OTG Ep. 1: Personas in Practice (ft. Oliver Batten - Destination Store)

Hey peeps, ladies and gentlemen. This is the first in our series of podcasts that we've been promising and not delivering um for some time now. My name is Oliver Young. I describe myself as a recovering community engagement person. Haven't been on the tools in a while, but that's what I did for about 25 years. My co-host is Michael Gottsche aka the Gottsche. Mick, do you want to tell us about you? Yeah, also um a recovering uh communications uh and community engagement person. Uh worked with Oli many years ago, continue to work with him on Scopomap. now much more focused on on communications, less on engagement, but but keeping a close eye on the on on that space. And our special guest today is Oly. No relation. We had a discussion before. Every Oliver has their own abbreviation of how they spell it. I'm O L I. He's O L Y. Oly, tell us about you. Yeah. No, thanks for having me. Um, always fun to have two Olis in the conversation straight off the bat to keep it confusing. Um, but yeah, my name's Oliver Batton and I'm from Destination Store. Uh, yeah, we're a destination specialist agency. Um, we've got an office in Sydney, but we we work all over Australia and do some work in the Pacific as well. So, um, yeah, I'm the lead for destination strategy and impact, uh, and sort of, yeah, head up the the strategy element of of our business. But, um, yeah, I'm sure we'll get into the nuts and bolts of the destination story a little bit. So, just a reminder, our podcast is about AI and community engagement. Um, the reason we've got Oly on is that while they do a whole lot of brand and place stuff, one of the inputs into those strategies is community engagement. And Oly and I um did a project recently where he used gratuitous plug Scopomap um on his project. But Ollie, before we get on to all the um nuts and bolt stuff, tell us a bit about you. How did you end up at Destination Store? What did you do before that? Yeah. Yeah. So, uh I actually work um or live live and work down in the beautiful far south coast of New South Wales down in a little town called Narooma, sort of where I where I grew up. Um and yeah, thankful to work for an organisation, you know, that are happy for me to work remotely, but it it also fits quite well with the work we do because we do a lot of work in in regional destinations. So um I have been with destination store for a bit over 3 years now about three and a half years and um without telling you my whole career journey I guess prior to being at destination store I actually worked within local government government myself at Eurobodalla Shire Council um as the tourism and events manager there and we we actually hired Destination Store it was Destination Marketing Store at that time which is our former name um now Destination Store but we yeah we hired Destination Store to actually write the destination action plan for the Eurobodalla and so I sat on the the council side of the the fence um working with destination store on the the long-term vision and you know destination plan for the region uh and then sort of as that project came to a wrap uh the opportunity presented itself to join the DS team so I sort of jump shipped But um still work very closely with Eurobodalla Shire Council. It's where I live and they're still a client of ours. So um yeah, that's kind of a a brief snapshot of how I I joined the DS team. Was it a big culture change coming out of council? I mean, for someone who's done a lot of work with councils, you know, I have a a very vague notion of what it's like working in a council, but culture culture change. It definitely was. I mean, I've worked in the private sector before as well. I've worked in the private sector, the not for profit sector, sort of the university sector. So, uh, it it definitely it definitely came at a time where I was, you know, craving a bit of, um, fast-paced action. And so, and yeah, it was just sort of an opportunities alignment really. So, um, I knew what I was in for, but yeah, it was refreshing as well to kind of step away from local government for a little while and and, you know, hit the ground running. Um, yeah, working on destinations all across Australia, which yeah, is has been interesting and challenging as well. I met with you and Charlotte and Oh my god, I've got a terrible memory um ages ago now, like well over a year, maybe more than that. um in Surrey Hills for coffee and it was fascinating to me because I don't think I'd really thought about um councils marketing themselves in the way that obviously you guys help them do. Tell us I mean I know there's the work that you do tell us generally what destination store do like what's the offer what what kind of stuff do you do? Yeah, look, we we describe ourselves as destination specialists and we really work across sort of three quite clear um work streams. So we we have the strategy and impact space. So, um, as I said, that's kind of where I head up, um, a lot of our strategy work, but that that looks like, you know, destination management plans, visitor economy strategies, visitor servicing strategies. Um, and that's often where a lot of our work starts with local government and councils. Um, the second arm of our business is brand marketing and campaigns. So, often once we've developed a strategy for a destination or a place is, you know, how do we then um, bring that to life? often that's often through um you know a repositioning a new branding piece um and we actually put campaigns into market as well for that destination. Why do councils do that? Like why does a council want a brand? Well, I mean uh in a in a traditional model or a traditional sense and a bit more old school, you know, uh a destination management plan and also a destination brand in that sense is about attracting visitors to the destination to spend more money and to stimulate the economy. Um certainly there's a bit more of an evolution of that or a shift away from that rather than just focusing on the visitor. It's more um we're seeing a lot of destinations develop place-based strategies or place brands um which I'm sure we'll get into a little bit later in in one of the examples we'll talk about today. But um yeah, it's it's all about it is about you know stimulating the economy and you know um inviting the right visitors into the destination, you know, people that are really going to value that place but not purely for the economic or the financial return. Now it's a lot about the social benefit as well. So, you know, how do they give back to that place? How do they engage with the community? How do they engage with the environment? Um, so I know that in the discussions we've had around some of the work you do, a lot of the work you do is with regional councils. Yeah. And I think uh what I found really interesting was the notion that of I mean I I know people sort of grow up in the country and potentially move to the city. councils are looking to retain their young people but also attract people from a range of different professional backgrounds. Is that is that part of the the gig? Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's um I think certainly even just yeah in the last 3 years or so that I've been at destination store I've really seen sort of the the crossover or the blend of um you know like what what you could label I guess tourism with sort of economic development but even community development and um you know community engagement. So um you know as I said traditionally you might have had um purely destination action plans or destination management plans whereas now they're getting blended with economic development strategies. And so yeah it's really important for us to think about not just how do we get the right visitors to this place but how do we get people to invest in this place? Um how do we get yeah young people to stay? We often have to look at you know things like um housing affordability or the housing crisis in a lot of situation. Yeah. Uh in a lot of these situations around regional Australia and you know how does that impact travel and residents and community so yeah I mean it it is all interlinked. So we've discussed the work that you do we've lost Michael but that's all right you and I can keep talking um we discussed the work that you do with councils what other type of clients do you do you do you guys have you talked about some of that um stuff in the Pacific that sounds pretty interesting. Yeah I guess lastly and just to wrap from the last question the third area that we do for work is digital So, we actually also manage um the the socials, but also all the online channels for some of our clients, too. And that was really a way for us to be able to offer that end to-end service from strategy through to um actually delivering it for our clients. And so, we sort of like to sit in that vertical for destinations as a bit of a a specialist. But um yeah, in terms of some of the other clients, you know, we have absolutely worked with private clients before, you know, um private businesses or entities as well as not for profit organisations. Uh we we have done some work in Pacific over the last couple of years working, you know, we we did a full um destination brand for Kiribass, which is a tiny island right in the middle of nowhere. um uh as well as a marketing plan for Papa New Guinea yeah. So yeah, we and look that's uh sort of tied up a bit of with the experience of the team and sort of beyond my time at Destination Store. Carl, who's one of our directors um has done a lot of work in that space. Charlotte as well actually has done a bit of work in the Pacific. But um yeah, you know, Destination Store has been around for a long time now. um well over 10 years with Carl and Charlotte. So they've they've had some experience working over in in the Pacific more so far out. Michael, you left us. Yeah, sorry. Had something better to do? Um I do a lot of I do a lot of talking in these things. Is there anything you'd like to Well, at the risk of um at the risk of repeating questions that have already been asked, um just talking about destination store, you're talking about impact, social impact, economic impact. Can you talk about what kind of things that you're measuring when you're when you're looking at those impacts? Yeah. So I mean uh again sort of in the traditional sense you destinations are always going to look at you know visitation numbers um spend data you know um uh nights booked in terms of an accommodation sense and and they do give a really clear indication of movement um with tourism spend and um yeah I guess that sort of mobility data more though we are moving into the space of those social elements. So um you know things like doing sentiment surveys with community um whether that's possible uh at the beginning of a project to kind of set a bit of a benchmark and then further down the track to to re-engage that um and or sorry to re-measure that I suppose. Um and yeah, I guess in terms of community well-being, so looking at things like, you know, increases in employment rates and you know, um increase investment in the region, you know, what what pieces do they play in the overall well-being and value that is being delivered to that community. So coming up with like a values-based measurement framework and how you know yeah what are the core values that that community have and how to measure against them is increasingly important. Some of those values can be trickier than others to measure others you can use certain tools or AI tools even for that sense to kind of give you insight into that metric. Yep. Yep. And in terms of isolating the impact of your work, how do you go about that? Knowing knowing what's, you know, what's the result of your your strategies and advice? How how does that work? Yeah, look, that is a bit of a tough one sometimes. Yeah. Um, being a strategy consultant, sometimes you do hand over a strategy and you don't kind of really get to see it in action. I mean we we very much try to design our strategy so they're not strategies that sit on the the shelf they you know they have a road map or an action plan attached to them and um for a lot of our clients that strategy sort of becomes their operational plan on what they deliver on the ground with their team. So um you know some of our clients we work with for years in a row because you know one strategy moves on to the next thing and and that's when you really get to start to see the value of the work you're doing and the transformation of the work you're doing. So it might have started with um you know a destination strategy. We've then developed the brand for them. We've then put campaigns into market. We also managed their socials. And then you really start to see um you know an example of this is we we do a lot of work with Lithgow City Council and um you know we've re-branded them as Seven Valleys and we currently manage their socials and online um channels. But one of the main issues they had for that council area was perception. you know, the the perception of Lithgow as a a coal mining town. Um, and you know, trying to move that destination or that place into its next phase. Um, and so, yeah, having worked with that client for a few years, you can start to see the impact you're having in the shift of perception. um and the sort of sentiment that are coming through from the campaigns you run, the engagement on socials, you know. Yeah. As well as those sort of I guess more hard figures that come in around spend and That's a good that's a good one for Lithgow because I've been to Lithgow a fair bit in the pastand there are some really beautiful areas just outside Lithgow town centre. There was a pretty flash uh retreat run by Emirates that used to be there. Yeah. And most people's exposure to Lithgow is Maccas when they're driving through to Bathurst or something. So it's good to see that that It's incredible. I mean that as a destination you know they've got they are surrounded by spectacular national parks Capertree valley, Wollemi valley, Gardens of Stone you know and so it's really yeah I mean we developed a strategy but then it kind of you know is really about you know what is the what's the positioning of this destination what does it have to offer and then how do we tell that story and get that across and and you know it's not necessarily shifting the perceptions of visitors to Lithgow it's actually changing the perceptions are the locals themselves and what they think about the place. That's really interesting. So, so jumping into I know that um a lot of our listeners are community engagement people. Um not exclusively but some of them are. Um I know engagement plays a role in your work. Can you talk to that? Yeah. Yep. So yeah, I mean as as a consultant we we sort of work on a project to project basis. So but any project we work on has a community consultation element. So um you know most most projects kind of start with a and this is me generalising a little bit but sort of a research and discovery phase. So often with a client um being a local government, you know, they'll give us access to all of their other, you know, sort of relevant strategies and documents or maybe even data that they've got on hand for us to kind of dig our teeth into and really get a sense for what um that place is about. Uh but then it's, you know, and from doing that sort of desktop analysis, you really kind of pull some nuggets out of that information that you want to test with the community. you know, you might kind of um yeah, find perception issues or you know, whatever it may be. And then yeah, and then we we build out a an engagement schedule um with the client. So we it it usually always involves uh a number of workshops, interviews, whether they're round-table discussions, whether they're um coffee catch-ups over breakfast, you've really kind of got to meet the meet the the person who you're engaging with where they're at. Um we will always, you know, kind of push the client to meet with certain groups or people who we think are important. So for instance, it's always always it's usually always important to sort of engage with the First Nation representatives um within a community. So, you know, whether that's through the local Aboriginal land council, um, or sometimes they've got, you know, an advisory committee, um, you know, so it's kind of sitting down with the client, identifying who all the key stakeholders are who we think need to be engaged with in the process and then I guess coming up with a bit of a schedule on how to engage those people like you know, is it via teams because they don't actually live in the region or is it coming to the destination? Um and in most cases we're in the destination for you know anywhere between one to two weeks um meeting with a whole bunch of different stakeholders and and getting getting a lot of that qualitative data. And what kind of questions are you asking people like when Mick and I did engagement the vast majority of the work we did was around contested land use projects and quite often we're talking to people about impacts. I mean, we'd we'd like to be talking about other things, but generally a lot of the projects we did were quite contested and hot, but you're doing stuff where you're going out and you're asking people about, I'm guessing values attitudes aspirations. Is that Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So, I think, you know, there's an essence of um wanting to understand, you know, what is happening on the ground. So, you know, what are people's pain points and challenges with tourism, you know, like and again focusing in a little bit on tourism um in this example, but um yeah, understanding, you know, do people feel like they've got over tourism? Do they feel like they have not have enough tourism? Is it seasonal? You know, like what what are the challenges they're facing? What are the opportunities? So, I guess that's a a pretty clear broadly speaking way of looking at the challenges and opportunities for that place. But um almost in all the work we do too we there is definitely that aspirational element. So uh we do find sometimes going into a community people can get quite bogged down in their day-to-day. Um and you know the conversation can quickly go into you know potholes on roads and rubbish bins not being collected on time and that sort of thing. So, it's important to kind of try to steer that community consultation in a productive way and and get them to think aspirationally around, okay, well, you know, you want more visitors to this region or you want more investment in this region. What kind of businesses do you want to see in your main street? Um, or you know, what kind of visitor do you want to stay in your little bed and breakfast? Um, what, you know, how old are they? What occupation do they have? Do they have kids? You know, yeah, what kind of place do you want to create? Um because from that we're able to create personas um which really help us kind of unpack you know what what those challenges and opportunities are and kind of steer the narrative on you know the vision and where they want to go. Yeah. Beautiful. Um, sorry, Mick. I was gonna I was going to take the um the baton now that he mentioned personas and and then and let's and and dig dig into that those as a way into the Central Coast project. Can you Oly um can you speak to a lot of people in the engagement world are broadly familiar with personas? I don't think they're widely used. I don't think they're widely understood. Um I think and or they're um or they have a poor perception partly because personas haven't been used very well. Um they're superficial. Um They've been used for marketing purposes mainly. I mean Yeah but but even then not even well right. So my my question Oly is can you give me a sense of what personas are for you? What their use is like and what a good what a good persona looks like? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, personas really are um sort of I guess representative profiles of all the sort of different types of people who either live in or work in or even engage with a place. Um, and for us, I mean, maybe this taps into a little bit of, you know, sometimes how they're misused or um, not created properly, but for us, it's really to build a persona that is built from real data rather than guesswork. So, rather than um, building a persona that's based on a stereotype or an anecdotal thing you've heard is, you know, who are the people who live in this place? Um, you know, what does their life actually look like? Um and if you can create quite realistic personas based on that data and that evidence then you know it really helps you to make decisions um on on messaging on you know the services the engagement styles by actually you know being able to put yourself in that person's shoes. So I mean a persona to us um is quite a detailed um persona. So, I guess as an example, you know, I'm talking at least a two-page description about a person. Like that's to me that persona has a bit of depth. You know, it's they've got a name, you know, what their age are. So, you know, some of that basic demographic data, but then you go into their interests and you know what their concerns are. Um, you know, how do they engage with information and are they, you know, digitally literate and, you know, how do how do we communicate with them? Um, is also increasingly important. Um, and yeah, I guess it helps you step into those shoes, particularly um, if you can create a visual of that persona. For me personally, I find, you know, you can write a two-page persona, but until you've actually got a picture of what that person looks like, you can actually really start to connect with them and um, yeah, I mean, it's kind of as close to as them kind of coming to life really uh, and understanding what their needs are. So, yeah. Um, yeah. And and and I'll get to this in a minute because I I I saw you create images for some of that we created through Scopomap. Yeah. But before you had things like AI or something like Scopomap, how did you create person? Did you use them in a detailed way? How did you create them? Yeah, we definitely still created them. Um, it was a lot more time consuming. So yeah, I guess sort of you know digging for for the data and I mean you know you can go on and get census data online around you know the kind of people that live in a certain place um and you can kind of start to pull some of that key demographic data um together uh you do try to match that with more I guess qualitative data. So whether again if if the council is a client um no doubt no doubt they've done community consultation for their community strategic plan or whatever it may be. Um so kind of trying to get a sense for the tone that people are you know talking about a place or what their interests are and that sort of thing. But then um you know in my experience it then involved you know endless scrolls on Google trying to find an image that kind of is a bit reflective of what you've got written on a page. Um so yeah not always the easiest task. Um now with AI and you know AI image generation that has really kind of changed things I think and I mean to reflect um on the example with Central Coast. So yeah, we we created a you know a representative group of personas for that project around eight and um pulled them out of Scopomap and and put them into into chat TV and said you know can you create an image of what we've described here as a persona and the the visuals it created like it it took my breath away a little bit. I kind of had to step back from my computer and um and really you know like simple things like you know Jess is 30 years old. She lives on the central coast. You know, she relies on public transport and maybe that's all it's got to go off. But the image it created of Jess, you know, the architecture in the background was architecture you would see on the central coast and there was a beach in the background and she was at a bus stop because she uses public transport and all of a sudden it felt like, wow, this actually is Jess and um, you know, we can start to ask Jess questions and and feel like we're getting genuine responses from that persona. So, let's let's let's go. I mean, we've we've got the door open now. Let's go to that Central Coast project. Um, it's by memory. It's the first one that we did together. Yeah. Um, tell us a bit about that project and and uh your use of AI. Um, we've touched on the persona stuff. Just tell us about the project to start with, what what you were doing for council. Yeah. So we were engaged by Central Coast Council to develop a place brand strategy for council. Um and they so they had a destination brand um which was Love Central Coast. It was created a number of years ago but they wanted us to review that brand and sort of evolve it from a destination brand which was you know primarily focused at visitors and getting visitors to Central Coast into a place brand. um that you know looked more broadly at how do we attract investment um and businesses and also engage with our residents as well. So um it really was sort of an evolution process for the Central Coast. Um we we weren't in responsible for creating the creating the sort of the brand in the end or the creative if you like but building the strategy behind it. Yeah. Yeah. And so I mean my my memory of it um was we used Scopomap or Bruce our AI to create some personas that we thought were generally representative of a sample of people on the Central Coast. Yeah. Yep. So yeah, these are sort of some of our first meetings. I think Oli was and yeah, I think you know, you ran a bit of a demo with me around what Scopomap could do. And you know, we we sort of ring-fenced the the local government area on the central coast and started digging into um yeah, sort of that census and I guess demographic data um at the LJ level, but then also went a little bit deeper and started, you know, looking at um the towns and villages that make up the central coast and even I think at the ward level um which was really interesting. And so we started to get a bit of a sense for what the population makeup of the central coast was. Um and because we had that data, you know, we were able to develop a representative um I guess personas for those. I think in the end from memory we went with eight. You it really kind of is how long is a piece of string. you know, you can develop 20 personas if you want, but you know, in the end, you just want to keep it concise enough, but informative enough that you, you know, you've kind of covered off um yeah, I guess the key personas in that area. So, you know, we had from memory, we had a slightly elder retiree. We had, you know, The athletes named Barry and Carol. Ah, there you go. You remember better than I do, but yeah. Um I'm looking I'm looking at the case study. I'm sure. Yeah. Nice. Um, and you know, we had a local Aboriginal elder um that was part of that representative group. We had sort of a young working professional. So yeah, trying to kind of um get a representative from some of those core audiences so that you know we could we could ask them the consultation questions which we had you know drafted ready to take and and to deliver in person in the central coast but to ask them to the personas themselves to see what responses we got from them because once we did that and then asked the community we really wanted to see if there was an alignment there. Um and I think you know taking a bit of a step back I think the reason um you know when we were asked we were asked by council or a counsellor had mentioned you know the use of Scopomap um for this project and their their interest in it and I think it really was to ensure that the strategy we were going to deliver was grounded in evidence but that it was yeah representative of the whole community and the whole community's voice because something we hear often working in local governments is, you know, you come in and you do community consultation, but it's always the same people who turn up consultation and you know, you might have some particularly loud voices in the community. Um, and you know, it it is it is challenging sometimes to get a representative um whole community in community consultation. So I guess just having that level of persona development as a reassurance and you know to see that correlation if it's there is is a just adding sort of an element of rigour to that um process. It was an interesting one for us because I think it was about the fourth or fifth live project that we'd run with the whole persona idea. And for those of you who aren't familiar, we create some personas. Then we ask the AI Bruce to role-play being each persona and then we ask the questions that are going to be asked in a focus group on an online survey, at an information session, whatever else. And then we compare the results in the real world. And up until this one, generally we a lot of the stuff we'd done had been theme matching. So, the personas said X and the community said X. This one, you guys were really good in the way that you had some questions in your live survey survey that allowed us to capture some demographic data about the respondents. So, a lot of people generally haven't done that in community engagement. I think we would, but we don't. um you know there's been some fear that people might not respond on a survey if they think they're somehow being identified but generally that hasn't been my experience and Oly I don't think it's been yours particularly if you ask you know things in the context of we're committed to transparent and inclusive engagement yada yada um what was really interesting the theme matching in these processes that we've run and we've run about 17 now the theme matching's always been pretty good. Somewhere between 83% and 97% between what the what the synthetic persona said and what the real world people said. But the really interesting thing about this was we had an 85% to 90% match of it being a representative sample, right? So you had a massive cross-section of the Central Coast community, which which is pretty pretty rare Oly in my experience. Yeah. And a really good really good result. Yeah. And look, it was good. Um it was good in in the Central Coast example, I guess. We had lots of different layers of consultation. So, yeah, you know, we we did go into destination and we did, you know, workshops with larger groups of people. We did one-on-one interviews. We did, you know, teams meetings. Um but yeah, I guess yeah, doing the community the sort of more general community survey was sort of another layer on top of that just to kind of which which we hoped would sort of open the doors to um you know more community voice being that you know they didn't have to attend a certain session. They could kind of do it in their own time. You know we gave them a month to um submit their responses. Yeah, we were try we, you know, we were sort of experimenting as well, but it was good to we intentionally wanted to get a bit of that demographic data, but also keep the questions quite consistent to what we asked the personas so that we could see that level um of, you know, like-for-like comparison and and whether it fit the bill like it it was a really interesting process. I think, you know, it's awesome to see that there was quite a strong correlation there. It's also was interesting to see like the limitations um of the personas and you know the kind of answers they provide and whilst they you know really kind of did pick up the core themes and you know the yeah sort of some of those challenges and opportunities they really don't have the the experience on the ground and the and the small details that you pick up in that face-to-face community consultation. So, you know, it's it's really good to correlation and then use that um you know, the face-to-face consultation to really understand like what what that means and like what are some what are some case examples of um you know that challenge or that opportunity on the ground that we're seeing um play out. Yeah. Mick? Yeah. So, um just just Oly checking with you what I'm hearing from you. Let's be clear which Oli? Because I'm finding that slightly disturbing. I think you're talking to me, but you're not. Oh, okay. I'm gonna call you Oli. Oli B. Oli B. Oli B. Am I right in understanding with the with the personas one? It gave your point at the beginning that sometimes you go out and consult and it's whoever turns up, that's the results you get. So for you, it was a good way to give you a bit of confidence in in your survey results as a cross check. That that was one. Was that yeah? Yeah. Yeah, look, it gives us a bit of confidence, but it also again really gives a confidence to the client. So again, that who's requested it in the end. You know, they want to make sure that their um yeah, their community's voice is being heard. So it kind of just adds that extra layer. I think it's really like a complimentary thing to add to a staple engagement process. I don't think yeah I think face-to-face consultation is so important um for so many reasons in terms of yeah really understanding the nuances of what's happening on the ground but also you know that face-to-face engagement is what builds trust in the end strategy and to me trust is one of the most if not the most important things when it comes to delivering strategy so yeah it's it's definitely um just sort of an add-on and a complimentary service. But yes, adds to that rigour, adds to that confidence and you know if um you know if council does get complained that like you know Joe Blogs came in and you know ruled the room and only his opinion was you know captured in this strategy it's like well no we've actually done quite a rigorous process here of of giving different um ways of community engagement and it's you know it's been reinforced by um what our representative personas have told us as well. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Hey Oly, I'm interested. Um, are you using AI and not necessarily our AI but other AI for for stuff either engagement or other parts of your your job? Definitely. Um, and increasingly so the the the nature of the piece that we're working at the moment. I mean we we're kind of constantly experimenting um with it and we're finding more and more you know even just like the tools and platforms that we use have their own AI integrated um elements to it now. So I mean we yeah we use some of the the more general AI such as ChatGPT or Claude to help us um just really with improving business workflow and efficiencies. you know, they're really good at synthesising large bits of information and and research. Um, they're also really handy for, you know, spotting trends in large data sets. So, um, you know, that can be a really time-saving exercise. Of course, there's always the human element to come in and check whether that's right. But yeah, so we do use some of those more general ones, but we um, yeah, like another example, I guess, is we are we're ACARLA certified. So, ACARLA is another Australian based data agency. Um, and they, you know, from them we get to look at, um, not just one LGA specific data, but actually the data across all of Australia. Uh, and in that we can look at spend data, some mobility data, accommodation data, flight data, sentiment data. Um, >> they now have an AI, I guess, element to their platform. And so that really helps us to interrogate data and to synthesise data as well. So yeah um Does their AI have a name? Sorry? Does their AI have a name? I don't believe so actually. I don't think they've Yeah, they haven't given it sort of a Australian name like can I ask a um Oly Batton, can I ask a question about something you said before about using um AI generated images for the personas and you were saying you know you're kind of struck by the impact of that. Can you like articulate? Okay. So, I'm trying to think like if you can put your finger on like what is that impact? Like what's the difference between reading something and then seeing that that person? Can you describe what what that does for you? Uh, yeah, it's a good question. I I'm trying to think about it from a point of view of like me personally but also for our client because you know that they saw the personas we created and they were also quite taken back by them because it's almost like I obviously had never met the personas before because I'd made up but it they looked like and felt like real people which maybe the impact is that they feel more relatable rather than just um more than just words on a page. And I mean that might exclusively be for me a very visual learner. So actually seeing someone's face makes it feel more real. Um, particularly when you're flicking through a a large strategy document to really have the faces of the people feels like um yeah I guess for the client as well probably makes them feel like well yeah these these people are is exactly the kind of person I would see down this market. Yeah. And I wonder I wonder if because there's so much because you've you've prompted that image with like real information. Yeah. And then that visual becomes actually shorthand for all those words that you've put into it. Yeah. So there's all those visual signifiers in the image. Yeah. That that in an instant Yeah. tell you lots of stuff. Anyway, I found that very interesting. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So, Oly What's next for destination store? What's you you've got some big projects coming up. Could you talk about any of them? Yeah, we uh yeah, I mean, the nature of our work is sort of ends and flows. We've had a couple of big projects sort of wrap up recently. So, we've been in proposal writing land a little bit this last couple of weeks. So hopefully some new projects coming up um on the near horizon, but we we sort of haven't heard back from them yet, so can't drop any any big news. But we we've got a conference coming up. Um so we actually we sponsor City Nation Place. Um and they're a UK based agency, but they run uh this will be the second year they've run an Australasian conference and they're partnering with Main Street Australia. um it's coming up in early August in the Gold Coast. So, we'll be speaking at that. And that's really to um yeah, as I sort of said early on in the piece, we're sort of seeing a bit of a transformation in our industry of moving away from just destination specific to more place-based um strategies and brands and plans. So, City Nation Place is exactly that. They're sort of um you know, leading in the industry around place-based strategies and place-based branding. So yeah, we're excited to be the whole team setting up to the Gold Coast for that. Um, which will be really great. Um, to yeah, just network and connect in with people who are looking at sort of destinations or place places more holistically. Um, but yeah, we've we've got some ongoing clients. As I said earlier, we're still doing work with Lithgow City Council. We're doing work with the office of the 24-hour commissioner um here in New South Wales as well delivering programs for clusters of councils and businesses around the state around the nighttime economy which is an exciting one. >> Um but yeah look we we're kind of at a phase now too where yeah we are in a really experimental phase where we're looking at new AI tools, new data sets. Um, it's a it's a bit of a fast-moving beast at the moment, but it's it's an exciting time for our business too to kind of look at ways that we can improve the work that we're doing um and look at some of our internal processes and things as well. So That's fabulous. Well, I've got some I will have in the next two weeks. I'm looking at one of my developers now should we get all the bugs out of it some updates to Scopomap that I reckon you guys will find really interesting. Awesome. Particularly our Survey Monkey type feedback form that automatically benchmarks respondents against the sample and and against themes. So that's something that I will come out and show you guys in a couple of weeks. Great. Um Mick, anything else before we wrap up? No, really interesting hearing about your work. Um Yeah, Oly Oly. Yeah. Hey, thank you for thank you for seeing us today and having Oli squared on an episode. Um, our next episode, folks, is going to be with Abby and Ryan from Landcom. Um, talking about all the stuff that they're doing around AI and community engagement. But for this episode, thanks Oliver, really appreciate you coming. Yeah, thanks Mick and thanks Oly. It's been a good chat and yeah, excited to see the updates and continue to see where it goes. Cool. Gottsche, anything else? That's it. Thank you. Sweet. Thanks for listening. See you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.