about you, kind of like sometimes I think about like on the streets, kind of like out in the world, but then you're also thinking, okay, if Vogue's gonna write about us, then that's more, it can be more of a national play. But I love how you're thinking about it from like, just saw like Vogue just posted about Papier and like, I just saw this creator I follow. Like that's what you're essentially hoping happens with this, right? Is like the noise in a lot of different places where your ideal customer is watching and making decisions. Yeah.
Holly Chapman (18:02)
Yeah, that's exactly it. And I think, you know, we would love to have been a brand that, you know, had big enough budgets to be like, we're going to work with this celebrity. like, you know, lots of brands have a lot of success through celebrity and billboards, but we, you know, had that restriction of budget, we weren't able to fund that. So it was kind of like, how can we be really creative with what we do and really make the most and make the biggest impact, you know, without spending like millions of dollars.
Emily Steele (18:10)
Do you feel like, you know, the approach you've used does feel like there's a lot of virality to it, given social, given how people share. Do you think you would be in a totally different spot if you had the millions to use billboards and more of the celebrity? Or do you have conviction that like, hey, this strategy actually can be just as impactful as other channels? What are your thoughts?
Holly Chapman (18:52)
I think it again, it depends on the brand, I would like to think that I think a celebrity can be really good, but on its own, if we had spent all of only our money on that and we didn't invest in, you know, content on our own channels, all that kind of behind the scenes stuff that happens, I think that it would have been a drop in the ocean and you would have got that big piece, sure, but you wouldn't have gotten anything else. So I think that kind of, I like to think that the way that we've approached it, you know, in a more creative way has you know, allowed us to, yeah, drive that kind of omnipresence in a different way. And I think it would have been, it would have been different, the relationships we would have had with our partners, with our community, I think would have been different if we had this big celebrity moment and be these big billboards. I don't know, it doesn't feel as intimate, it doesn't feel like you've got that kind of, that connection with the brand in the same way. But that's maybe just my bias speaking, because that's you know, the way that we did it. What do you think?
Emily Steele (19:53)
Yeah, I kind of feel the same. It's way more work to have dozens of relationships with partners and doing in-person events meets creator strategies, working with the Met. That's a lot of different things versus like, here's a celebrity campaign and we're going to put a majority of dollars there. But I do think it's the like, you think about how consumers need to see things so many different places and just how they're connected on their phones to so many different people, things going on. I align very similarly. think people feel more connected to brands than ever before. And so the way that you can connect is celebrities can be really powerful, but it's also kind of the everyday person's voice and network that at scale could be more impactful, I think. So yeah, they definitely align there. Yeah.
Holly Chapman (20:48)
Exactly. think like you're just more likely to like buy. say someone in your network that you follow and you're obsessed with, they don't have a million followers, but like they have, you know, a good amount. And you're like, I just, everything they post, I want. I think like that you don't get that with celebrities that like, kind of like trust in like that they, that what they are endorsing is something that you're like, I'm going to definitely buy that. And I think that nano community and that advocacy that you get with kind of the with influencer at like a smaller grassroots level, I think it's just it is really impactful.
Emily Steele (21:24)
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's just like if a celebrity shares something, I'm like, we have very different budgets likely, you know, so I'm kind of like, do we buy the same things like in general? there's already a gap in my mind of like, you're a celebrity, which means you're just like purchasing differently than I likely am. And so there's sometimes that disconnect just depending again, like on the celebrity. But when it does feel like someone who's like a micro influencer, it does make you feel like, I could actually connect with that person because we have so many similarities in our life and our path. So yeah, that totally makes sense. To dig in a little bit more on PR, I know that's your background, but you eventually end up outsourcing it to a PR agency. So I love your take on how do you find the right PR firm? How did you vet the one you worked with? Like, how do you know it's a good choice? Like, what are some of those things you've experienced?
Holly Chapman (22:18)
It's such a challenge. And whenever I speak to other brands who are like launching in a new market, especially in the US, I think it's one of the hardest things to kind of get right. to be clear, we have made mistakes along the way that were costly and we haven't had it perfectly right the whole time. But I think kind of being clear about what a PR agency unlocks specifically is really important from the get-go. So for us, we think of it like it unlocks resource, relevance and relationships. And yes, we kind of can do some of that on our own, but I think that relationship piece and resource piece is really key. And we kind of were finding that we were hitting a plateau. There was only so much that, you know, me and a very small team can kind of do. And we were wanting those relationships that were kind of already embedded. So I think for us, kind of the way that we went about it and the way that I'd advise others to do it.
It's really to kind of ask people in your network who, who have maybe, experience in a new market. If you're launching the US or if you're doing the other way around in the UK, really ask them who they work with and in tandem ask editors that you might have connections with. Whose email they open, whose email do they open and whose pitch do they actually engage with? And I think that's where I started and I was introduced to kind of many agencies and I think we explored and tested a much bigger lifestyle agency, which didn't really work for us because I think they were kind of requiring more spend on kind of the activity to generate the stories than kind of being able to generate stories without that. Yeah, without that. So we did experience that. But we kind of found the perfect partner with a smaller kind of mid-size agency. And we kind of use them to pitch and all those amazing things, but also, you know, to sense check things. So when we were going to launch in Target, for example, we were like, you know, is this, is this cool to launch in Target or, you know, is this like us launch? Like in the UK, have like stores which are, you not favorable. We probably wouldn't want to kind of necessarily launch with. And so they were like a sounding board and they were like, yeah, like, you know, John Darion has a, has a collab with them, know, Rosie Assolin's in a line with them. Like it's, it's like a really cool way to kind of, you know, showcase your brand, to a more mass market. but without that kind of like confirmation and on the ground stuff, I think that we maybe would have taken longer to get to that decision. so I think it's sort of, they were the ways that we kind of found them. And I think we did an RFP process which was, you know, them pitching and a lot of it was like about ideas, but I think for me, it was also about like connection with the team. You know, we're a small team internally. Who are those like partners that we're going to trust to kind of run the show? And, you know, we're not going to, I don't want to be involved in, no, I don't want to be, but I think it's detrimental for the brand to be involved in like signing off every single pitch, and every single press angle and kind of being involved in that way. So it was kind of like, okay, who do we kind of trust for that? But I think recommendation and word of mouth is really key. And I'd be happy to provide recommendations if anyone listening is looking for like support or help or anything like that.
Emily Steele (25:42)
Yeah, cool. Cool. Thanks for offering that. Kind of to change subjects, you're in NYC, been there now 18 months. How do you think about growing your personal professional network as you're in kind of a big city and kind of getting established there?
Holly Chapman (26:10)
It was so hard at first. think it was overwhelming. I think that one thing I would really say is like actually telling people that you're moving is amazing because you would be so surprised how many people have a friend, a cousin, a friend of a friend who's like in the city. And I was overwhelmed and felt so grateful for the amount of people that actually agreed to get coffee with me. And in the early days, I would say that I said yes to everything. Anyone who was in the city, was like, yes, I would love to meet. And I found everyone to be so welcoming and not at all like the kind of stereotype of New York that you'd maybe imagine. But I think kind of the first step is really reaching out to your own network and telling people that you're there. So on LinkedIn, if that's your place, on Instagram, if that's your place.
Holly Chapman (27:05)
And yeah, everyone I was meeting beforehand, I was like, I'm moving to New York. Like, let me know if you know anyone there or if you're coming over. That was the first thing I did. And the second thing, once people know that you're there, I found that, you know, we hosted lots of brands in our office and we had them, you know, they would be like, we're coming to New York or UK around, we're coming to New York for a week. We had them like, we're like, yeah, sure, share our office space, like, you know, welcome. And I think that was, that was really great too.
Holly Chapman (27:35)
And then the third thing is really find those sort of meetups or pockets of networking if you can. And I was lucky enough to be invited to a WhatsApp group with lots of brand leaders from like Bumble and LV and some other really cool brands. And we would meet up every like six to eight weeks. And I just found that like slowly it kind of happened. I was lucky, I think with the press side, I had relationships with editors and they kind of became friendships. But you know, not not necessarily naturally, think, you know, I did pottery classes with, you know, the editor of Elle and was like, hey, like, because she said she really liked ceramics. And I was like, I'd like to do that too. I'm not saying I was any good at it, but I think I kind of said yes to those things. found like one editor, she was like, she lived around the corner from me in Park Slope. So I was like, I saw her a lot. I think it was just sort of saying yes, basically.
Emily Steele (28:08)
Yeah. Yeah. Just like leaning in and being like, okay, I'm going to meet anyone, everyone. I'm going to say yes. And then over time you can be a little bit more selective once you've met a handful of people and figured out how you to use your energy to in a new city with work and yeah, all of that. love it.
Holly Chapman (28:44)
Yeah, I think the first few months are tough and you just have to kind of get through it and find your people. And I think once you do it, doesn't feel like networking. feels like, this is a friendship.
Emily Steele (28:49)
Yeah, yeah, I feel like I've been in the same city for a long time. So it's interesting to think about just uprooting life and being like, I'm gonna go make some new friends. Like I really like the ones I have. I'm open to making new friends, but I'm like, my gosh, that's such an undertaking. So kudos to you for, I don't know, doing it. I love it. So I would love to dig into some of strategies, the creative strategies that kind of work well when you think about the startup budget. think we've done a lot of interviews with people who are just getting started launching their CPG brand or more of that emerging kind of business. so I think startup budgets, bootstrap budgets, whatever you want to call it, are very real. You talk about some of the like earned media things. Is that something you would recommend to earlier stage companies or what are the things like?
Maybe even early in your journey at Papier, that's different now that you would recommend.
Holly Chapman (29:57)
I think the first thing I'd recommend is really localised partnerships. And those partnerships can form different, can be in different ways. It could be an editorial partnership. So you're kind of aligning with tastemakers on your blog or if you have like a physical newspaper, which I think is a big trend that's coming back. So if anyone is thinking about that, think create a brand newspaper. I think it's fairly inexpensive. It's around 500 to a thousand pounds, so less than dollars.
Holly Chapman (30:26)
And I think you could create real impact and stand out with something like that. But editorial partnerships as well as those kind of collaborations. So we managed to do a tie up with Headspace whereby we offered for everybody who bought a journal, they gave away like six months of Headspace and that kind of connection with the brand. I think a lot of people saw it and then it drove a bit more buzz and we had so many people then connect with us. If it's not a bigger brand with partnership, you could also look at like, cooler creatives and artists. So when we were first launching Papier, a way that we stood out was really with our collaborations on the covers. And so if you have a product that's able to be kind of customized in that way, or you're able to create a limited edition, I think that's a great way of like driving relevance in a new market. And it's kind of it is inexpensive for us, we didn't have to commit to stock. And so we were a bit more free to kind of test designs that might not have been commercially the most successful, but like were really popular. So I mentioned that we did stuff with Rosie Attounin. We've done partnerships with other smaller artists in the UK and kind of launched their careers like New Kenwood Hall. Yeah, and I think doing things like that, that makes you stand out. It's really, you know, it's low lift in terms of budget. It can be high lift in terms of the amount of resource that it takes to get it over the line, but I think it enables you to stand out of cut through. I think localized partnerships and in whatever scale is something that I'd say if you don't have a ton of money, maybe invest something in there. Yeah. And then I think earned media, you can do sort of, I think we we started as an, I had a database and I had a commerce background, so it's slightly different, but if you're even a founder, think just send a couple of emails and say like, Hey, I'm the founder. This is my brand, here's a few links, here's some images, I wondered if you'd want to write about it. And I actually think you'd get quite a lot of, if a founder was emailing, yeah, I think you'd be surprised. And I think that's a good way of also understanding before you commit to an agency or a bigger spend, like what pitches are interesting and what actually gets picked up.
Emily Steele (32:24)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's so good to think about. think some people are like, I'm not a professional, so I can't do it. But it's like, you can send a simple email and be like, does this interest you? Does it resonate? Some of the things we did, even while fundraising, was asking investors, what do you hate about this? What do you love about this? Just be willing to get feedback, because I think it does help you. You don't have to change your story. But it's like, what resonates with people you're talking to? Because you can lean into that.
Holly Chapman (33:09)
Yeah, exactly.
Emily Steele (33:09)
Definitely love that. Yeah. Well, I'd love to talk about what you do with OK Mentor. Can you talk a little bit about that organization and what it does and kind of, again, like lean into advice that you might have for those individuals once people know what this is?
Holly Chapman (33:24)
Absolutely. Yeah, I'm really proud to work with OK Mentor. It is a social enterprise kind of charity which enables to support people who kind of want to get into the creative industries and, you know, that could be, you know, straight from school. So you might be thinking about university or you might have just done your degree or you might be thinking about career change, which I think is really interesting. think post Covid, like lots of people are reflecting on of what they're doing and I think, you know, in recent years we're really seeing that rise of people who are, you know, thinking, okay, I've always wanted to, you know, do become a creative director and I ended up in a different role, like how do I transition? So it's kind of a mentoring service that we, you kind of can apply and then you're matched with a mentor who either has a similar skill set to you or is in an area that you really want to learn from.
And it kind of just connects you both. And I think that OK Mentor is really kind of filling that gap of it's not just kind of mentors from anywhere. It's like the people on the platform offering their services and mentors are from amazing companies and really accomplished in their careers and who can really open doors. And I think in my career, mentoring, having a mentor has been so important in kind of understanding what's next for me. know, kind of every stage of my career, even now I have a mentor and I sort of often will run ideas past them or kind of say, I've been thinking about this and if my next role I want to take on XYZ, you know, do you have any thoughts? And I think that mentoring is so valuable. yeah, for people who kind of want to either change industry or kind of get into that creative industry, I think there's often a lack of education on the fact that you need to be creative. have like creative director in your title. But I would say that almost every role in brand and marketing, you know, even if you're on the ad side, there is a creative element to what you're doing. And I think it's kind of also opening people up to like the possibilities of different roles and what you might do and things like that. yeah, it's kind of, it's great to see, you know, so many people match with amazing mentors and they kind of go on to completely new careers and things
Emily Steele (35:41)
that's super cool. If someone's looking for a mentor in that, you know, or like, hey, I do kind of want to break into the creative industry. Do you have a couple pieces of advice you would give them if they don't match with you as their mentor, for example? OK.
Holly Chapman (35:57)
Reach out to me on LinkedIn and I would always match with you personally, whoever. But no, think something I would say is to open yourself up. again, like tell everybody that you're kind of either looking to move or you're kind of what you're interested in. So I think kind of the opening conversations that you might have, you never know where that will go. And then the second thing is to find networking events with like-minded people and I know in London and in New York, there's like a really big kind of scene of like marketing events, talks, like speed, there's like speed mentoring, things like that. There's some kind of really interesting things. And I think go to the places where you're interested in what, you know, say it's a talk, go to the talk that you're interested in and you'll naturally find a room full of people that are either in that space that the talk's about or interested in that, or kind of people who are like-minded enough. And I think That's where that kind of in-person building those in-person relationships is really important. So finding kind of those pockets of events is a really good start. And then I think reach out to people. And I literally just had someone message me today, say, I heard you do this. Like, I would love to pick your brains. I kind of want to move from a comms role into something more like brand marketing. How did you do it? I just have a bit of advice. And I think that, you know From my experience, everyone is always so generous with their time and advice that I think mostly people will reply.
Emily Steele (37:24)
Yeah, yeah, I find that too. Like I can't meet with everyone who reaches out. But it's like if I can send a quick voice note or point you to something I wrote a few years ago or whatever it is, like it's always about, yeah, adding value. might not look like an hour long coffee date, but there's always ways to say, hey, here's what I did. Here's what, you know, maybe it works for you or here's some groups. So love that. I think the reciprocity, especially in the creative space, like we want to help people, right? Like how do you get to the next level? So okay, well my last question for you is what's next for you and Papier? Anything you can share with us?
Holly Chapman (38:02)
Lots of exciting things. have just launched in Canada, so that's another new market for us, which we're very excited for. And we are really excited for more international expansion next year. I think like Europe and then eventually Asia, which will be incredible. Yeah, so I think like lots, lots more to come in Papier in different territories. And I'm really excited to kind of get stuck in again with like, what does that look like for us? Do we do the same strategy? All that kind of thing. So I'm really excited for that. We also have our first, this is another good one for anyone who has a startup budget. We have our first in the wild posting campaign going live to drive some buzz ahead of Black Friday. And so there's going to be posters posted all over London and New York. And yeah, people can kind of, will hopefully get to see the papier around in real life. And it's much less expensive than like, tube or subway advertising or billboards. It's only for two weeks, but I think it's really cool and it's a really cool way to kind of drive buzz around your brand. So we're doing some activation around that too. But yeah, that was really exciting to kind of do that.
Emily Steele (38:58)
Okay, pull that together. I'm gonna be in New York City the weekend of the November 15th. Will I be able to see it while I'm there? It'll be fun. Okay, okay, I'll be like, where do I gotta go? Take my selfie, you So fun. Well, thanks so much for being on the podcast today, sharing more about you, Papier, and all the things your life looks like as someone in brand and the creative space.
Holly Chapman (39:17)
Thank you so much for having me. It's been so nice to speak to you.
Emily Steele (39:37)
Yes.
