 So in today's webinar, we are going to be talking about module two, which is the industry introduction and joining us to do that today. Oliver Shea, who is the director of Omni Media and Planning at Boots. And we also have Pete Markey, who is the chief marketing officer at Boots. So I'm going to hand it over to you both, as I know you have a presentation to show us. And then I'll come back for a Q&A at the end. Brilliant. Thank you. Yeah, Ollie's just going to get on the screen now. So first of all, thank you all for coming along today. It's a real privilege to come and share a bit with you today. What we're going to do is first of all, I'm going to chat a bit about Boots. And then Ollie's going to share a bit about his background. I'm going to share a bit about mine. And then together we're going to answer some of the questions you've sent us. And then obviously very happy to open the floor to more questions. So Ollie, let's start with a bit about Boots. So you may know a fair amount about Boots. But the most of it is you don't know. So we are 170 years old. We've got a ton of different things we do. You may know us for a pharmacy. You may know us for beauty, but we also have a hearing care business, opticians business, a thriving business in Ireland. I'll have some Advantage card holders on this call today. We've got over 15 million of you. And we're going to be celebrating 25 years of that award-winning loyalty scheme next year. Lots of Boots stores around. I've been in the business quite recently. I joined 10 months ago. And my antenna is always tuned into where a Boots store is. It's amazing how many there are and how close they are. You can literally get to one within 10 minutes. We're also a thriving digital retailer. Our sales are up over 100% since the pandemic started. And we've really grown our sales through digital and the app. So we're not just about a physical store. We're about so much more. The marketing team is mainly based in Nottingham. Although today I'm in our satellite office in London. And we either work from Nottingham or from home or from our London office or from one of our agencies in London. 120 people in the team. It's a strong team. We've done a lot of quite exciting work recently. We're gearing up for Christmas at the moment. But we ran a campaign through the summer called Feel Good is New. And that was named the most effective out of the month in June by marketing week based on how it scored for persuasion and responsiveness. So we're really delighted with that. We've seen some great results from our recent activity in the last six to nine months that Oli and I are particularly proud of. We were asked about how the team structured and happy to talk more around therefore where opportunities lie. But our broad structures have a marketing comms team who deliver the work in store. You have TV, social media, video on demand, radio, all the bits you know us for. We have a loyalty team that deal with the Advantage card and what we do each day. The media strategy and planning team, which is Oli's team that I'll let Oli bring to life in a moment. Development, which is about how we shape our customer experience and what technology we used to do that. An insight and research function and we have an internal creative studio. So we have a 50 plus strong creative studio where we don't just use big agencies. We have people doing creative in the building with us in Nottingham. And WPP, who are referenced there, are one of the world's leading big ad agencies. And we work with them and they do all of our big creative idea work including Christmas is launching soon. As you can see on the bottom, Oli and I are relatively just about. We can just about claim to be new guys just about still. But I don't know what Oli thinks but we learn every day. It's an amazing business and every day I'm learning new things about the business and how we operate. So really pleased to be here but wanted to share a bit of context around boots and what Oli and I are going to come and talk about. But I'm going to add to Oli now who's going to share first of all about his background and how he got into marketing. Over to you, Oli. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Pete. And I love it to meet you all this afternoon. Pete said, yeah, very much the newbies to Boots. So for me, it's just been five months that I've been here at Boots. And my role is omnimedia director. So I kind of have two hats as people saying I look after the consumer media side of the business. So working on all of our activity at the moment for things like Christmas. So how we're putting together all of our plans for that with my team. And then on the other side of my role is I am responsible for Boots Media Group, which is our supplier driven business, which is where we look at how we can leverage our own kind of media channels within Boots, such as our in-store channel, our on-site Boots.com channel. And now we're developing other channels off-site that we'll be able to obviously leverage with some of our supplier base. So that's my role now. But my career, I've kind of been over kind of the last 20 years. I've been born as you can hear and raised in the UK. And I've lived both in the UK and also abroad over the last kind of 20 years of my career. And just going to share with you guys a little bit of where, how my career has taken me and some of the things I've worked on. So really I've worked across a real range of kind of large companies. So my career started in retail in Sainsbury's. And I started on the graduate program there where I worked in the stores group and the retail group for about three and a half years there. Really fantastic. I think it was some great grounding for me to really understand that kind of core retail business. And I think kind of passion and love for retail always kind of began. But I'm also, I'll be very open to a geeky techie guy. And so the opportunity kind of came up at the head office at Sainsbury's to kind of move in. It was just about the kind of genesis of the kind of e-commerce for them. So I had the chance to kind of move over and start working in the kind of e-commerce business there. Started working on things like what was the original Sainsbury's to you which is now their home delivery service. Worked on that for a number of years. And that kind of, I got bitten with the bug then both on e-con, but also I started to get really into the marketing space and a lot of digital marketing. Really enjoyed it, loved it. And I think it kind of gave me the drive to look at what opportunities I could have in my career. An opportunity came up to move to Nestle. So I had the opportunity to go and work for Nestle for about three and a half years in the UK as the head of digital. Really great, got to work on a great range of brands there from Nespresso to Nestcafe, from everything from kind of cat and dog food all the way through to Sweets. And really worked with them in a kind of genesis when we had things like Facebook were beginning to come live and have a chance to kind of work on some great brands and really learn from that. But I think the opportunity that spurred me was well, what else is out there? What other brands are out there that I could work with? And I've always been a massive fan of Guinness, a big rugby fan. And so an opportunity came up to move to Diageo to run the kind of media planning and buying department there in the UK. So I took that opportunity. Guinness is one of the brands I got to work on. And I had a great chance to work on great brands. Diageo has a great heritage of being able to have a great way of building brands and the kind of learnings I got there were quite brilliant. So I spent five great years there both in the UK and then in Europe. Really, really enjoyed it. Gave me a great bedrock. But I wanted to get back into commerce. I wanted to feel a bit more connected to the delivery. And also I wanted to live outside the UK. So I moved from London over to Amsterdam to work as booking at booking.com at the time quite startup in its genesis. I did five great years there building the media team there and the media department. Really, really enjoyed it. I think it gave me all the international experience that exposed me to kind of a global role, but also gave me some challenges of working and living in another country. And I got to work across a range of different places. So I worked on European, Europe, US, Latin, and also gave me the chance to move over to Asia. Five great years there, but was looking also for a new challenge and about 18 months ago, I took the opportunity to move over to Denmark where I work for Echo for about just over 15 months. Really enjoyed it. It was great. I got to be the great media director there. But I felt the kind of pull of coming back to UK. And so here I am now after seven years away, moving back to kind of be at Boots. Amazing opportunities to work for Brown with real heritage and with the chance to work with Pete. And also, you know, we know there's an exciting agenda ahead for us. So that was a lot of draws for me. So my career has been quite varied across the board. Lots that I've learned from it, but it just kind of gave me the chance, I suppose to look at different areas and move into it. I've always worked in media. I love media as a kind of discipline. I think as I've grown, I really liked the opportunities to kind of meld those kind of long-term brand building approaches. So how do you take kind of big TV advertising and marry it really with kind of pure performance and things like PPC programmatic. And I think as the kind of media landscapes have evolved, particularly over the last period of time, it just gives that constant evolution that's challenging that always means there's something new to learn, which I really enjoy. And then I think the other thing for me is I really always see media as a kind of growth driver for a business. And that for me is something that's always driven me as an exciting part, which is, you know, media is not an investment. It's an opportunity to drive revenue and profitability for a company. And that's something I'm really excited about doing. And having the chance to do that at Boots is really something that's been a super exciting part for me. So that's just a little bit about me. We'll talk a bit more later and please do ask any questions about it. But I'll hand over to Pete. Brilliant. Thanks, Ollie. Great introduction. Ollie is a really key member of my team. So it's brilliant to be able to do this with Ollie. And I'm going to show a little bit about how I got into marketing. And so a little bit first about me is I've lived all around the country. Sadly, I haven't got as many air miles as Ollie, which I'm quite jealous about. I've mainly lived in the UK. So from High Wickham to I was a Geordie for a while. As a kid, I sounded like a poor version of Anton Deck. I used to be a big fan of Newcastle United Football Club growing up. But my dad's job meant we moved from Newcastle to Bristol. And then from there, I went to university in St. Hampton, got married and lived in Basingstoke and now live in East Surrey towards Horseshoe direction. And so it's given me a chance to see all sides of the UK and live in some wonderful places and meet some amazing people. But it also means my accent is completely nonscript. So when people meet me, I have no idea where I'm from. But I do reassure you that years ago I did have a very, very broad Geordie accent. But the years in Bristol sort of took that away from me. But I haven't gone for Bristolian either. But it's anyway, it's been a rollercoaster ride. When I went to university, I'd love it. Sometimes people ask me, what was your big career plan? How'd you get into marketing? When I went to university, I really wanted to get into journalism. So I did, first of all, an HND and then upgraded that into a degree at St. Hampton. And I wanted to leave to either become a journalist or work in public relations. And I actually, I'll tell the full story, I actually turned down the chance to take on a graduate job in public relations to stay in St. Hampton to be with my then-girlfriend, who's now my wife who I've been married to for 24 years. So I made the right decision there. But turned my back on a career in PR and ended up working, first of all, in British Gas. So I needed money. So I basically got this degree, left with a 2-1 in corporate communication. It had been everything from advertising, PR, media, video production. I ran a radio station. And just to pay the bills, I ended up working in British Gas. I was doing the things in customer service. And from there, I got to know the business in the St. Hampton office. I got to work in the internal comms team. I led a sales team. And then applied for a job in the head office in marketing. So I thought, you know what, I've done marketing. I did this in my degree. I thought, know what I'm doing. And so I got a job working on analyzing the performance of British Gas' big brand campaigns. Now, this is going to make me sound incredibly old. And I apologize for this. But it was a day, many moons ago, when you could only ever buy your gas from British Gas. You could only buy it from British Gas. And so I was in British Gas at the point where the whole energy market opened up. You could buy your gas from a range of companies, buy electricity from a range of companies. Back in the late 90s, it was like unheard of. It was like revolutionary. So I was in British Gas when the brand really mattered because we went from having 30, 40 million customers to sort of having a lot less quite quickly. So you were constantly looking for how could you retain and hold on to customers. Really exciting business to be in. And I worked in a range of roles in marketing from brand then to direct marketing. And the business centric who still owned British Gas went on a really exciting strategy program where they bought the AA to get into not just people's homes but into people's cars as well. They bought one tell an Australian business that was a telecoms company that did again. I'm showing my age here. Fixed line telecoms where you'd have a call package where before mobiles exploded, you get a phone at home, people would ring you up on it. And that was really important for us. But I did sell mobile in the early days of mobile for 99 a month Nokia handsets. That was me, an unlimited broadband. So I got to work in the AA first of all and then in one tell working again on marketing programs. Really interesting business particularly one tell because we didn't have a big marketing budget but similar to what Ollie was describing it's all about response. Getting people we had we had at that time it's early 2000s that 40% of our customers doing online servicing. Which 20 years ago is phenomenal to think about. There was amazing business where it was all about how you performed in digital. Hey performed in response. We even ran responsive press ads. You were literally living the business day by day on performance. Love that business. That business actually got sold. So a company called talk talk that you probably still see advertised a talk talk bought one tell. They literally came in overnight and painted over our logo with their logo that sacked our agencies. I had to make my entire team redundant. And they said actually we quite like you we'd like to hold on to you. And I decided that I'd done telecoms. I really didn't want to do it anymore. And I had the chance to go and work for a big insurance company called more than there's part of Royal and Sun Alliance and move to Horsham. And then with that I was able to do more response, more brand activity. I ran the digital team as well, the e-commerce team and grew that business significantly by investing in the brand and response channels. I then got a chance to do a global role. So I went from more than to work for Royal Sun Alliance globally. So I got to sit on the board of the Russian business. I worked in Scandinavia, Ireland, Canada, Latin America. I went to Chile and Argentina quite a lot. It was really interesting working as a marketing consultant within a business, fixing difficult naughty marketing and brand problems. And what was particularly exciting is working in businesses that were so different from the UK. The markets are just so, it's a very obvious point and you will be learning this through the work you do with CIM, but markets can be so, so completely different. You know the product might be the same, but the way it's sold. So a great example is Russia where you go over there and you think golly, these guys should be doing loads of targeted marketing. You know, even direct mail still writing to people. Yeah. There's no way you could buy people's postal addresses. You can't get postal addresses in Russia. It's sort of unheard of. So again, let's quickly rethink our approach to marketing. From there I got to run marketing at the post office for a couple of years. Amazing business. Well established. The business you'll know because it's on the high street everywhere. And I got to go in and reinvigorate the brand, change the customer experience, digitalize it a lot more, and do the first Christmas campaign we've done for five or six years that performed really well. And my most recent roles I went back. I got lured back into insurance. I worked in a digital garage in Aviva where they were trying to disrupt, create a business model to disrupt how they did insurance, fast turnaround with data and marketing tech with Adobe, similar to what Ollie described about performance, marketing and media. And I took all of that into running marketing at TSB for the last three and a half years and then into boots nine months ago, which is amazing business that we'll share more about. I've been lucky to work on some really big campaigns and pretty too many intervention here. But I've loved working on big brand projects, but also the sort of hands-on work that Ollie described is seeing how your marketing activity performs every day. That's the brilliance. When I first started in marketing, the dream was how do you get the right product, the right service, the right message in front of someone at the right time? So take boots. If someone's got a cold or a headache, make sure I'm the first place to think about. And actually with all the technology and the data we've got now, the sorts of work that Ollie and I can now do is that personal where we really can be more relevant and show up in whether it's through social media or even our email program or on our app in a way that's hyper-hyper personal and relevant. And that's super exciting. So that energizes me as much as some of the big stuff we're able to do. As well as all the exciting work we're doing with boots, including a fantastic Christmas campaign we've got starring Jenna Coleman, who's been in the likes of Dr. Who, Serpent and Victoria, who's brilliant to work with. That launches very shortly. In my last role at TSB, I re-launched the TSB banking brand with a campaign featuring David Schwimmer from Friends, which was another great campaign to work on. I promise I don't always work with celebrities. I've done as many campaigns without them, but for the ticket for TSB, it really mattered to show up in quite an unexpected way. And having David Schwimmer in his first ever ad campaign was brilliant. And also the content we create, the targeting of the content was brilliant again. Right customer at the right time with our messaging. As well as the day job, I think one of the things that's really important for me as a marketing leader is to do more in the business. So Ollie and I were able to do so much through what we do in the day job. And we're able, both of us do a lot more to extend what we do. And so just a couple examples of what I've been working on recently. I'm the executive sponsor for something called Marketing for Change, about how we show up in the most inclusive way, the people we pick to feature in our advertising, the language we use, the products we feature. And that's globally within not just Boots, but Walgreens and Boots Alliance that owns us. And then also I'm the executive sponsor for the Boots LGBT plus Pride Network, which gives me a chance to work with some amazing people in how we show up throughout the year to truly celebrate the LGBT plus community. And I think for me an important part of my job is being a really positive change agent to make a difference with the great work we do as a marketing team, also within the wider business as a whole. So hopefully that's a helpful history on me and Ollie. And then Ollie and I were just going to quickly sort of tag team on answering some of your questions, if that's all right. We'll pick the next one, Ollie. I'm just going to ask our fantastic host how much longer you want us to talk for, because Ollie and I could merrily chat through these questions very much, but forever in a day. So how much longer would you like Ollie and I to cover and open up for questions? All right, hello. We can start with some questions now if you like, unless there's anything else that you feel is really important that you wanted to go over. Well, why don't we open for questions? I mean, if we don't get any questions, we can cover the ones here, but I'd love to hear from people on this call. We've already had lots come through. Fantastic. That's probably a good idea so that we can get through some of them. Ollie, shall we stop screen sharing for the minute? That's a great idea. That's great. Thank you. Well, thank you both so much for that. Your careers have been incredible so far. So I'm sure it's very inspiring for people watching, and I'm sure they do have even more questions that I can see. The first question we've had is, what do you think is the best route into marketing? Would you say university or an apprenticeship? Ollie, do you want to take that one first? I'm happy to take the perspective, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think for me it's, I mean, my career was quite very marketing because actually I did my degree in history and then my, I did my master's in politics. So it's completely unrelated to anything I probably do today. So I think from my perspective, I think nowadays with the raft of opportunities that there are in marketing, I think really from my perspective, doing university degree, that is something that you're really passionate about and want to do during the period and gives you great learnings, I think sets you up really well for then whatever your career wants to be after that. So I would say from my side, you know, do the thing that you want to do from a university perspective, look at the opportunities and how that links to maybe what you might want to do in marketing and the teacher, but there's so many like opportunities now to get into it, into marketing, I think, and so many different avenues that you can begin with, that you can cross over. So, you know, from my side, started probably really digitally driven, moved more into brand building, then moved, you know, across. So I would say, you know, do what you love at university, enjoy the time and then from there, look at where you can link your career from there. But there are lots of internships and other opportunities that I've worked with, other partners in other parts of the world with, which also can open up opportunities, maybe when you're not studying as well. And then build on that. Yeah, I think Ollie's spot on. I mean, I just chase every opportunity. I think there's some really interesting apprenticeship programs opening up. I mean, the likes of the School of Marketing, the Marketing Academy Foundation, there are a number of ways into marketing now through some of the really great apprenticeship schemes, as well as some companies running those as well. And it's not something we're, I think, doing enough of for Boots at the moment. So Ollie and I are working with our HR business partner on looking at apprenticeship schemes within getting people into Boots. No, we haven't landed the plan yet, but we're actively seeking one. And we'll get there very quickly, hopefully in the next couple of months. I think a degree, it's like, I mean, I did an MBA years ago, and I think a degree is obviously brilliant. If you're passionate about a subject and it opens your eyes to stuff. And part of the familiar learning experience is the people you meet and the journey you go on in it. So I think if you're passionate about something, go chase after it. Go and do a degree and be brilliant at it. I think a lot of it getting into marketing is about, it's about, you know, tenacity. It's about personality. It's about being driven, about being passionate about something and getting out there and getting the right level of experience. So my view would be I push every door down. If you haven't got a degree, don't let it be a barrier. If you're passionate about doing one, go and do one though. And it's not going to hurt you, but I just, I don't think it's the be all and end all now. I think it's more about the drive into termination. But as Ollie says, if there's something you want to do and you want the experience as well in life and the amazing group of people you're going to meet. And I can't argue with that. I met my wife that way. So it's all good. Okay. You meet amazing people and it's quite life changing. Chase after that as well. Would you say there's lots of opportunities, say for someone who doesn't want to go to university or, you know, they just know straight away they want to do marketing, but they're not bothered about university. Would you say there's enough option out there and, you know, they won't be disadvantaged to someone who has a degree? I would. So my hope is not. I mean, as Ollie and I saying, you were seeing more schemes of commercial apprenticeships. Yeah. The best thing to do is get yourself, get onto LinkedIn. And I think LinkedIn is brilliant because LinkedIn obviously wasn't there in the early days of my career in Oli's. And it's really exploding. Actually, the level of searching you can now do for both apprenticeships and marketing roles and even an entry-level marketing assistant are brilliant on LinkedIn. So I encourage anyone to look quite regularly at LinkedIn and go, what's out there? What are people looking for? What criteria? What level of experience are people looking for? And then how do you go about getting that? And how can you start applying and getting into those roles? So it's about curiosity. Be tenacious. Don't get despondent if you don't. You get in the first hurdle and just keep looking for the opportunities and push those doors down. Equally, look at things like the School of Marketing I mentioned. Look at the Marketing Academy and go, are there opportunities with some of those schemes depending on background experience that you could also get into? So yeah, don't let it be a deterrent and seek out every opportunity you can find. But as I say, LinkedIn is a brilliant way to do that now. Yeah. I completely agree with B. I mean, I think now you can talk to a range of different people through LinkedIn. And I think also myself, other people who've been in the industry while also very keen to help people get into the industry. So I think you'll be surprised if you approach people how willing they would be to help, you know, get you get into the industry or to open up opportunities. But I completely agree with B. I think if you've got the will and you've got the desire to do it, it's not a requirement for you to have done a marketing degree or something similar to get into the space. So yeah, I think if you want it and you want to get after it, then it shouldn't be prohibitory at all. Yeah. That's great to know. Thanks. So speaking of, you know, starting an apprenticeship or maybe just coming out of university, what would you say an entry-level job looks like in marketing? So it can vary quite a lot, actually, I think. So if you look at my team, it depends on where you're passionate about because, equally, you might want to go from work in an agency. You might go, actually, I want to do account management or create it for media planning or buying. So I think it depends on that. It could be you want to get into market research. It could be you're massively into data and you want to work in data analytics. All of those are great marketing disciplines. So have a think about where you want to place yourself on that scale of you're more creative, more data-led, customer experience-led and where you want to play there. That's, I think, is a really good place to start. And then an entry-level job tends to be more of a marketing assistant, but it could be a data analyst. It could be a junior planner. It could be any one of those things. So you could find yourself running marketing effectiveness reviews. You could find yourself running a research program. You could find yourself running some media activity, some of the activity Ollie's described. Or you could find yourself running some regionalized or specific marketing campaigns. So I think to answer, I would say have a look at marketing and it's absolute breadth and depth and go where would I, as that person, want to be and what's the level of experience I want to get into. None of those ways in a wrong. But I think the bit, come back to Ollie's point, is find the thing you're passionate. If you love data, get into data. If you love planning, go on plan. If you love creative, find a way to create it. So there's so many different ways in Ollie, aren't there? Even more so now than ever. Yeah, I definitely agree with Pete. I mean, I think find that thing that you really love to do, whatever it is, the element. And maybe also talk to some people who are already in the industry to find out what area it is that you've put interest in. I think to Pete's point, the opportunities now that kind of entry level is so broad. And I would say actually be very open. So I mean, I've set up in-house, say, programmatic planning and buying teams. We took a range of really great people who came in to start just basically building campaign activity for us, but then found they loved certain elements of media, went on to do strategy, went on to do buying. So I think the opportunities there just probably find out that part that you really love to do. And then once you start doing it, does that really interest you? Or as you start to be exposed to more elements, how do you want to then maybe be a bit more specialized or more generalized depending on what you want to do? Thank you. Now, for people who are maybe haven't had any experience, they haven't done any work experience or anything. So they're not quite sure what route they want to go down. As you were saying, to get experience in different places is useful. But what advice would you give to someone who isn't sure what route to go down firstly? What kind of advice could you give to them to choose which route to go down? I would say I would go back to what I was saying before. I think going to talk to some people in the industry and start to understand what it is that that role actually involves doing. I think for myself, I'm very honest. I never really knew what I wanted to do when I first came out of university. I had always knew that I wanted to be in retail and my dad was in retail. So I thought it sounds like a good idea. I should probably do that. So I started in the stores group and then did that for a few years. I kind of found I learned so much from that. So I think my only other thing I would say is don't think too much about what the end destination that you would like to be. Maybe think about some of the elements that you enjoy doing. Get into it, have an opportunity to do it and then go from there. But I would definitely start by talking to some people who are doing that in the industry. Find out if that sounds of interest. He's also listening to people. I mean, there's so much available now. Podcast available. Talking about what they do in the industry. So it gives you an idea of whether or not that interests you. And I think if you start down that road and you enjoy it, it's one of those things that kind of draws you in really. You can't. I mean, I'm a bit like when I look back to my career, I was thinking, well, I never thought I'd be where I am now. I think that's really helpful. Again, coming back to LinkedIn is I think you have a look for even if it was job times, you can follow people on LinkedIn. And actually it's, you know, you can see what they're talking about and what articles that they're promoting. Have a look at the campaign website, campaign live, have a look at the marketing week website, the festival of marketing on YouTube, the drum, all worth following. And you'll get to see what some amazing, you know, amazing work is and whether you want to do that. I would say, I think trust you get a little bit on this stuff. So look, if you don't, you know, if spreadsheets excite you, then maybe you like data. If spreadsheets don't and you get really switched on by creating, if in your social life, you're the person people come to that always plans a night out, maybe you're pretty good at planning. So there's bits already you'll find your DNA. So it's not about, so look, I was not a natural analyst. So I was an analyst for a year in that job and I enjoyed it, but I knew that I didn't want to be reporting on the marketing effectiveness of campaigns for that long. So I jumped at the first opportunity I could to get into managing and planning campaigns and I absolutely loved it. I just knew that spending my life in analyzing data and spreadsheets just wasn't me, but that's not wrong. There are people for whom it's amazing. And those people are chief data officers today who are doing amazing jobs. I'm just thinking about a former colleague who's now running data for Lego. He's exactly that person. Blumen loves it. And those jobs come on big money now. If you're into data, that's the gold. That's the gold rush in marketing at the moment, data analytics, which sadly Ollie and I don't work in, but it's amazing. And you can sort of be quite commanding in the roles you get. Hence, you end up at Blumen Lego, which is fantastic. So I think, yeah, worth having a good look at yourself and where you get your energy from and the sorts of things you like doing it, because it's actually a really good guide for the sorts of roles you could go into. So yeah, have a good look in the mirror and go, what do I like? And that's not a bad guide. Yeah. I think it's important to remember, you know, that this is a career for life. So it's okay to make mistakes at the beginning. You're only 18, 21, whatever age you're starting at. You know, as you've said, Pete, you don't always find it straight away. Sometimes you have to get a job just to get into the industry and then you can find your path from there. Yeah. And I think that's, I mean, one of the things one of my mentors used to say is, you know, your career is never done. It's kind of evolving. So I mean, I kind of, I mean, even if I look at my own career now, I mean, I'm 41, I've done probably 20 years in my career. I mean, I hope I've got probably another 20 plus years to go. So, you know, it's an evolution that goes on through it. So I think also that's the other thing is just be patient with yourself. Don't feel like you have to be in a certain place at a certain time. You know, having that journey and that enjoyment is probably something I realised a bit later into my career was part of what I really loved. You know, so being, having the chance to go abroad, having the chance to meet different people, that was all part of the excitement versus where was I or what was I doing. So I think almost as long as you enjoy it and you love what you're doing, that's the biggest thing when you spend a significant amount of time in work. So if you love what you do and you enjoy it, I think that gives you that longevity. But also, you know, you don't need to solve everything on the first day. You have time to do that. Yes. Yeah, definitely. The next question is basically asking what does someone need to do if they wanted to get some work experience at Boots in marketing? I mean, not against it. I guess to check the challenges if everyone asked them, we won't be able to comment everyone. We haven't, just because of the pandemic and not being in the office, it's been quite hard to do it and we're not yet in a pattern of, I mean, Oli can, I happen to be in London, Oli's at home today, but equally Oli could have been in Nottingham today because we were together a few days ago and I was in Nottingham as well. So we're not yet in an established pattern, which has made work experience quite hard. So we haven't turned, in fact, we haven't had a lot of people asking for it, but we wouldn't have rushed into it over recent months simply because what I also wouldn't want is for someone to literally sit on a phone and say, you know, this is the one where we can give someone a project or something to work on where they feel like they've achieved something, even if it's just in a week where you've achieved a bit of work. And then you haven't just, I remember some of the work experience I did, they're freaking awful. I remember I did the photocopy and made the teas and I sat in meetings that no one explained to me and I actually once fell asleep, I had to wake myself up when I was working thinking, please will the world swallow me up. I think it was about 17 at the time and thankfully someone jolted me to awake, but it was not a very interesting meeting. And I just wouldn't want to give someone experience where you go. We've had a work experience at Boots, but you've learned nothing. You've sat on calls where we filled you full of jargon and you think what the heck was that and you don't feel you've achieved anything in a week. So I think we've got to get our act together a bit more in the context of as we evolve into hybrid work, but I'd like to do it in a way that gives people a proper work experience rather than just you've sat in the shadow. Shadowing is a bit rubbish. Come and sit on a call while we hear us chatter about stuff. We don't explain to you, it's not helpful. How would you go about it? I think allow us a bit more time to get organised in the rhythm of how we're working. And I'm not against people reaching out. I suggest do it in the new year to the point where we're more in the rhythm right now. We are so knee deep in Christmas. Olly and I are literally living and breathing. So most of you on the call quite rightly wouldn't be thinking about Christmas unless you're very organised in which case become a planner. We are living Christmas right now. Our ad launches within the next two weeks and already our activities live promoting gifting and we are living and breathing everything from number seven advent calendars to all sorts of stuff at the moment. So now is now is not the easiest time to engage with boots. But come January and we'll come out the other side of Christmas hopefully celebrating with everyone else. And then a really good time and at that point I think we'll be in more of an organised rhythm around how we're working and then we can reopen the topic. Thanks Pete. I'm sure that's really useful for them to know. So anyone watching, if you do want some work experience, maybe save it till after Christmas because it sounds like you two are very busy. But I'm not surprised about any kind of retail industry must be super busy over the Christmas period. But I actually can't wait to see the Christmas advert. I feel like it's a bit of a competition at the moment over the last few years for who can do the best Christmas advert. Yes, yeah. We're super excited to have just had the research back pre-testing before we go live which has shown the strength of what we're going out with. So I hope all of you when you see it love it as much as the research is saying. But we're really excited and Ollie's done some amazing work on the planning around the launch. So yeah, watch this space. So I'm just going to ask you one more question before we finish as we are unfortunately running out of time. But what is your favorite part of working for Boots? I think that the bit this is back to I'll take all these words about something you're passionate about is join a company that you care about what it does and look I've worked in banking and I genuinely believe you can care about what a bank does. You know, businesses inherently in my view at their core are trying to do good things for customers and for shareholders and to members employees but find I think for me find a job find in a business that you care about what their mission is and what they do look at their values look at the culture and go you know that's me I'm aligned with that and I've worked in businesses I found Aviva quite hard Aviva culturally didn't fit with me but Boots is like a hand and glove and all these felt the same I know so that Boots is a purpose led business founded as I said 170 years ago because Jesse Boot founded Boots basically people couldn't afford soap unless you were rich you couldn't afford soap you couldn't afford razor blades you know and sadly that was a real issue but then suddenly it's a bit of an issue now still for some families in real difficulty and so Boots was founded to make healthcare and medicine everything affordable to everyone so that missions continued we work now with Macmillan on cancer support we work with the hygiene bank helping families in real need have access to those hygiene products in shower gel razors deodorants everything today that affects particularly kids in school you turn up in school without access to those products that's a real issue and we work with the Prince's Trust to get more young people into work so on top of and as part of the work Ollie and I do we work in a business that genuinely cares and genuinely puts its purpose front and center so what I love working for Boots is I work with amazing people that Ollie I've got a brilliant of the best team I've had in marketing amazing group of people and we get to do work we're really proud of but we get to make a real difference every day so we're not just selling the next perfume or the next beauty launch yeah we're doing that because it matters and we care about it passionately and as well as that we're also making a difference I hope in society and the world at large and so you can go home in the evening going look we're hopefully overall making a positive difference so my encouragement would be find a brand that you feel the same about and as I say that doesn't have to your brand on paper you think is sexy you know I've worked here and sure you could go how's an insurance make insurance makes a massive difference if you look at communities that flood the difference you make to put people's lives back to normal is enormous people that go through a car crash if your house is burglar and flooded the difference you make in someone's life is enormous so don't always it's not always the most obvious thing you can find businesses that have real purpose and real heart that maybe aren't always the most obvious and equally you know the temptation I had a few years ago was to chase after you know I'm only going to make it for work for Facebook or Google or Amazon or Apple yeah amazing brands if you get to work for them congratulations they're amazing but you can equally learn something working for you know Swinton insurance direct line compare the market confuse go compare you know Santander bank you know they're amazing businesses out there that that you may not think of the sexiest thing on your CV but you can make a real difference so yeah find that place makes a difference excites you as much as boots does to all you know thanks so much do you have anything to add about completely agree I mean I think for me that the thing that attracts me to boot is the culture I mean as Pete says I think that's something you can't underplay I think you know there's a lot of places that you know speed that would be really people would say or that's exactly the place I'd want to work I think for me the biggest thing and what drew me to booze is it has that it really was somewhere I'd always wanted to go to it's a great brand but also the culture brilliant you know there's that collaboration where people want to be successful together and I think that in a business is just such a strength because you have that ability to drive transformation when you know that the person standing next to you wants it just as much as you do so I think if you've got that and you've got that culture and you've got great people around you to work with and learn from that for me is I think that's that's the reason why I mean I come here and I totally agree with Pete I think you know what we feel it's like we're doing now is making a real difference into some of the activities we're doing you know and also the people are brilliant I mean I'm very lucky I've got a great team that I work that works for me and you know that isn't for me is enormously enthusing so yeah I think if you feel that energy about where you are and you know you're in the right place and you feel that you know the culture is you fit with the people that's when the best work you'll deliver because you'll be you'll be all going after the same thing so yeah no but it's a great place to work I mean your passion shines through both of you I can tell that you're obviously so passionate about your jobs and you love your jobs because it's so obvious people can't stop talking about it when they enjoy themselves and I think that's so important in a job so thank you for sharing your passion with us today