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Donna White: It's about what they want to share with us and
not what we've got to say. And I think that's the sweet spot
where we can find a little bit more relatability and build up a
lot more trust with young people.
Paul Thomas: Welcome to a brand new episode of Starts at the Top
our podcast about digital leadership and change. I'm Paul
Thomas. And I'm Paul Thomas, because Zoe has sadly been
consumed by hay fever today, so it's just me in a very short
introduction before introducing our guest. We're very excited
today to share our conversation with Donna White, senior head of
digital and youth marketing at the Prince's Trust. We spoke to
Donna in May and learned a lot from her about how to tackle
marketing communications to young people in a constantly
shifting environment. The short answer is that there are no
short answers. Talking of princess we're recording on the
day that Spotify has ended its podcast deal with the Duke and
Duchess of Sussex, a joint statement from Harry and Megan's
company and Spotify said they had mutually agreed to part
ways. The contract was estimated to be worth $25 million, 18
million pounds in late 2020. So where others see problems. I see
opportunity and we just like to put it out there, Daniel Eck if
you're listening, we're here and available. And Megan, Harry,
you're welcome to come on Starts at the Top too if you'd like a
platform to discuss your challenges with leadership and
navigating digital streaming services we are open to all. So
now for our conversation with Donna white, from the Prince's
Trust.
Zoe Amar: We are very excited to welcome Donna white to the
podcast today. She is senior head of digital and youth
marketing at the Prince's Trust. Donna works for the Prince's
Trust, a youth charity that helps 11 to 30 year olds to
develop the skills and confidence they need to get into
work, education or training. It uses digital content to drive
awareness consideration and signups among young people who
empower them to find a job or start a business working with
partners such as Tango, Disney, Tik Tok and many more to extend
the charities reach and relevance. Prior to this, she
worked in PR and communications for public sector and food,
drink and hospitality agencies outside of work. Donna is a
charity comms mentor, equality, diversity and inclusion trainer,
counselling college student and likes to visit exhibitions to
see the best parts of London. Donna Welcome to Starts at the
Top.
Donna White: Oh, thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
Zoe Amar: Very excited to have you here. And just rereading
your bio, I mean goodness me, such amazing talents and a range
of experiences and I know we're going to explore all of those as
part of the interview. Let's begin with what you've got going
on currently. So it's been a really busy, very exciting month
at the Prince's Trust, hasn't it, especially around the
coronation. Can you tell us a bit more about what's been going
on for you and the team?
Donna White: Yeah, it's been a fantastic month. So with the
coronation, we were really fortunate to have some of our
trust supported young people and celebrity ambassadors and
stakeholders invited to the ceremony. And as a result of
that we generated a lot of PR and media interviews in the week
in the run up to that event, which was fantastic. So even
just hearing the commentary during the ceremony, there was
lots of kind of shoutouts for different Prince's Trust
ambassadors. And that's been a great kind of branding
springboard. In the week of the coronation, the Prince's Trust,
helped to generate 42 million impressions online. And our
website visits increased by 202% in that week, compared to the
year before, so we are really primed to be talking to our
audiences at the moment as we capitalise on this halo effect.
And just a couple of weeks after that coronation we had our
flagship Prince's Trust award ceremony in central London,
where we honour our young people's achievements, and we
had great star quality on our red carpet with Amal and George
Clooney, Stanley Tucci, Rylan, Sam Ryder, and just so many
ambassadors who were able to share their experiences through
their own social media channels, so the owns and earns, kind of
pulling power. This month has been fantastic and great for
team morale as well within the Prince's Trust.
Zoe Amar: And that's fantastic. Congratulations. I mean, you had
me at Stanley Tucci, and also an extraordinary amount of website
impressions. That's just brilliant. I mean, that sounds
like you're living the digital marketing dream, to be honest.
Donna White: Yeah, it's, it's really great to have some of
those highs. But we are aware that it's not as easy as just
kind of getting celebrities onto a red carpet sometimes. And
we're doing some work around our brands doing a little bit of a
review. Because what we keep coming back to at the Prince's
Trust is that there are two very distinct audiences that are not
alike. You know, we're all about reaching 11 to 30 year olds to
get them into work, education and training. So that's what my
team focuses on. But then you've got this wealth of supporters,
and that could be colleagues, volunteers, government and
corporate partners, etc. And the language that you have to use to
appeal to those groups is so distinct. What I've heard is
that young people don't like the term young people. In fact, when
they come to us at that kind of average age of 16 to 25, they're
not considering themselves as young anymore. So we really have
to pay attention to our marketing collateral. And they
definitely don't like the terms vulnerable or disadvantaged,
which we completely get, and we kind of ring fence that for our
fundraising comms. But we recognise that it does play an
important part in helping to demonstrate the impact. So it
can be really difficult to get that balance right.
Zoe Amar: Absolutely, I can see the dilemma that I didn't
realise you had such a broad audience. I mean, that must be a
real challenge in terms of reach, in terms of segmentation,
and also say relevance as well, as you say,
Donna White: Yeah, relevance is a big thing for us. And as part
of our strategy, it's all about extending our reach and
improving our relevance, because as much as we are really well
known, we're not necessarily known for the right things. We
have such a complex offer, which is great, we do so much to
support young people, but that message can get lost sometimes.
And some recent data that we've established is that just one in
five young people are aware of the Prince's Trust even when
prompted. So that's why working with the partners that you
mentioned earlier, the likes of New Look, Disney, Marvel Tango,
or Cadbury is so important to try to get that instant access
to Gen Z, give us a few kudos points so that we can start to
have that conversation and build up some brand loyalty, brand
familiarity in a place where they're already going to be
hanging out.
Paul Thomas: You have to help us because as parents of young
people, knowing how to describe them to other people is probably
half the battle.
Donna White: Yeah, there's, there's just no quick answer.
And I think that's why I'm having the conversation with
young people. So not being defensive as a marketing team,
but just saying, you know, have you got any ideas? How can you
help us? What's the short term? What's the longer term, and we
know that we might not find any resolutions too quickly. But I
think some really great feedback that we had from young people
was that, you know, rather than just keep using the term or
being too repetitive, draw upon the age ranges, you know, that's
all encompassing, you're either 16 to 30, or you're not. So
young people are very then clear, if we're talking to them.
And it helps us to get around any queries around eligibility
Zoe Amar: It's really competitive, isn't it to build a
too.
relationship with that audience? Am I right? In thinking that?
Donna White: Yeah, because it's always changing. And I just
think being adaptable being agile. Not being too precious
over your youth marketing acquisition plans, is really
key. We do a lot of lead generation at the Prince's Trust
so for each of our courses, we would run a digital campaign to
try and build a As much interest as possible. And we're very
aware that, you know, there's a cost to reach these young
people, and we try to keep within our cost framework. But
in a digital world that we're currently live in, people expect
results or feedback instantaneously. But we hand
those leads from marketing over to service delivery. And that's
not always within our control as to how quickly these leads can
be followed up. So we're trying to work much more
collaboratively with our operations team in order to
create a process where young people can be responded to in
relatively real time, so that if we do need to retarget them,
we're not going to be making that more expensive, because
they've had a poor user experience. So we're entering a
world of real sophisticated marketing in terms of the
Prince's Trust, because it's not just about what our team can
deliver, it's how we can deliver it effectively with other
departments.
Paul Thomas: It has to be quick, doesn't it? Because the truth is
really hard to spot trends with that audience as well. Because
something that sort of really, up and coming that they might be
paying attention to disappears, just like that. I mean, we've
had a conversation on this podcast about the drink prime,
for example, which you know, I was talking to my 14 year old
the other day, and he was saying, well, actually, now it's
in every shop, nobody's looking for it anymore. It's not really
a thing. Yes, I'll drink if it's in front of me. I'm not gonna go
searching for it. And it's interesting. You mentioned
tango, because I've noticed a real sort of step up in terms of
their advertising. Again, always going back to the the
advertising I remember Zoe, you know, the in your face, sort of
you've been Tangoed type approach is on its way back. But
those trends come and go. So how can organisations stay on top of
those trends, particularly amongst that youth audience?
Donna White: It's really difficult to do that. So I won't
say that there's a great formula that we've gotten, we get it
right every time. But I think it's about being aware of all
the trends, but then really drilling down into the ones that
feel authentic and aligned to your brand style. We know we're
a 45, 46 year old charitie so we don't need to be acting young
all the time. But we do need to know young people and I think
there's a difference. And I think we would break down the
trends work out what feels right. And what feels worth
putting a lot of effort into. Sometimes you can create great
content in just kind of a few minutes. You're not overthinking
it. You're not over complicating it, and you're just getting it
out the door to test the water. And I think that's where we're
getting a little bit more comfortable as a youth marketing
team, for a long time, we kind of held ourselves to these
standards where we would have these fantastic polished videos
with very clear high production call to actions. And yeah, we
throw in an ambassador or two, for just good appeal, because
that's what the Prince's Trust has access to. But now it's
about just coming down to worth a little bit, talking to a young
person capturing a story in their words, it's about what
they want to share with us and not what we've got to say. And I
think that's the sweet spot where we can find a little bit
more relatability and build up a lot more trust with young
people. So it might only be, you know, one in five, one in 10
trends that we can actually push forward with a little bit, but
we'll be across them all, and making a real rational
justification as to which ones we progress.
Zoe Amar: They're a very discerning audience as well.
Aren't they? Quite rightly, sorry young people, anyone who's
listening, probably sounds very patronising. For my kids, they
are incredibly fussy about which brands they interact with, who
they will trust, who they will start to follow on, I think
you're absolutely right about things moving really quickly in
that digital marketing space for young people. So speaking of
that, and speaking of some of the things you talked about, at
the start of the interview, all these amazing influences coming
to your awards event. That took me back to that first
conversation we had a few months ago, when you talked about this
really fascinating, very creative approach to how you are
marketing yourself during cost of living crisis. So can you
break that down for our listeners? Because it's I think
it's a really interesting case study of how you can be creative
in tough times.
Donna White: Yeah, of course. So the Prince's Trust exists to
support young people into work, education or training. And
during the cost of living crisis, we know that the most
disadvantaged are being hit the hardest. So this is our time to
really step up and communicate that our offer is free, and will
lead to skills and confidence in order to help them create better
features, which is fantastic. But how do you do that in a
marketing sphere? Well, budgets are also tight for us at the
moment, too. So it's all about working smarter, not harder. And
we have decided to prioritise our budgets around the
conversion point of the marketing funnel, where we feel
that we can have a little bit more quality control over the
costs that we use, and that we can gather data which will help
us to make better planning decisions. So what we mean by
that is running these lead generation campaigns across
Facebook and Instagram for each of our programmes, whilst
gathering information on which programmes are most cost
effective in what area of the country by programme theme, or
by cost type, or by audience interests. And that is being fed
back to our programmes development, service delivery
teams to help us plan the next programme mix for the quarter
ahead. It means that we can start to look at, is digital
marketing the right solution for this particular course or
programme? Or should we be looking for offline outreach
measures instead, through perhaps b2b marketing, so making
sure that we've got the right resources, posters, brochures
available for job centres, or parents or guardians. And that's
been really exciting for us, because we're just building up a
bank of knowledge. And we're starting to put marketing at the
table of a really important discussion, where we're not just
being told what to do, but we are informing how we do it. We
do recognise that actually focusing everything on the
conversion point of the funnel isn't ideal. It's an option that
we are currently working towards, because we do need to
meet those Programme targets. But it is a little bit like
inviting young people to shop with us, but we're only showing
them one or two products at a time. Or it's actually they
should just know that this store has everything that they're
looking for. So in order to kind of supplement that that's where
the corporate partnerships come in. That's where the influencer
work comes in. And we're looking to get gifting kind initiatives
with as many groups as possible, to help us to continue to extend
that reach and relevance so that we are covering both sides of
the coin.
Zoe Amar: Such a thoughtful creative approach, you've talked
about how the kind of role of marketing internally is starting
to shift a bit. So do you think those conceptions that other
teams colleagues might have if marketing is beginning to
evolve?
Donna White: Yes, it is. I know for the last six or 12 months,
there's been a real focus on education. So making sure that
we are educating senior stakeholders to really
understand what we're doing. And there's a few things that I've
been really keen on the team getting more involved in. And
that's just taking as many opportunities as possible, to
shout about how we work, who we're working with, and the
results that we're getting. And having that transparency, making
sure that people are really aware that marketing is involved
in as many projects as possible, helps you kind of break down any
barriers that people may have, they start to ask questions, and
they start to understand how and why this is quite effective. And
it's even more important, because when you have that trust
with a senior stakeholder, even if things aren't going to plan,
you can still get ahead of the game by saying, this isn't quite
working the way that we expected, we do have a
contingency, and this is how we're going to adapt. So we are
going to stay ahead of it. And it's not about then waiting till
the end of the year and saying, Sorry, we couldn't quite reach
the targets that we set out for, we've been dealing with the
problems as they arise and approaching them together. I
think one thing which I want to see more of over the next sort
of few months is just a real clear understanding that
marketing can only be as successful as the brand, like if
one hits a bit of a ceiling, then it does make the other
group a little bit difficult to succeed. And that's why I'm a
real big champion for really understanding people's
perceptions of us so that we can look to mitigate that, so that
we can continue to grow those opportunities.
Paul Thomas: But what has been the perception because I work
with
Donna White: proper strategic partner within the organisation,
but it's taken time. And the perception is always when you go
in the first it's very service led that oh, yeah, those are the
guys that will put the polish on top of some things. So here's my
work, so far marketing tidy up, and they'll flush it out. It's a
very mad men type of view of marketing and PR, isn't it those
people up in those offices, smoking their cigarettes,
drinking their whiskey, you know, that sort of thing? Is
that the perception? Or has that been the perception internally
for a while, Donna White 17:28 I think in the past, there was a
perception that marketing is very likely to say, No, we are
going to be shutting ideas down. Because we are a little bit
laser focused on the tasks that we've got ahead. And yeah, that
probably was a little bit of a perception of, we make things
pretty, we might kind of fluff them up. Those things have been
changing. And I think that's because we're part of so many
more conversations at the moment. Back when I started
within the marketing team, we were running campaigns across
the calendar, because it felt like a really nice thing to do.
Now, our campaigns calendar is fully aligned and integrated
into the business need. And I think that's been the
difference. We're doing fundraising campaigns, because
we need to reach this type of target with this type of
audience. And there's a real kind of cross over there. We're
running programmes campaigns, because we want to scale the
number of young people we support over the next five
years. So we need to be able to grow and flex to that vision.
And having those types of conversations with different
team members means that it isn't about going after award winning
campaigns, although that is a really nice kind of
accomplishment to have, it's about making those decisions,
which will have a real great impact on the work. And it might
mean that the marketing is seen above the line. Or it might mean
that it's a little bit more below the line a little bit more
behind the scenes in order to get things done.
Paul Thomas: You're also the team that seeing those direct
results, aren't you because you're having that conversation
directly with both your supporters and your
beneficiaries. Those people that interact with the trust do so
through those those channels. So I think it's become since the
social media, boom, if you like I think it's become much more
important that that line between marketing and strategy is fully
fully defined, because you're the ones with your finger on the
pulse, you're the ones that are able to turn around and say,
Actually, this isn't quite the right direction or it doesn't
feel quite right, because that's not what we're hearing from the
people that we're talking to. So is there been a shift more
towards that sort of strategic way of thinking from leadership
and have you had to fight hard to to get seen in that way?
Donna White: Um, I think we are always fighting to be seen in
the light that we know that our work does adds to be seen. And
there's always going to be change over at a senior level at
times. So there are new people to bring on the journey with
you. And depending on the landscape that you're operating
in, you might have to have a different type of conversation.
So with every charity, I'm sure is kind of having tough
conversations about finances. And that means that us taking
that strategic approach, not just talking about the kind of
opportunities to see we want for our marketing campaigns, but the
conversion, the impact that we want to generate is so much more
important. And that's really pushing the marketing team into
a space where it necessarily hasn't been comfortable in
before. I think you're right, I think being connected to the
front line, we are really fortunate to hear people's
feedback. And it's always great when our audience gives us
feedback, unprompted through social media. And we do take
those things on board. So for example, we're always having to
remind people that we are a charity that relies on generous
giving, despite our associations that people might perceive us to
be. So it's taking every opportunity to remind people of
who we are, what we do, and why we are one of the best youth
charities, because we have been around for such a long time. And
taking that spirit as well from kind of the 70s when we were set
up, and making sure that that is still front of mind and relevant
today.
Zoe Amar: When we last spoke we talked about how you were co
creating content with young people and especially how you
were deploying Tik Tok. But I know that that is a real
challenge for a lot of the charities out there who might be
listening to this. Can you tell us a bit more about how you're
doing that?
Donna White: Yeah, definitely. So last year, the organisation
set up a youth voice and influence strategy. Because we
really recognised if we want to practice what we preach, we do
need to invite young people to feedback on all areas of the
business. So now we have a groups of young people who could
sit on interview panels to make sure that the right roles are
being recruited for. And from a marketing perspective, we run
listening exercises and content workshops so that we can
understand what young people think about and how we can
improve our outputs. So what we've heard from young people
through those forums is that they will help us to
reprioritize the benefits through our programmes. Whereas
we might be pushing on one day, you know, free lunch free travel
example. They're saying, actually, I really want to know
more about the one to one mentoring. That's what's
important to me right now. So that is something that we can
then dial up in our campaigns. And they're also really proud of
the regional representation. They don't want to see London
centric campaigns, they want to see and hear different accents,
different landmarks in the content that we produce. So
they're always a pleasure to be around. And when it comes to the
content days, we would work with young ambassadors. So they are
young people who have been through our programmes. They're
media trained, and they are great advocates in sharing their
stories at events or through digital content. But we
recognise that we can't always be asking them to create more,
tell your story in this format. And in that format, we needed to
give something back to them. So we've started to create a
blueprint whereby we invite influencers or media specialists
to come and give them some training, which will help them
improve their social media outputs for their business or
for their personal brand. And it gives them a real value
exchange. Now, when it comes to partnerships, like TikTok where
I would really like to see us going, is using TikTok's
expertise to push our product offerings further into the
future. So for enterprise, we help young people explore if
self employment is right for them. And we've long been able
to help young people set up online businesses, particularly
ecommerce through marketplaces, such as not on the high street.
But digital marketing is changing the landscape ever so
much further. You can now be buying and selling through
TikTok. And by getting them on board, we can really help people
to feel comfortable with using that as an output for their
business. And again in the future, early days, but what I
could see us doing is perhaps having a kind of TikTok to
umbrella couple of cohorts of digital entrepreneurs. So as
they go through their training, we could equip them with the
tools was that they need to capture their story of setting
up their business from start to finish. And then that could be
used as inspirational campaign insights in order to inspire the
next generation.
Zoe Amar: That's a great process. It feels very equitable
with young people what you've described there. And so anything
that you are learning from young people at the moment and how
they're using digital that has surprised you or really stood
out for you.
Donna White: Um, I think what surprised me recently is just
how much time young people are spending on TikTok. I know that
you can read different reports and perhaps get different stats.
But the last thing that I saw was that an average of 12 hours
per week for kind of 16 to 25 year olds on TikTok compared to
about four hours per week for Instagram. Now, this is a
challenge because when TikTok can be in the news for you know,
some right reasons, but also some really kind of challenging
reasons, that puts pressure on us to really question, Are we
making the right decisions, if young people's data is being
affected? Is this the right association to be having. But
from a youth marketing perspective, take the ethics to
kind of one side, it is a platform that they're on, and
they're always going to find a way to be on there. And it's a
little bit like the Better the devil, you know, because it's
not just like we could redeploy our marketing spend to
Instagram, yes, it would have some benefits, young people are
on there, but then on there for just a third of the amount of
time. So that window to capture young people's interest is
significantly reduced. And I think that's the type of
recommendations that we need to be putting forward when we're
being questioned. Because it's not a case of, let's not do it,
let's look at the impact this could have, it's not impossible,
but we're definitely not making it easier. And if we are
committed to supporting young people, then we do need to
possibly take a few risks and be where they are. Because if it's
not on Instagram, it's going to be on the next platform, which
we don't even know what it's called yet. And that's probably
going to have so many more kind of question marks around it.
Paul Thomas: I was gonna say it's always riding that wave,
isn't it, that you, you have to have big corporate organisations
who sort of dance around the idea of using things like
TikTok, but when you're directly talking to an audience that is
using it day to day and I think it's much more than 12 hours a
week, by the way, indication of what's going on in this house.
But it's it's one of those, one of those platforms that you just
can't ignore. And the trick is balancing your use of the
platform with the resources and the education you give to young
people about how their data is being used. Because when we sit
down with our 14 year old and have those conversations about,
you realise what you are giving up here, by doing this or
posting this, then they are in a position to make those decisions
for themselves. And by the way, there's there's there's another
thing within that which I think is for the parents, of young
children to also understand this so that these platforms don't
get demonised in the way that often they do. Because of the
right. They're reading the press, they're seeing the US
challenge the availability of tick tock within their country
within their borders. You're looking at the sort of the
Chinese links and the sort of the scare mongering and all that
sort of stuff where young people are looking beyond that and
looking at the decisions they're making just more generally about
sharing information. So perhaps it's the parents as well. So is
there stuff that you're doing around education, around data
use and data privacy and those sorts of things for young people
Donna White: I guess there's two parts to that question, I
and older people?
suppose. One is kind of an internal mode where we do have
an ethics committee. So it's not just marketing, making these
decisions in a silo and putting the organisation at risk through
our external communications. We do have representation from
across the organisation, including trustees who will take
our pros and cons for and against and help to kind of
determine next steps, which I think puts us in a really good
position in terms of educating young people on data. We are
starting to do more, but I think we'll see that accelerate. So
what I mean by that is, we have our privacy notice and we have a
young person version of that which is much more condensed and
uses far simpler language so that it doesn't feel like we're
trying to trick young people into how we use that
information. We're very transparent, and always give
young people the opportunity to opt out. And that's even during
any time during a campaign which they might associated with. I
remember a few years ago, we were working on a campaign and
that was going to have some really great out of home
advertising, which was connected with a corporate partner, and a
young person just didn't feel comfortable, there was going to
be a lot of digital, there was going to be a lot of PR and
press. Like I say, they were going to be on billboards, and
the photoshoots had been done. And they didn't want to proceed.
And that was absolutely fine. And I think that's where
everyone in our organisation is so understanding because we're
asking young people to be vulnerable time and time again,
keep sharing their story, even if their story was from a good
few years ago at times. So that was a case where we were able to
remove them, extract them from that campaign, without kind of
too much delay. We made a few work arounds. And that was a
really positive outcome. But yes, I think going forward, as
we extend our kind of digital architecture and digital
transformation at the trust, we will need to do more in order to
be in order to be that responsible adult, I suppose I
always think of the Prince's Trust. It's like the big brother
or sister, it's, you know, not telling you what to do, but it
is looking out for you and giving you some friendly advice
and guidance. And I think that is the stance that we will be
looking to take more of across data protection.
Zoe Amar: Such a personal decision as well, isn't it how
much you engage with digital. So it's really interesting seeing
my kids develop. So my youngest is 10. And my eldest is 12. And
my 10 year old, she's not allowed to have any social media
accounts, and obviously isn't always my 12 year old either.
But my 10 year old is quite kind of relaxed about things, she has
had a lot of education in school. And also I talk to her
about it as well. But I can see that as soon as she's 13, she's
going to be on TikTok. She's already making like little
videos with her friends and just saving them on the iPad, I think
she's going to be out there doing stuff, we're gonna have to
keep a close eye on her. My son is just not interested in having
any kind of presence on social media at all, even though he's
at the age where he could do that in a year's time. And
whenever I take a photo, he always says to me, Mommy, where
are you going to put that? And he's been doing that from a
really young age. And he's I don't put my photo on Instagram,
don't do it, he gets crossed about it. So that's quite
interesting how there's no one size fits all for young people,
I guess adults as well, actually, that everyone has
different levels of comfort with how much they engage with these
platforms.
Donna White: Yeah, definitely. And I think that it's just about
really hearing people and kind of understanding it from their
lens as well. Like I say, we work with so many different
types of people at so many different events. But yeah,
being really transparent about what data you're collecting, or
what type of images you're taking, and how it's going to be
used. So between our marketing and comms team, even if we do
have publicity consent for a particular story, or quote, you
know, we'll always kind of reach out out of courtesy, because we
don't want any young person to be blindsided by the fact that
they might pop up on a on a Google alert type of thing.
Zoe Amar: It's really interesting, such an important
bit of education to give young people. And then one thing I'd
love to ask you about before we wrap up is when we last spoke,
we talked about automation. And obviously, that's something we
know that a lot of our listeners are interested in working on.
And I know that's involved as part of your Pathfinder
campaign. Can you tell us a bit more about that?
Donna White: Yes. So Pathfinder is our digital transformation
project, which is looking to redesign the young person's pre
programme experience. So it's everything until they kind of
have that first point of contact, which includes
marketing, but also has another number of touch points with
different teams. And for us, this is about not only improving
the organisational culture, but changing the way that we work
with appreciate data, and also bringing more teams together in
a way that they've possibly not worked side by side before.
We've been working with some external consultants and
research agencies to help us progress. And through the
discovery phases, we've been able to develop some archetypes
and we've progressed with some roadmaps, and now we're at the
stage where we're just currently starting to co design some of
these processes with young people to really understand how
we should be moving forward so that we can have some clear
recommendations to agree on for the long term. And I think what
stood out for me is that yes, it's about digital automation
and about making things quicker and easier and much more
intuitive for young people. But it's also about embedding young
people's needs at the heart of this process. It's about what
matters to them, and not what we have to offer. And that's about
reframing impact, from start to finish. When we joined to kind
of youth marketing and set it up, yes, it was about reaching
young people. And then it became about putting them onto a
programme and making sure that social media was part of that
trail. But now, in the future, where we want to get to it could
be that a young person comes to our website, and they download a
CV template, or they download a budgeting spreadsheet. And maybe
they download it, and then leave the website. And we don't hear
from them for six months, because that's all they needed
at that time to fulfil their potential. And those are the
types of pieces that I think should be really coming to the
forefront of our reporting so that we can start to see, yeah,
the difference that we're making in a much broader perspective
than what we are now.
Zoe Amar: That's, again, such a thoughtful way to tackle this
huge challenge, isn't it? So please do keep us posted about
how all of this develops, we'd love to hear how you get on.
Donna, thank you so much. There's been so inspiring and
also so practical. You'll have given our listeners lots of
really, really brilliant advice there about how they can take
some challenges, which I'm sure they're dealing with as well,
and work out their way forward. So thank you so much for sharing
your story today. We really appreciate it.
Donna White: Oh, you're welcome. Thank you. Thank you for having
me.
Paul Thomas: Thank you very much. Thank you so much to Donna
for coming on to the podcast and being such a wonderful guest.
She and the team at the Prince's Trust really do some great work
and it was an absolute pleasure to speak with her. We hope you
enjoyed it too. And we'll put some links to some of the work
that they're doing in the show notes. Next up is an episode we
recorded just this week with Soma Sara, founder of the
Everyone's Invited movement. Everyone's Invited as an
essential and enlightening force to push us forward to a more
equal world. And it's this is a vital conversation, but it's
hugely inspiring leader. I really can't recommend it
enough. In the meantime, you can find us on Twitter at Starts at
the Top one and you can also email us at starts at the
top@gmail.com and if you listen to us on Apple podcasts or
anywhere you can rate and review please do, all your reviews help
us to reach more listeners. And we'll speak to you again in a
couple of weeks. Thank you and goodbye and get well soon Zoe!