Wed 26 Apr 2023
Speaker Q&A: Koral Ibrahim - Business Founder
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We chatted with Koral ahead of his talk at Balance Festival on customer acquistion and the power of community
Outline your business in 1-2 sentences
The Ready House is a strategic creative partner that gets brands future-Ready. Working at the intersection of content, commerce and culture, we exist to turn customers into champions of their brands.
In the future, people won't simply buy brands, they'll join them - and that's the same for how businesses will engage with agencies. Our mission is to creatively unlock the potential of community using the power of proprietary data. Information guides, creativity follows. We are proudly independent, London based, but globally minded and widely connected.
What has caused the biggest shift/growth in your business?
Put simply, data. Businesses need to create brands which people love; and understanding what your future customers are engaging with culturally, allows brands to instigate the stories they tell. Brands need to contribute to this cultural conversation, and shift the dial from talking just about product (what they sell), to creating a truly iconic platform for interaction.
This shift has prompted us to create a proprietary data model which Interrogates culture, Instigates stories and Navigates change. We call this our way IIN. It scrapes millions of data points from social media and review sites, and allows us to authentically understand what any audience, in any location around the world are truly interested in. It guides and enables truly relevant creative thinking, all whilst mitigating risk for businesses in the quest for turning customers into ultimate brand champions.
What are the greatest challenges and opportunities within your sector?
The greatest challenge every consumer focussed, product/service-based business is going to face is building out their ‘brand mix’. The brands which are going to lose are the ones which focus wholeheartedly on the ‘acquisition’ of their customer, rather than the loyalty of their fans. Don’t get me wrong, we all need to sell, and the businesses need to be a commercial success; however marketing strategies need to shift from a performance-centric one to a brand-centric one. Collectively we need to focus on how we unlock communities, not just push product/services without any substance to consumers.
There are opportunities for many brands who think more along these lines. Every single brand touch point needs to be considered in depth, and truly interrogated whether that touchpoint oozes the brand mission & personality. Then when it comes to a conversation about organic channels, brands have the opportunity to compliment their sales engine (digital marketing ads), to populate it with opinion-rich, engaging and culturally-relevant content. Brand’s need to be more editorial in this space, and think about the holistic journeys of their future consumer.
What do you think is the next big thing in the world of Wellness?
The next big thing in the wellness space is going to be the personalisation & hacking of human health. Brands will increasingly sell less of the products/services which are subscribed to the masses, and create more individualised offers which become personalised on a bio-hacking level. Health and wellness means something different to everyone, and the same thing doesn’t work for each individual; so brands will be adapting to this, and creating more offers which are open to personalisation for each customer.
What is your best piece of advice for budding entrepreneurs?
- If you’re the loudest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.
- Always hire the talent & find the expertise in areas you’re not so good at.
- Stick to the original proposition of why you started and don’t dilute. This is often the a truism to why it’s going to be successful.
How do you maintain a work-life balance?
Since the addition of the first ever Ready House office, maintaining a work-life balance has been increasingly getting easier. The ability to leave the laptop at work, and then come home to decompress has been a huge learning. I’ve slowly recognised over 5 years, it’s not about the amount of hours you work, but the productivity within the hours you do. Optimising tasks, sticking to what you’re good at, and hiring people better than you in areas you need support in. Luckily outside of work, having an amazing & adventurous partner, enables me to still explore the city I live in and love; but we also help each-other to forget the daily stresses and always, no matter what, think about the bigger picture of life.
Koral will be speaking at Balance Festival on Friday 19th May. His talk "Stop obsessing over customer acquisition! Unlock the power of community through social-first thinking" will take place at 10:30am.
