Carl Cahill: Creative Director & Founder at Salo Creative

^{Joe Fox (00:01.782)}
Hey everyone, Joe Fox here from Growave. Super excited to welcome you to another episode of the Retain Grow Thrive podcast. I'm joined by Carl Cahill today from Salo, a really, really cool brand and creative agency based out of the UK. They do a ton of fractional work with a lot of really, really big brands and agencies, work with a lot of your favorite US agencies, some of them that have actually already been on the podcast.

So I'm super excited to welcome you today, Kyle. Kyle, can you give us a little bit of a background?

_{Carl Cahill (00:36.396)}
Yeah. Hi Joe. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I mean, I've always been a creative, always worked in the industry as a designer. And yeah, I guess my journey really started, well, working as a fractional creative director. I ended up working with kind of a lot of cool agencies, really wanted to help, you know, develop the design teams that they had. And yeah, it leads me to today where...

We've got a great design team behind me and we really support agencies and brands from both sides of the Atlantic. So yeah, it's been quite cool.

^{Joe Fox (01:13.333)}
Yeah, you've had a lot of incredible success, I must say. And I really love having incredibly creative people on the podcast and you're clearly one of them. So thank you again for coming on. Tell me a little bit, I think this podcast will be a really, really good learning lesson for a multitude of reasons. So think brands are gonna learn a lot about how to tell their story through brands. So I definitely wanna touch on that.

And obviously I think this is a really good opportunity for agencies that might be putting out a lot of websites, but they don't necessarily have that creative talent in-house and they might essentially want to work with someone such as yourself. So ideally I'd love to start from a brand perspective, cover off a little bit of your kind of process, yours and your team's process. Maybe we can talk about a major brand that you've had a win with on that front, if you're allowed to, of course.

And then I'd love to kind of steer more onto the partnering with agency side and talk a little bit about the ecosystem a little more.

_{Carl Cahill (02:20.044)}
Yeah. Well, look for me, I love working with brands and even working for brands on behalf of other agencies as well, especially when they might not necessarily have all the creative tools or resources. So I love stepping in, helping brands. From design, especially in the world of like commerce, that there's always a way of getting things right from a functional point of view, making things work well, you know, making sure that, you know, the site.

The store is frictionless, gets people to shop with these. But a large part that I find is always missing is kind of that brand storytelling piece. We talk a lot about the brand storytelling, but what does that actually mean? And I love working with brands to get to the truth of that. where we've got these lovely sites that we're creating, it's about making sure that the messaging's on point and...

You know, people that, or your customers and certainly customers that, you know, keep coming back and keep shopping. They fall in love with your brand and they understand and they feel connected with it. And there's so many other ways, great ways of doing that and achieving that. Aside to having what is a really functional site. So yeah, so that's a large part of what I love doing is, yeah, of course, making, making stuff that's performant, you know, it performs as well as it should. And,

But then, yeah, there's that whole lovely piece about like working with brands, getting to the truth, understanding what it is that they need to say, how do they get their tribe, you know, from their audience perspective and keep them coming back and feeling part of something. So yeah, the process is pretty simple. I feel it's pretty simple, but naturally as a creative, I think the best...

things to be is always curious, always ask questions, understand, what is, and I love that onboarding journey with a, with a, with a client or an end client. Getting to understand and feel, and yeah, w working with them and get to the, like I say, the truth of things. but yeah, it's, it's, it's very simple. could say it's simple, but yeah, the whole creative process is a lovely process and it's both kind of experimental, which I think is important.

_{Carl Cahill (04:35.554)}
but also kind of making sure that what we create together is going to work well, look great, and connect really well with our users.

^{Joe Fox (04:45.126)}
I love that call and there's two things there that I can pick up. One is I can tell you're a master of your craft because to you it feels simple. And I can always tell that when someone's dedicated to their craft. And second of all, I can tell that you love what you do. So that's really cool and you've got a big passion there. I'd love to, obviously I know some brains are a little bit more sensitive than others, but.

You can anonymize it by talking about, you know, a brand in X industry if you want to, but do you want to give like a bit of a, you know, maybe an example of like a brand that you were working with that may have been around for a little while and they felt that they were like a little bit stale with their brand or they weren't connecting with their audience properly and just kind of talk around like that thought process or the way that you solve that problem.

_{Carl Cahill (05:39.82)}
Yeah. So really hard to pick one. The beauty about being a creative is that sometimes, know, variety is the spice of life. And I love working with lots of different types of clients and, uncovering kind of their challenges in terms of how they want to connect with their audiences. Yeah. did, did recently, I say recently, a great piece of work, which was more about like identity for Brixton, the creative label, did like working shop.

^{Joe Fox (06:07.503)}
Nice. Yeah. Yeah.

_{Carl Cahill (06:09.314)}
like that, which is good. Yeah, there's a backpack brand called Hyperlite that we did with Roswell, which is really cool. And again, that was all about kind of like making sure that the brand was really, you know, clearly communicated. But then again, there was loads of things from a commerce point of view, like, you know, if you're shopping for a backpack, especially if you're hiking up a massive mountain, like weight was an important thing. And actually, that was a big deciding factor in your

purchase decisions. like bringing some of those things into the, into what is normal, not, well, not normally, I guess a shopping experience is making sure all of those things kind of, looked after. calm was another one. loved it designing a shop for calm where it was all about like reducing anxiety and, know, ensuring that when shoppers come on, they felt, you know, at ease. so yeah.

^{Joe Fox (07:03.796)}
I love that, yeah.

_{Carl Cahill (07:05.464)}
Great things. love those challenges. And there's so many kind of like behavioral things that we know you can think about other than just kind of whipping up a theme and hoping it sticks. You know, it's just, let's make it a bit more exciting. Let's challenge or look at the way we should be talking and helping customers shop with us. So yeah.

^{Joe Fox (07:27.938)}
I love that. I'm assuming, and I don't want to make too many assumptions, but I'm assuming with like calm, that would have been very much about ensuring there's like a really easy to navigate flow and making sure that there's like cool color palettes that like automatically make the human psyche feel relaxed and stuff like that.

_{Carl Cahill (07:41.933)}
Yeah.

_{Carl Cahill (07:48.64)}
Yeah, there were loads of things like, you know, not flashing, you know, sales signs everywhere. like, you know, it almost, you re, you know, sort of rewrote all the rules there about like how to make people shop faster and quicker. It's like, no, take your time, relax, chill out, you know, make good, make good choices. So, yeah, but that was quite a while ago. That, that's that project was good fun. And it's, it's a clear one in my mind to make,

you know, think about the behaviors on the site and, you know, come through. So that was a good one.

^{Joe Fox (08:22.273)}
I love that. That's really cool. I love that. I definitely want to pick your brain offline about that. Cause I feel like there's definitely some sites where, you know, you feel like you're walking onto like a used car lot or something like that. And it's like, bye, bye. Sell, sell, sell. Just discount signs everywhere. And it's like, you know, a sensory overload. And I'm sure maybe Carl, you feel like this, but I think, you know, as you get older and you, you're,

_{Carl Cahill (08:43.117)}
Thank

^{Joe Fox (08:50.822)}
know, tastes are a bit more refined and you kind of know the brands that you're looking for and all of those sorts of things. You kind of want the opposite of that. You kind of almost want that like boutiquey kind of like experience where it's like, I don't want to see for sales signs. I want to be able to understand more about the product, the feel, how it was produced and those sorts of things.

_{Carl Cahill (09:14.506)}
Yeah, of course, like, because, you know, people are different now and they shop differently and they want to learn about things, make better informed decisions about what they're purchasing. You know, if they're coming direct, then yeah, certainly. And I think that's important to tap into all those things. Yes, best practice, you know, e-commerce things that they exist. And right, we know we're going to help encourage users come back and shop in ways that they're familiar. It's important to make things much more

more familiar so they can navigate well and find what they're looking for. But of course, those buying decisions are really important. Like how much detail do we give around a product? we provide video demonstrations of things? we have to sell other things with... There's just so many different ways and areas to look at.

^{Joe Fox (10:02.366)}
Variables. Yeah. Yeah. No, I love that. you know, I think, as I said, I think this is a bit of a of a masterclass on that storytelling side of things and brand and how important all of that is when it comes out creatively. So I'd love to. Is there a couple of pointers that might be just some like super quick things that you see a lot of brands, you know, potentially doing that if they just

you know, maybe looked at it from a different lens and, and, you know, from a, from a brand perspective or a creative direction that they could change. I know, I know that's a little bit difficult because obviously you have like a really, you know, a process that you've worked on over a long period of time. But I'm just wondering if there's like, what is one thing that comes to mind that you would recommend to, you know, maybe, Shopify brands that aren't quite as established or even if they are established, it's a common, common thing that you see.

_{Carl Cahill (10:31.598)}
Hmm.

_{Carl Cahill (11:02.126)}
Well, again, I think it sounds simple, but it's to listen to your customers a lot, right? One the things I love is, especially with some of the brands or business that we work with, like sometimes I love listening to telephone conversations with the sales team or, you know, customer services and stuff like that to understand, you know, what they're saying and how they, you know, some of those things can really drive really good information about like how we package our stuff online.

yeah, listen to customers, think, think much more about their behavior. So, you know, what, what frictions are in there in, you know, if if I want to make an informed decision about a purchase that I'm making online, like what are the things that I'm, I'm worried about, you know, when making this purchase, a lot of brands get stuck in kind of terminology. I've seen that a lot. you know, they'll call their products something, but to

for their audience, they call it something else or, you there's so many things that can, yeah, that brands could think about and ask more questions around how do our...

How do our customers think? How do they shop? I think it can be really informative and it's a really simple exercise. So I love that part of the process. obviously brands are very naturally passionate about their products and that comes across very quickly. So I love having that conversation with them because you know what gets them excited and you really want to capture that excitement and put it out there because yes, customers love that as well.

They love, you big, great brands that can, you know, you want to draw a relationship and you want to fall in love with brands, right? So let's not give them a stale site that just has no, you know, don't know, meaning or anything. Let's give them everything that they want. So I love bringing those, you know, putting those connections and making brands and their customers connect better really.

^{Joe Fox (13:05.275)}
Absolutely. And it translates in the work, I must say, because I had a look through your portfolio and obviously, we both share a friend in Nehar and I think it's so apparent that the work you and your team do really does translate and create that kind of love story. And I think it's cool for us on a grow wave side of things when we're looking at things from a loyalty perspective, because it's so much easier for a loyalty program.

_{Carl Cahill (13:24.301)}
Mm.

^{Joe Fox (13:34.766)}
to be really successful when there is a great brand story that's translated really well through a website. Because, know, like the point I made earlier, if it's a site that just feels like a used car lot and someone's just trying to really sell something incredibly quickly to you, that's not really building any of that brand loyalty or affinity. So, you know, when people such as yourself are doing amazing jobs on the creative and really giving that brand

_{Carl Cahill (13:40.974)}
Mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (14:04.383)}
identity and design and translating that well. makes programs such as GrowWave more successful because it's more likely that someone loves that brand and they want to be a part of that brand and they want to be part of that loyalty journey with that brand. that's really cool. And also I think to your point, Carl, the points around like understanding and listening to the customer and everything like that. I think that's really cool. And what we always

have our CS team suggest to brands, particularly growing brands, is to really like, not just think of the reviews as like a conversion tool, but really think of them as a feedback tool. And, you know, don't take, if you get a couple of lower reviews, don't take that as an insult, take that as an opportunity and a learning opportunity to be able to one, turn that experience around if it was to do with a negative experience, or if it's customer feedback, maybe you're not.

_{Carl Cahill (14:44.813)}
Yeah.

^{Joe Fox (15:03.16)}
translating your product accurately to what the end is and using that. So I can definitely relate on a few of those points.

_{Carl Cahill (15:12.782)}
Yeah, 100%. And it's, I think it's easily forgotten. And I've worked with brands that say, we're doing all of this, but in truth, they're not. And I don't think they're listening hard enough a lot of the time. So I find that exciting. It's a great opportunity for creative to come in. like I say, naturally we're the ones that ask a lot of questions. We're curious and we want to fix those, those problems. And yeah, I think it's such a necessary part of the process.

^{Joe Fox (15:40.183)}
Absolutely. And Carl, I want to touch on this because we mentioned the knee-heart thing. I know you do a lot of fractional work with agencies and really get in and kind of act as the creative director or you have your team help out with those sort of things as well. So I'd love to, as I mentioned, a lot of the audience is our partner network. We've got a really, really solid partner network globally.

_{Carl Cahill (16:05.582)}
Mm-hmm.

^{Joe Fox (16:09.052)}
I'm very strong in the US and a lot of these people are, you know, like Neha, my friends and close acquaintances and everything like that. And thankfully they don't get sick of hearing my voice on the podcast. So they often check it out, but I'd love for you to maybe talk a little bit about what that looks like and what success looks like, you know, with these agencies in the hopes that they can work with you and, and, and yeah.

_{Carl Cahill (16:34.366)}
Yeah. Well, for me, like I I started out as a fractional creative director and I love working in our space and our industry. think agency is always fun. I love the pace of it. I love the diversity of projects that we get. So it's great. It's a great space.

So yeah, working with lots of agencies, which is great. You know, it's changing, like we know it's changing that the whole model and the space at the moment. one thing I'm finding is that a lot of agencies are, they're reducing their head count or they are...

you know, in favor of outsourcing, right? And that's the simplest way to put it. I like to think of myself as not necessarily a supplier or an outsource team. We really love to embed and integrate with other agencies because they do what they do really well. We love what we do. And it just feels really nice to fit ourselves in those different spaces. So a lot of the agencies that I work with and I've got a great team behind me and, know, in the UK, UK creatives, I love.

pushing the whole UK creativity side of things. But yeah, for some teams, they don't even have a single designer now. And so it's nice to go with them with a of like, we've got a creative department ready to step right in and...

and work within, you we've shaped everything around the agency model, like the needs of those agencies. But yeah, especially for like Neha and Roswell, I've been, you working with them on a fractional basis for a very long time now, and they've got their own creative team, which is great. And just love the work that we do for them, actually is fantastic for us. And yeah, I like to think that even from a UK creativity point of view, that there's a lot of value that we can bring across.

_{Carl Cahill (18:29.734)}
And yeah, and really what I aim to do is just help, know, that's really the way I really want to fit in. So definitely interested in working with much more partners, especially in the US as well as we've got quite a few already and expanding on that. But yeah, I'm here to help. anybody that kind of, you know, wants to push the creative button, I'm there to help push it, you know.

^{Joe Fox (18:56.178)}
love that. I love that. And I think it's like, to your point, I think there's so many, you it's really interesting and I'm sure you feel the same, but I feel that sometimes, you know, for me being from Australia, having spent a lot of time, you know, working with Scandinavian companies, working with global companies, working with companies in Asia Pacific, absorbing.

you know, kind of a lot of those different cultures and trends and seeing like, you know, where things are going in certain directions can be such a strong advantage when you're working with, you know, US companies or say, for example, you're a US company working with a UK company. sorry about that. The, sorry, I'll just pause this. I'll just clap here so that the editor can edit that out. I'm so sorry about that. I thought my phone was on silent.

The, sorry, I'll pick that up. So I think that translation sometimes of being able to have these different and different kind of cultures and different things and seeing what's emerging in different, you know, kind of cultural trends or business trends or anything like that can translate really well across different countries when you're looking at things and having a completely.

Not a completely new, like necessarily new set of eyes, but it's kind of like being able to look at something from maybe a slightly different cultural aspect can be incredibly helpful, I think. And I'm sure, you know, for with, with your side of things, Carl, on a design perspective, being able to, you know, see what's really pushing through in the U S pushing through in the UK, obviously you're staying abreast of everything from a design perspective globally and seeing what's the trends are coming through. I'm sure that just

add so much value to a brand or to an agency.

_{Carl Cahill (20:52.494)}
I think it's vital really, especially as a creative, is to draw in different experiences, environments. Like I was saying, I love the variety of work that we do, and I'm sure there are connections between projects that we've done where something has influenced something else, even if it's in a different industry or even a different, it's not necessarily a website, it be a project that's just something completely different from a creative point of view. All the time you're drawing these inspirations.

You know, I love telling my team, I want you guys to be an annoying toddler. You know, I want you to keep asking questions. Why, why, why, why just to kind of, you you, get, you get information that way. And, I think it's important to ask that across anything really. so yeah, I, I do love the job that I do because you do get to work with so many businesses and you get to sometimes it feels like you asked the stupid questions and, by asking the stupid questions, sometimes you get the right answers.

and I love that about what we do, just trying to understand and solve things, in a creative way. But, yeah, it's very important to draw those inspirations and, collect them from anywhere you can, you know, it's, it's, it's important. So I don't try to get siloed. I don't think it's important or good for our team to kind of like tune in and focus on one sector or one specific thing. It's drawing inspirations from lots of different places, test things, experiment.

Come up with new ideas, and I think that's the only way that you're to get there

^{Joe Fox (22:22.785)}
Yeah, I love that. That's such a cool approach and such a great philosophy. Carl, I'd be remiss to not talk about kind of what we're seeing at the moment, just with AI machine learning. I don't always like talking about it. It seems like it's kind of an obligatory thing that everyone's talking about though. And the reason I wanted to bring it up is because...

Yeah, I've spoken to like different agencies that might focus on things like SEO or ads or social or anything like that. But I haven't had a discussion with anyone of your caliber on a design front on what AI is doing currently to the industry where it's heading and all of those sorts of things. I personally think that the soul of design is not

translated in any way, shape or form in AI. That's my personal opinion. I just think it's incredibly difficult to get the same feeling from content, whether it's written or designed visually that I do. I feel like I have a very good eye and a very good, I can pick it out a mile away and it instantly, unfortunately puts up a bit of a barrier for me.

I do think it's becoming personally less and less. It's harder and harder to tell almost every day that goes on as these technologies improve. But I'd love to hear from someone of your caliber who's so heavily focused and a master in design. What do you see coming and what challenges are you facing with AI at the moment?

_{Carl Cahill (24:13.334)}
Yeah, I got lots on to add to this actually. so I, I think it's really, I think it's a great space that we're in. Right. And I think even now, like, the value of creativity has, it's been devalued a little bit, right? You know, people producing their own stuff and, but I think there's, there's a lot of lessons that being learned now. We've, we've had clients that have kind of slowly moved away from us in favor of doing things, things for themselves because they can.

And some of those are actually coming back because they are producing middle of road stuff and they're not happy with the value of what they're producing. And so the value of creativity is come back. I'm pretty optimistic about it. you know, I think this is a never in a better time really for creatives to step up and, you know, show the value of good creativity again. And,

^{Joe Fox (24:44.243)}
Yeah.

_{Carl Cahill (25:07.084)}
But in the same way, there's a lot of things that we've adapted and changed. Some of our processes and tools are much more faster, much more efficient, and much better as well. And I think I don't want to sacrifice good human thinking in our process and especially creative thinking. Getting to...

Getting to the answer quick. Like everyone is suddenly feels like everyone needs to do things quicker, but it's not necessarily true with everything, right? Let's sometimes slow down and let's embrace kind of opportunities, know, directions and experiments and other ways of doing things. Um, cause it's too easy to settle on one answer very quickly because we've chucked it in, um, no, no. Um, and it's telling us what we need to do. So we better do that.

I think, like I said, we've moulded and we've adapted and we're doing great things. It's helped a lot. But I think the value of creativity has never been a better time. I think, yeah, perhaps from maybe other agencies and peers I've been working with, I think we need to stop like commoditising what we do a little bit.

And yeah, just bring back some of that value because there's so much more that we can do. yeah, and I think we're getting there. think I've seen conversations shift a little bit. So I'm not worried. I think I'm more excited about it all. I think we can do some great things now. It's just, yeah, not sacrificing that human thinking, I think is the most important thing. A human loop all the time.

you know, let creatives be creatives. we're not defined by our tools, right? So, you know, we've been using Vigma for a long time. like, because I can't use that tool anymore, doesn't mean I'm not a creative anymore. I'm a creative thinker and I can visualize what I want. I can visualize what we need to do. Just using a different tool set is, know, creatives should be using different tools all the time. That's, that's the beauty about what we do. So yeah.

^{Joe Fox (26:54.993)}
Yes.

^{Joe Fox (27:16.199)}
I love that approach, Carl, and I agree. And I think we share the same thinking on that, that, you know, I don't think AI can ever replace that level of creativity. I just don't ever see it happening. I think that's what truly separates, you know, humans from robots, really. So that's my thoughts. And I'm really glad to hear that that is the approach that a lot of, you know, brains are having, is that they're kind of realizing.

we can't do everything with AI and we need creative and we need soul and we need, you know, these things for our brand. So it makes me happy to hear that. And I very much value your opinion there.

_{Carl Cahill (27:48.142)}
and you

_{Carl Cahill (27:58.728)}
that's all right. We've seen a lot of disasters out there and then with some of the brands that we work with, they've gone on to experiment and, but yeah, they come back and they all, or some of them are like, right, you we'd love to continue doing this ourselves. How can you best advise us and help us? And like that's fine as well. That's a conversation worth having because...

You know, ultimately I think, you know, brands are trying to think smarter and, and, you know, you know, bring things in house sometimes and that's, that's fine. I, I have, we support that. it's just making sure that there's no disconnect with like them producing stuff that not happy with, like this, there's always an opportunity to improve things, make things better and come up with new ideas. And I think we shouldn't just avoid that, you know, as being an opportunity. So yeah.

^{Joe Fox (28:48.822)}
Absolutely, absolutely. Carl, look, I've really enjoyed this conversation. The 30 minutes has absolutely flown by. feel like there's, you know, I really enjoy these conversations with creative deep thinkers such as yourself. So thank you so much. This has been personally really enjoyable for me. And I'm sure the audience has gained a lot of value out of this, you know, from your wealth of experience and everything that you're working on.

_{Carl Cahill (28:57.358)}
Everybody has.

^{Joe Fox (29:16.546)}
I know a lot of agencies will be reaching out to you because, you know, as we both spoke about earlier, Nihar's fantastic and Roswell's fantastic and the work you're doing with them is absolutely fantastic. So that's a testament in itself as well as obviously all the amazing work you and the team are doing. So thank you so much. I really appreciate your time, Carl. And lastly, where is the best place for people to connect with you?

to keep up to date with everything that you guys are doing and essentially to be able to connect with you if they would like to continue conversations.

_{Carl Cahill (29:54.604)}
Yeah, I mean, the regular channels, LinkedIn probably best for me. yeah, SaloCreative.uk is our site, but yeah, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm always there. yeah, definitely happy to speak to other agencies or, know, brands that certainly just want to amplify their creativity. That's what I'm here for. yeah, reach out.

^{Joe Fox (30:19.934)}
Awesome. Carl, thank you so much again. Really, really appreciate it, man. yeah, let's just definitely keep in touch. I'll be keeping a very close eye on the work you're doing and please let me know when you're in Austin next. It'd be fantastic to catch up in person. But thank you so much again for coming on the podcast.

_{Carl Cahill (30:38.82)}
Thank you, Joe. Yeah, it's been good fun. Appreciate it.

^{Joe Fox (30:42.209)}
Appreciate it. Audience, thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Retain, Grow, Thrive. Carl is an absolute sensational creative person. I really, really enjoyed that conversation. I think the work they're doing is incredible. If you're an agency that feels that they're lacking a little bit of that creativity with some of the brands they're working with, I really, really encourage you to reach out to Carl. His LinkedIn profile is linked in the show notes. And if you're a brand that's sort of sitting there questioning,

You know, should I be going down this route? Should I be going down this route? And you want some more creativity injected into your brand, please reach out as well. Thank you so much and I'll see you again on the next episode.

^{Joe Fox (31:28.275)}
Awesome, Kyle, that was great, man. Thank you so much. I really, really appreciate that.

_{Carl Cahill (31:33.698)}
Great, no thank you, was that right?

^{Joe Fox (31:36.277)}
No, no, no, that was