[00:00:00] Veronica: Hello, and welcome to The Quantum Spin by HKA. I’m Veronica Combs. I’m a writer and an editor here at the agency. I get to talk every day with really smart people working on really fascinating subjects, everything in the Quantum industry, from hardware to software. On our podcast, we focus in on quantum communication, and by that I don’t mean making networks safe from hacking or entangling photons over long distance, but talking about the technology.

[00:00:26] How do you explain these complicated concepts to people who don’t have a background in science and engineering but want to understand all the same?

[00:00:34] Today I’m very excited to be talking with Christopher Godfree. He is the commercial director for Across The Pond and a tech comm specialist. Thanks so much for joining me today, Christopher.

[00:00:44] Christoper: Thanks for having me. It’s really nice to be here.

[00:00:46] Veronica: So, a tech comm specialist, what does that involve on a day-to-day basis?

[00:00:52] Christoper: I mean, day to day, I enjoy the fact that I am always meeting new people, you know, meeting people at the very edge of emerging technologies. As a business, Across The Pond works with technology, only with tech brands, but obviously the tech sector is a very broad sector these days.

[00:01:08] So it means that we sort of work within all sorts of different pockets of that sector. But yeah, right now, certainly over the last few years, it feels like this- it’s a sector that’s just kind of going a bit crazy in an exciting way, but it’s also sort of happening so quickly that it’s, yeah, sometimes a job keeping up.

[00:01:23] So right now, naturally, we work across a lot of AI quantum of course, a lot of robotics, working with some fusion businesses. So yeah, lots going on and I, day to day, am sort of meeting a lot of people, learning about sort of what they’re doing in their business, looking at where their challenges are and, and, and helping them, particularly in the areas of comms and marketing and helping with their, with their storytelling as technology brands

[00:01:46] Veronica: Across the Pond has such a sort of big picture, broad, fresh approach to all of this.

[00:01:52] It’s not your typical marketing agency, at least from my perspective. What are the guiding principles for your agency that helps you produce such interesting work?

[00:01:59] Christoper: We say we make the complex human. That is the sort of our one line in that fundamentally taking complex things, complex technologies, sciences, and turning those into human-centric, meaningful stories.

[00:02:12] It’s a challenge that we see in so many parts of the tech sector. There’s a real need for this stuff, and this isn’t just, just turning stuff into marketing assets. This is how do you find ways to grow businesses? How do you add value to businesses by improving the way that you’re talking about the technology?

[00:02:27] One of the things I see an awful lot when I speak to, to founders particularly – so often they’re, they’re brilliant, brilliant minds, geniuses, like have got kind of brain capability way, way beyond anything I could ever dream of, and they’ve created this sort of in- incredibly impressive product, this technology that can do things that, you know, you may never have imagined.

[00:02:46] Naturally, they want to talk about the technology, and fair enough, you know, a lot of time and effort, hence has gone into building that. But I find what often happens is as those businesses grow, they are stuck in that kind of explaining the technology mode. So we always say the principle of our business is to sort of try and help tech businesses come out of explainer mode.

[00:03:08] Don’t always be saying how a thing works. I mean, certainly in the early stages it’s important, and I guess it’s sort of often a kind of mindset that comes out of academic institutions and research labs where you are trying to demonstrate to your peers the validity of your thinking and your work. But actually, as you’re looking to grow the business and starting to become more commercially minded, it has to be more than just explaining.

[00:03:29] It has to move to demonstrating the value of that technology out in the world, that’s where you start to have the kind of the more interesting conversations around growing the business.

[00:03:38] Veronica: Right, like why it matters and why someone should care and the impact on daily life. We’re, we’re often trying to pull our clients kind of out of the weeds and up into sort of that broader vision and the bigger picture of the work. That sounds like what you all do on a regular basis too.

[00:03:53] Christoper: Yeah, that’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. I think that so often people– I think particularly, I mean, quantum’s a really interesting one when you look at something like AI, AI, they would say, oh, AI’s had, you know, the, the ChatGPT moment was the sort of the bit where in everyone’s brains it flips from being this science fiction thing to being an actual thing that…

[00:04:11] I mean, that was unusual because it sort of became a consumer product immediately and everyone had it- Mm-hmm … in their hands and could use it and test it. — A lot of people ask me, like, “When’s the quantum moment going to come?” I don’t think it will be – quite the same in the sort of, we’re not all going to suddenly have a quantum computer in our houses.

[00:04:25] It won’t be the same. But it, I think it will be, it will be done through storytelling. I think a story will come out that will make people realize the power of these computers or the potential that they have because everything is quite theoretical still at the moment, and I think that is where there is a sort of a general struggle within the sector, is that there is a lot of theory but there are not enough use cases yet.

[00:04:48] I mean, there are some starting to creep through, and some businesses, to be fair to them, are sort of starting to, to demonstrate real-world use cases that can translate into stories that mean something to regular human beings who, who can sort of, you know, try and, try and picture how this stuff could work.

[00:05:01] But broadly, I think it’s a  difficult one. Of all the sectors in which we work, I would say quantum is the one that, I mean, it’s, it’s quantum, right? So much of it is based on stuff that defies a lot of the science that we think we know.

[00:05:13] Veronica: Right.

[00:05:14] Christoper: So yeah, looking for those real-world use cases, I think, is a massively important part of telling the story of quantum. And, you know, this is an industry where we are getting there. We’re getting better at it, — There is so much potential, put it that way.

[00:05:25] Veronica: One of our clients was working on like battery research-

[00:05:29] Christoper: Uh-huh.

[00:05:30] Veronica: and the chemistry behind that, and how to build a better battery. You know, no one wants their EV battery to explode in flames, right? So we need better batteries. And so I thought, “Oh, that’ll be an easy story to tell.” And then I spent hours reading about the science of batteries and molecules moving from one side to the other, and I mean, I finally had to rein myself in and say, “Okay.”

[00:05:48] But to explain the use cases, sometimes you do have to go so far into a rabbit hole that then, you know, I have to pull myself out and say, “Okay, what’s the big picture?” You know, who’s going to invest in this? You know, how many jobs will this create? You know, what is that bigger picture? But like you said, some of the use cases still require a lot of explaining themselves to get to that ul-ultimate benefit.

[00:06:10] Christoper: Yeah, I agree. Right. And I think bat-batteries is one of the good ones. That is, that is a real use case that, you know, if you’ve got an electric car, you can very quickly see the benefit, and all you need is some rationalization about how quantum can help build batteries that will completely change the nature of transport, for example.

[00:06:26] I think IonQ is doing some quite good work in this area with Hyundai. Some of the drug discovery stories that are coming out, D-Wave are doing some good work there. But it’s still hard to pick businesses that are sort of telling a story well and becoming associated with that.

[00:06:40] Q-CTRL, I, I think some of their G- sort of, kind of-

[00:06:43] Veronica: Mm-hmm …

[00:06:43] Christoper: bits of GPS stuff, I think that’s really interesting. And then there’s the kind of hack now, harvest later, I sort of feel like that was the first story around quantum to come out that people could immediately get their heads around, because it’s the idea that anything you do that you think is encrypted technically isn’t.

[00:06:58] Right now it is, but all that data might be sitting somewhere on a criminal mastermind server, and they’re just waiting for the computer to arrive where they can decrypt it all. That’s, that’s pretty… That’s a compelling narrative. But it’s also a little bit of a fear-driven narrative. And the problem- Mm-hmm

[00:07:13] with it is that the solution is quantum computing, but also quantum computing is the cause. So it’s- Right … sort of an interesting one. It doesn’t quite have that sort of smooth journey through as a story, but it’s certainly one that has got people’s attention, and you read about it a lot in the papers and, you know, get, it gets the, the kind of the science out there to some, to some extent.

[00:07:32] So as I say, I think we’re, we’re on a journey, and yeah. There’s a lot more interesting stories out there to come, I think.

[00:07:38] I don’t know if you follow Michaela Eichinger on LinkedIn. She works for one of the quantum companies in Europe, but she also does a lot of really good, interesting posts – about quantum and use cases and things like that.

[00:07:50] Veronica: And she posted about IBM and Algorithmiq and the Cleveland Clinic working on a new cancer treatment. Mm. And the test is already in Phase II clinical trials, so at first you’re like, “Oh, a new cancer treatment.

[00:08:02] Wow.” But then she went into the details of explaining, and she had a picture of a molecule, and the light comes in, and then things change. And so again, really close, but, but not quite there. I know storytelling is really important at Across the Pond, and like you said, you don’t want to rely on the fear-driven stories all the time.

[00:08:19] I think people sometimes dismiss storytelling. Like, “Well, we don’t have time to get into those details,” or, “That’s not really going to move the needle.” But it really does in a much bigger way than people understand, I think. Can you tell me about your work in that space?

[00:08:31] Christoper: Yeah, I mean, I, I know what you mean.

[00:08:34] You say storytelling, I go, “Oh, you know, that’s all nice. You know, it’s very nice having a story” and so on. Storytelling is fundamentally one of the things that a business will need to grow. And I talk about sort of technology as potentially becoming a commodity. Everyone’s struggling to keep up.

[00:08:48] All your competition is rising up constantly against you. So I guess from an investor point of view, the technology is a given. You have to assume that technology is good. But given a whole selection of tech businesses that are offering amazing products right now, which are the ones that stand out?

[00:09:03] Which are the ones that are telling a compelling story about what they do? And that’s not just like a st- like a story like a bedtime story. Rather than it just simply being about an explainer, you know, explaining how something works, it has to be the story of: how is the world going to change because this technology now exists.

[00:09:21] And that is the bit that completely depends on the audience. It could be that your investor is looking for somewhere to invest. It might be that you have a financial services customer that’s looking to buy into the product sold by a quantum business. It could be that you are really struggling to recruit the best talent within the quantum sector, and they are making decisions to who they want to work for.

[00:09:38] But having that story will be the bit that will flip them into going towards you as opposed to someone else. So I don’t see storytelling as a nice to have, a little kind of marketing deliverable. It is a fundamental part of what will grow the business. And it should deliver results, and it should be trackable, and it should be measurable, and you should set clear KPIs against what it can de-deliver.

[00:10:00] But I think what is so often the struggle, and you know, s- I see this a lot speaking to kind of early stage businesses, is that a lot of tech businesses don’t even think about this stuff. They don’t even realize that’s something they need to think about. Particularly early stages, they don’t, you know, they won’t have a marketing team.

[00:10:16] They won’t have a CMO or a head of comms or anything like that. That burden will sit with the CEO or the COO or a founder, but someone who has got so much other stuff to worry about, so many other priorities. So often I’ll meet someone and they’ll say, “Look, I know we need to do something.

[00:10:33] I just don’t know what it is yet, but I feel like we need to do something.” That, like, that delights me because at least someone has acknowledged, you know, it’s like admitting you have a problem is the first, you know, step towards solving it. It’s like acknowledging that there is something that they need to do.

[00:10:48] Now, there are lots of things that you, you should be doing at that stage, and you may not know what they are, and that’s absolutely fine, and I can sit down and talk you through what those things might be. But bear in mind, early stages, you don’t need to be spending a lot of time nor money on that stuff.

[00:11:02] But the fact that you’re thinking about it and starting to, in your mind, realize that there are building blocks that need to be put in place, that will supercharge the growth of the business later on, far more so than, you know, if you just focus on the product, wait till you’re at Series B and see where you get to.

[00:11:17] It’s putting those foundations in place early, and it doesn’t necessarily take a huge amount of work, but it’s just that sort of really important hygiene stuff that I think other– in other sectors, they’re better at realizing the value of that. In the tech sector, less so.

[00:11:30] Veronica: That’s really my favorite part of the job, is talking to the people doing the work, right? The algorithm writers or the engineers or the chemists, because they’re in it day-to-day and they don’t see the potential and the interest and the cool things that are happening.

[00:11:43] Whereas you can draw that out and talk about the people who work there or, you know, their connections across the world. I mean, quantum is a global industry, but it’s still pretty small. You can kind of connect the dots. It’s like seven degrees of separation, right? Not even that many. You know, someone in Bloom-Bloomfield, Colorado might s- know someone in Hamburg, might know someone in Singapore, might – know someone, you know, in London.

[00:12:02] It’s getting into those bits and those personal stories to me is really fun too when you’re talking to clients.

[00:12:08] Christoper: Hmm. No, I agree. I, I think the– You know, we talk to a lot of engineers, and I think that that’s what makes so much of the way we operate different because the engineers are so often the lifeblood to some of these stories.

[00:12:20] And, you know, when we’re talking to these sort of incredibly smart people that really do understand the technology far more so than potentially anyone else in the world, that’s then the job for us is like, how do you translate that into a story that means something beyond, you know, what might appear in a white paper?

[00:12:36] There are different ways you do it, but fundamentally it’s about knowing what to leave in and what to take out. It’s a really intense filtration process. And-

[00:12:43] Veronica: Mm-hmm …

[00:12:44] Christoper: you know, it takes a lot of preparation and a lot of time spent with engineers.

[00:12:48] And also interestingly, it kind of gives the engineers a chance to get involved in the creative process. They have to, you know, have a say in how the story plays out. Even when it comes to visual identities and design work, there will be rounds of feedback where the engineers will be involved because, you know, their voice is paramount.

[00:13:06] So yeah, they, they, they are sort of the lifeblood of the story. It’s just our job is turning so much of that great thinking into something that actually resonates beyond their peers and beyond that kind of natural group.

[00:13:19] Veronica: Right. Right. We look for the story when we’re working with clients, you know, what is their technology going to do?

[00:13:25] How is it going to change the world? You know, what’s the reach and the scope and the use cases? We often used Google’s Willow chip announcement as an example because all the elements were there. There’s a key message. There was a number in there. There was the image. There was the third-party validation.

[00:13:41] You know, it’s not just Google saying they’re great, it’s, you know, who are your partners, who’s used your technology, or at least looked at your technology. I know that Across the Pond worked on– has worked with Google, Google’s quantum group for a while. Can you share anything, what, what that was like or how you corralled such a giant announcement into such an elegant package?

[00:13:59] Christoper: So Google, yeah, we’ve worked with them for many years, I think seven years now, maybe. Sort of basically all of their big launches we’ve worked on as a team. Our head office is in London, but our San Francisco team has worked on those projects. That’s a great example of working closely with those engineers, working out how to sort of filter out the important bits to keep versus the bits that aren’t necessarily required for a big kind of public announcement like this.

[00:14:24] The visuals, like that idea of having the chip against a natural landscape, the sort of Santa Barbara beach image that we used, I think it made it feel different. I think we’re just always looking for more inspiring ways to, to show the, the hardware in this case

[00:14:37] All our briefs are very varied even within quantum, we sort of get very different challenges give-given to us. But with this one, I think the audience is interesting. There is an element of, of course, looking to get into the press, looking to get the, the, the news out there about this achievement, there is also a, a sort of a very excitable quantum specialist audience who are, you know, who will devour this stuff.

[00:14:59] So it wasn’t that we could just strip out all of the science and strip out all of the technical bits. That did need to be in there. And we sort of almost, the way we looked at it was like, how, how would you do this if this was a, like an… Imagine it was Steve Jobs. How would you do it with Steve Jobs standing on a stage launching something?

[00:15:15] Let’s turn it into that more kind of big TED Talk moment on stage. Fundamentally, that, you know, the content could’ve been done on a Zoom call with a PowerPoint. But trying to sort of give it the stature and ground it as a big moment in the evolution of the technology was a way of framing the story itself.

[00:15:32] Then we could work with the engineers to, to extract the key, the key bits of the story that we wanted to keep. So yeah,, you pulled out a good example there of sort of where we would work closely with those teams to tell the story.

[00:15:43] Veronica: And I, I’m a word person, but obviously I understand the importance of visuals as well, and I think the Google announcement, it wasn’t like black and silver and, and blue.

[00:15:56] It wasn’t cold. It was much more natural, the name, and, and yeah, I didn’t think about the image of the beach, but yeah, it did make it seem not otherworldly, but definitely different from lots of other sort of, we’re in the lab and we’ve got lots of pointy things around.

[00:16:09] And so it was, it was distinctive that way.

[00:16:12] Christoper: Yeah.

[00:16:12] Veronica: When I think about visuals in the quantum industry, I often think of PennyLane, which is a quantum algorithm company, and, you know, their branding looks like it’s out of the ’80s. It’s pink and blue, and it’s soft edges; it’s very far from the lab, circuits, and cold images that lots of quantum companies use.

[00:16:30] Why do you think that works?

[00:16:31]

[00:16:32] Christoper: I love PennyLane’s work.

[00:16:33]  I think the way that they project themselves is great. I think you’re right. It feels like those sort of lovely pastely ’80, ’80s colors. It makes them stand out in a sector that struggles to let itself stand out. In a sector where all the businesses begin with a Q by and large, you need to work hard to try and make yourself look, look a bit different. So yeah, they’ve got an interesting name and an interesting look, and just even that as a starting point means you’re just more likely to lean in and sort of listen to what they say. Recently, there was a big quantum conference here in London, and it felt like there’s still work to do, I’ll be honest, in terms of how at least from a visual perspective, like if you take the storytelling out of it for a second, but just from a visual perspective, if you walk into a hall of quantum businesses with their stands up, do they feel that different?

[00:17:15] I would argue not enough currently. There’s a lot of navy blue and white. There’s a lot of that kind of slightly futuristic, or what people might think is a kind of futuristic kind of graphics there, or there’s a lot of the kind of chandelier gold, but there, the sort of, there are a lot of people trying to move beyond that.

[00:17:32] I think one or two have sort of tried a little bit. I think Riverlane have done a quite nice rebrand recently. I think Alice & Bob have really started pushing on the kind of… They started with an in- interesting name. Let’s, let’s start there. And then that’s a beautiful cat logo,

[00:17:44] They have now finally started really kind of utilizing that across their social channels, and I think they’re doing a great job. I mean, I think it does look really good. It makes them stand out, and it feels somehow more digestible than just going in hard with a lot of these sort of much more traditional sort of scientific tropes.

[00:18:02] Christoper: So there are isolated cases of, of companies that are doing it well, though, I think is the truth. . But again, you know, to what I was saying earlier, I think a lot of businesses don’t think of this stuff.

[00:18:09] It’s sort of seen as a nice to have, but actually in the long term, strengthening your, your brand, strengthening your narrative, and strengthening your visual identity will… ‘Cause you know, let’s remember, every time someone comes into contact with your brand, they are seeing those visuals again. They’re hearing that story again, and it’s like compound interest.

[00:18:29] It just reinforces over time and strengthens the brand and the business to the extent that it will stand out when put up against competition, and it will mean your business has a much higher chance of succeeding longer term. So it’s a really important thing, and yeah, I think, yeah, good, good, good that you mention that because I certainly have been thinking about it lately, looking, looking around at a lot of these sort of rather similar looking quantum businesses.

[00:18:51] Veronica: I think Alice & Bob, their visual style is gorgeous, and it’s so complete, right?

[00:18:57] They’re so thorough and thoughtful with their branding work. And they just relaunched their brand identity. So, yeah, we’re a fan of Alice & Bob too. They’re one of our clients, full disclosure.

[00:19:06] Christoper: Oh, that’s great. Like, I think they’re great, and I like the little nod, you know, they’ve got the gold, the kind of the gold nod in there. I think they’re doing a really good job.

[00:19:13] Veronica: So what other opportunities do you see in the quantum companies when it comes to branding or storytelling? What, what advice would you give?

[00:19:20] Christoper: I mean, I think the, the first, the advice I give to most of them is just start thinking about it. Be aware that this is something you could be thinking about and should be thinking about because, you know, as you look for your next round of investment or look to acquire customers, depending on which stage the business is at, so often this, the sort of the fundamentals are lacking.

[00:19:36] Those foundational building blocks of a brand, that strategic thinking proposition and the narrative itself. It makes it so much easier. It makes your communications, every, every bit of communications you do from this point on will become easier because you know that whether it’s a white paper or a keynote speech or the line on your website or, you know, your email footer or a blog post, what- whatever it might be, it all kind of comes from the same place, so you’re not having to sort of start afresh every time.

[00:20:03] And yeah, it just, it keeps on reinforcing. So it’s, it’s important, and it is valuable. It will yeah, it’ll be something that you don’t regret even if you feel like, oh, no, we’re too early to start thinking about that stuff

[00:20:15] Veronica: Everyone’s always under time pressure,

[00:20:16] and it feels like storytelling takes time, and you can’t necessarily compress that exploration and discovery into, you know, a day. How do you convince clients to take the time that that kind of storytelling requires?

[00:20:30] Christoper: I wouldn’t ever want to convince them of anything that they sort of weren’t willing to take on.

[00:20:34] This is why I love the sort of meeting people who sort of feel like they know they need to do something, but they’re not quite sure what, because that’s when you can start to engage in a conversation. But I t- I don’t think it’s true that it always takes time. We are, as a business Across the Pond, has been working, you know, in te- technology for, for nearly 20 years, and the, the rate of change has accelerated beyond anything we could’ve imagined.

[00:20:54] And, you know, I was saying earlier that sort of the last few years have been bananas, frankly. Yes. So what we’re having to learn to do is work at the speed of technology, fundamentally the speed of the engineers and the product makers, as opposed to the speed of a typical marketing cadence, which is, you know, how communications used to work.

[00:21:12] No longer. Everything is a race now. Everything is a race against, you know, what other, what the competition is doing, what the investors are looking for, what China’s doing.

[00:21:19] There’s so many other factors at play that we need to work quickly. So it’s not to say, “Oh, we just love working at breakneck speed.” Obviously, it’s good to have time to think about these things properly. But there are ways and methods which we do employ with our clients to ensure that work can be done at speed because you sort of have to work quickly.

[00:21:36] I mean, the work has to work. Fundamentally, it has to be effective. So if it’s not effective, there’s no point doing it. With the sort of experience we have, we know how to get to the nub of some of these problems quite quickly.

[00:21:46] So I wouldn’t assume everything takes ages. It doesn’t all take months and months and months. You know, there, there are ways of being more modular with the way you work. I mean, that’s certainly what we do as a business. We break things down into much smaller packages, and it makes it more plausible for our clients, you know, both from a timing perspective, but also from a financing perspective.

[00:22:04] It means that there’s not these sort of big, sort of big, heavy costs. If you’re at a very early stage, you can sort of make it a bit smaller.

[00:22:12] Veronica: Right. Right. Is there a point in a company’s evolution that storytelling is more important?

[00:22:19]

[00:22:19] Christoper: Think so. I think there are sort of key milestones where storytelling really sort of comes into its own. If there is suddenly a real pressure on talent, I think that’s when the story will deliver for you.

[00:22:29] I think if you are going to market, you know, sort of really looking to acquire more customers, that’s when, you know, it’ll be particularly valuable for you. I think having it in advance just means you, your team, your co-founders, investors, et cetera, will be versed in telling that story and, and will sort of help reputationally over time, as opposed to sort of trying to cram it all in at the last minute.

[00:22:51] It doesn’t have that same compound interest effect.

[00:22:54] Veronica: It’s an investment that pays off, like you said over time and in multiple ways. Not only with employees or investors telling the story, but also when, you know, an agency’s trying to write a press release or even writing LinkedIn posts or other social posts, that storytelling influences everything, all the communications.

[00:23:09] Do, do you think that’s the case?

[00:23:10] Christoper: Completely agree, yeah. I guess thinking from, from, from your perspective and sort of from a PR perspective, absolutely. Those stories will sort of dramatically change the way those press releases go out and, you know, social posts go out. I think it’ll have a huge impact.

[00:23:24] It’ll just make it easier. That’s what I always, I always say, like, once you’ve sort of nailed your brand narrative and you’ve got a story around your technology, it just makes everything so much easier.

[00:23:31] Veronica: I was reading your LinkedIn uh, and you said that storytelling is the easiest way to de-risk investment,

[00:23:37] Tell me your thinking behind that.

[00:23:39] Christoper: It sort of slightly kind of what I was saying earlier about that kind of idea of not wishing to commoditize your tech not wishing to just sort of effectively be in a race to the bottom with everybody else whose technology is emerging rapidly and everyone’s developing at the same speed.

[00:23:56] How do you stand out above that? Because you have to assume you can keep up. You have to assume your technology is as good as the competitors. But where do you then sort of push yourself beyond that in, in such a way that people will be able to talk about you with the context that means, “Oh, this is, this is the team that I believe can achieve X because their technology will do this for me in my life, and it will do this for the world, or this for this industry or this for the planet.”

[00:24:23] You know, what- whatever it might be. Having that story that ties to a kind of a real world endpoint is so much more valuable than having an explanation. So I think from an investor point of view, you’re massively de-risking investment if you’re looking at a business that has a story nailed down from the start because you already know you’re, you’re kind of halfway there.

[00:24:44] Right. Right.

[00:24:45] Veronica: Whenever quantum technology pops up in popular culture, our staff always talks about it. You know, like, “Oh, did you see this movie?” Or, “I’m watching this series on, on Apple TV,” and, someone mentioned quantum or this had a plot point. And I think that that’s really, that’s an important marker in company storytelling or technology storytelling, I think, like seeing it beyond the industry pop up somewhere else and someone else see the power of, of technology.

[00:25:11] I know that culture is something that Across the Pond thinks about with these campaigns.  Do you have any advice on that or any, any observations?

[00:25:19] Christoper: Yeah, I mean, I think sort of working out how to embed your business into culture or your technology into the conversations around culture are really important.

[00:25:27] We have, you know, within our business, we sort of operate three kind of key models within which we tackle this, this idea of, making the complex human. We have meaningful storytelling, which is exactly that kind of taking complex things and, and building human-centric stories around it.

[00:25:41] We have one which is about scaling innovation, which is specifically focusing on growing businesses, but the third one is called cultural readiness, which is very much about building the operating system on which your storytelling will exist. So how do you build a brand in culture? How do you make your brand culturally relevant at a time when there’s a huge amount of cultural change going on and a huge amount of technological change going on?

[00:26:03] How do you bring those two together in such a way that people can understand it? The way technology appears in culture also is sort of important for the point of view that , a lot of the time it’s sort of technology can be sort of framed as quite dystopian as well. So it’s, you know, how do you counter some of the, the kind of counter narratives and the fearmongering around technology and, and really tell the truth and demonstrate the potential about technology because there is a lot of good that can come from great technology.

[00:26:30] Not everything will necessarily be good, but I think it’s important that we understand where the good can be because, you know, when it comes to things like drug discovery or you know, building better batteries, it’ll make a huge impact on our lives. Culture is a big part of that.

[00:26:42] I’m always fascinated when I see kind of references to quantum in, in sort of popular culture

[00:26:47] Veronica: they do spark a conversation, so, so that’s a good thing.

[00:26:50] Do you have any interesting projects coming up or anything you’re excited about working in the last half of the year?

[00:26:56] Yeah. I mean, we do have lots of interesting things coming in. I can’t– I don’t know how many I can actually talk about because so many of these come with sort of big thick NDAs.

[00:27:04] Christoper: But there are- Yes … plenty of quantum businesses that have got interesting challenges. There’s a lot of robotics businesses with interesting challenges, a lot of AI companies just kicking off a fusion project at the moment.

[00:27:14] It feels like things are just moving very fast this year. A, a lot of people I speak to in the sector are feeling the same. It’s just there’s a kind of slight frenzy going on, and I don’t know if it’s just a lot of investment going in or I dunno if it’s the year of the big IPOs, but something is happening in the tech sector, which is kind of, there’s a bit of a crackle of energy.

[00:27:27] So, you know, it’s busy. It’s a good problem to have. But yeah, it’s definitely, it’s going to be a busy year.

[00:27:32] Veronica: Yes. Yes, it is.

[00:27:34] Thanks so much for joining me today, Christopher. I really appreciate it.

[00:27:37] Christoper: Thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure. I look forward to catching up soon.

[00:27:40] Veronica: Thanks for joining us for another episode of The Quantum Spin by HKA. You can find all episodes on our website, hkamarcom.com. Of course, you can find us on all your favorite podcast platforms as well. Follow us on LinkedIn under HKA Marketing Communications if you have an idea for a guest, or if you’d like to be on the podcast yourself, you can reach me on LinkedIn, Veronica Combs, or you can go to our website and share your suggestion via the contact us page. Thanks for listening. Talk to you soon.