All businesses have a story to tell. And for many businesses the story they are telling is uniquely theirs. But what happens when your business is looking after the legacy of a story that is over a century old and in many ways belongs to hundreds of thousands of people?
How do you tell that story?
Well that’s what Neil Reed does, he and his wife own Pooh Corner in the village where A.A Milne wrote his famous Winnie The Pooh books.
As well as housing a cosy tea room Pooh Corner also has a Pooh-seum with items telling the story of Winnie The Pooh.
In this episode Neil shares how he brings his passion and dedication to the business and helps even the most dedicated Pooh fans learn more about their favourite bear and his history.
Key Takeaways
- Educate Your Customers: Neil emphasizes the importance of educating visitors about the brand and giving them a memorable takeaway. Share elements of your brand story that customers may not know, just like the constantly updated Pooh-Seum at Pooh Corner.
- Listen to Your Customers: Remember, every customer has a story to tell. Take the time to listen to their why and make them feel seen and heard. Building these relationships can lead to repeat business and loyal customers.
- Brands Evolve: Neil starts every day thinking about how to move the business forward, whether it’s a small change or a significant investment. Keep evolving your brand to stay relevant and engaging for your audience.
Guest Information
NEIL REED Owner, Pooh Corner, Hartfield
Website: https://poohcorner.co.uk
Online shop: https://shop.poohcorner.co.uk
Email: info@poohcorner.co.uk
Tel: 01892 771155
Neil’s guitar company: https://www.fanoguitars.com
Email: info@fanoguitars.com
Your host:
KATIE FLAMMAN (she/her) – Voiceover Artist, Presenter, Announcer, Podcaster, Founder of Storyteller Media.
Website: www.katieflamman.co.uk
Podcast: https://katieflamman.co.uk/the-storytelling-for-business-podcast/
Voiceover services: https://katieflamman.co.uk/voiceover-services/explainer-videos/
Presenting services: https://katieflamman.co.uk/presenting/
Get in touch for a FREE demo read of your script:
Email: katie@katieflamman.co.uk
Phone: +44 (0)1892 249 001
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Transcript
“Hello, and welcome to Storytelling For Business, the podcast that helps you build better relationships with your customers by telling stories they can’t wait to hear. I’m Katie Flamman. I’m a voiceover artist specializing in corporate storytelling.
Whether you’re a startup or a long-established brand, your business will have a story, and it’s important to share it because it’s a way for potential clients to get to know you, your values and your purpose. But what if the brand you’re responsible for and its story are already world famous with a hundred years of history? How do you respect that legacy whilst at the same time keeping things fresh and interesting?
Today’s episode has the answers. Who’s the most famous bear on the planet? Well, I’m pretty sure it’s Winnie The Pooh.
The Pooh bear stories were written in the 1920s by AA Milne, as you probably know. Over the past hundred years, millions of people all over the world have fallen in love with the bear of very little brain. And Pooh is big business.
The Winnie The Pooh brand is worth billions of dollars from global licensing agreements, movies, merch and of course the books. So Winnie The Pooh pretty much embodies the concept of storytelling for business. Now, don’t get your hopes up.
I’m not interviewing actual Pooh Bear. But today’s guest is a pretty close second because Neil Reed and his wife, Sam, own Pooh Corner in Sussex, just a few miles down the road from my recording studio here. Pooh Corner is in the village of Hartfield, the same village where AA Milne wrote those famous books.
The building dates back to the 1700s, but nowadays it houses a magnificent gift shop, cosy tea room and educational Poohseum, dedicated to the life and works of AA Milne and illustrator Ernest Shepard. And it’s stuffed full of all kinds of weird and wonderful Pooh Bear memorabilia. I’m so happy you’re here, Neil.
Welcome to the podcast.
Well, thank you so much. It’s really exciting. I feel very privileged to be part of it.
You and I were at school together, so we’ve known each other quite a long time.
We got that out of the way quickly, did we? The reality is we’ve known each other for over 30 years now. Surely, it’s scary, isn’t it?
It’s like 10 or something.
I’m sorry. Are you telling people you’re only 30 anyway? All bad news, everyone.
Back then, did you ever think Winnie The Pooh was going to come into your life in such a massive way?
No, Winnie The Pooh was never going to play a big part in my life. As a child, I had a Winnie The Pooh nightlight, and I know that the books were read to me. But it was really more about falling in love with it as an adult.
Once I’d actually bought the property, that really made the biggest change when I understood that Winnie The Pooh has a million layers. And it isn’t just about a boy who went onto the forest with his teddy bears. It’s got very little to do with that, in fact.
So it’s five years since you and Sam took on Pooh Corner. How did it come about?
By accident, really, I was in a previous life. I spent many years in the music business. I learned how to tell the story of of why people needed a band when they didn’t.
And that’s essentially what you do in the music business. You convince people that they need that band in their life, even though they don’t. Or they do, depending on how their emotional state is.
That’s normally how the music process works or the visual appeal. I took those skill sets into marketing where I was working for big, big brands, car companies, international sports teams, where we were helping them tell their story, but actually make it more interesting. And actually, the Pooh Corner thing came about simply because I was with a client who was trying to sell the business one day as a going concern.
And they had 50 families through the door that all fell in love with the idea of being responsible for the for the well-being of Winnie The Pooh in the village where the books were written. And it actually it didn’t make any financial sense for them to make it survivable. And to me, that was like a great big flag going, give it a go, give it a go.
If anybody can do it, you can. Which sounds cocky and confident, but I know I’m just a little bit silly. And it actually was one of those things where I thought it is if it’s going to be that hard that’s the challenge I need right now.
And that’s why we took the journey on.
And any significant milestones along the way? I mean, taking on a tea shop just before Covid wasn’t very easy, right? And it’s a very old building.
The positive thing is I still do have other business interests. The one thing we always explain to people is my wife and I have never taken a single penny out of the business in five years. Everything that this place makes goes into the renovation of the property because it is very old and the planning for it for the future.
So, you know, I’m sitting here at the moment in our Poohseum and all the proceeds from the business that we have left over goes into acquiring things that allow us to continue to educate and tell the story. Because without actually the reason the business wasn’t working historically is it never found a way of telling the story of Winnie The Pooh in the way that helped educate people as to why it’s so important.
And you said there are many layers to it. And I mean, that’s true, isn’t it? You’ve got the history of the building and the author and the family.
And then you’ve got the actual storybooks. And then you’ve got the kind of whole disnification of Winnie The Pooh. So, I mean, when people come to Pooh Corner, is there one overriding thing that they’re attracted to?
There’s two things that make me still chuckle today five years on. One is the fact that there are people that absolutely love EH. Shepherd’s illustrations and those that love AA Milne’s writing.
And there’s a big gap between the two. It’s almost like it should be a debate as to which one was more important. And actually, they should be equaled out by now.
We should understand that without the pairing, and this is the bit that it’s always easy to get caught up on, without the pairing of these two people at that particular time with this particular story, we wouldn’t be talking about it now. And then you’ve got people that absolutely have a fear of Disney as a going concern. And actually, without Disney, we don’t know where this would be.
And we’re very, very proactive on both sides because what AA Milne and the H. Shepherd did was absolutely beautiful. There’s actually a player in the middle, and this is where the layers come in.
You know, you’ve got the AA Milne and you’ve got Disney, and they’re just the icing on the cake. They’re just the two bits that finish off the story. In between that, you’ve got a million other names and a million other people.
You’ve got Harry Colburn, who is a man from Liverpool who basically went to Canada to train to be a vet. Whilst he was there, the First World War broke out and he brought a black bear cub for $20 at a train station in Canada, and he brought it to London Zoo because it wouldn’t be safe on the front line. Had that black bear cub not gone to London Zoo, there wouldn’t be a Winnie The Pooh.
There’s a million other pieces that play a part in the Winnie The Pooh story that people don’t know about. The Disneyfication is a fascinating one in the fact that Disney has created this world and created the animations and then we do have a lot of people that arrive here not realizing that Christopher Robin Milne was in fact a real person. He’s not a character.
He’s a real person that had a real life and actually struggled with the whole process of fame. We try to explain to people that this young boy, his father writes some stories with him as the catalyst. They’re not necessarily for him, but the problem with by using your son as a catalyst and actually using his real name in the book, which nobody had done before, so there’s no right or wrong.
But what that did was then create a problem in the fact that he was never asked about him. He grew up being asked about the character in the book. And that’s very hard for a child, you know, that where there’s no escape for the for the boy at that stage.
And it took him a long time to feel like he could be himself rather than be this this character in the book. And it really just came down to a fact that where where he had the biggest problem was that nobody really nobody really wanted to get to know him. It was a very, very solitary life in that respect.
And he hid from life for many years, really not until the passing of his parents. Did he really start to find any joy in the fact of who he was? Winnie The Pooh was born of war.
So when we have people that come in here and they want to understand what Winnie The Pooh is about, and our thing here is to ensure that we explain the stories behind the story. People have already read the story when they arrive, and our job is to tell the stories behind the story. So it’s looking at the characters.
Why did AA Milne create the characters in the way that he did? Because they weren’t necessarily how Christopher played with them. Christopher would have been a young child.
He wouldn’t have made owl or rabbit the characters they are. That was all part of Milne’s creation. And that is always a fascinating thing to look at.
Everybody knows an owl, and everybody knows a rabbit, but you’re right. They’re quite intellectual and OCD kind of characters, aren’t they? They’re not how a little kid would play.
You’re completely right.
And this is where you’ve absolutely hit the nail on the head, because the way we can see it now and the way we’re learning it now is there’s a lot of talk about they are various different characterizations, but in fact, they were men that Milne fought with during the war. And these were people that then he could characterize. So from what we understand, you know, Piglet was the design of a soldier that wouldn’t give up rations.
Owl was a sergeant who would happily get men motivated to go over the front line. And we actually have an amazing story one day. And this is where the stories come the other way as well.
There’s a 93 year old lady, Margaret, delightful lady lives in the village. And she was actually linked to the family and knew them while they were here. And she told us about the many occasions.
And she said, Milne said to her one day, he said, what nobody understands or what nobody ever asked about is the heffalump. You’ve got this mythical creature that they’re all afraid of because they haven’t seen it. So they set a trap, they trap it, and then they realized that they could be friends with it.
Now, that’s when Milne explained to Margaret that to him, that was the German soldier, because he every time he met one, he didn’t dislike them. And these are the depths of the story and the craft and what he was trying to put across. But it was actually these books are purely based on him dealing with his own post-traumatic stress.
You know, the characterizations and the dealing with how they deal with problems without fighting and all these things. This is what the man was trying to write. And then you see it as an adult and understand that really, it was just a plea for pacifism in a different form.
And, and, whoa, okay, so, so I think the point here is that everybody is going to get something different from the whole Winnie The Pooh brand. You get the people who are really interested in the Milne story, but then you get the people that just love Winnie The Pooh and all the cutesy stuff. I mean, you get a lot of Japanese tourists, for instance, don’t you, coming into Pooh Corner?
We do. So a good example is we had a conversation with a young Japanese man not too long ago, “and he explained that the reason that it’s so popular, and so it is bringing it straight back to this topic, the reason it’s so popular there, it’s about a group of people that solve problems without conflict. And that’s the thing that they are more focused on than anything else as a country and they’re conditioned to find those solutions.
So Winnie The Pooh is huge in their community and their environment simply because of the way that, A, it’s classed as being great historical literature. It’s one of those things where in the UK we see it as, we’re very good in the UK of seeing whatever we do as just being novel and fun and something. Whereas to the rest of the world, some of the things that we’ve outputted, we completely missed the point of ourselves and the rest of the world gets it.
And Winnie The Pooh is one of them. But part of the role of being responsible here, or responsible for, for the survival and the life and the education of AA Milne and Winnie The Pooh is that we have to gauge that person that walks through the door as soon as they walk through the door. And you can have a 60 year old adult who’s still got the copy that their mother bought them.
You can have a 90 year old person who remembers when it was still very current and very new and fresh and around. You’ve got people that remember when the first film came out. So, you’ve got generation after generation after generation of people who have used Milne’s words and Shepard’s drawings as part of their life.
No different than somebody would an album or something. So you have to learn very quickly about who they are and why they’re associated with it. And some of the tales are so sad.
Every year we have a family who turn up because they had a young child pass away and part of the child’s room was Winnie or the child’s room was Winnie The Pooh. And this is a pilgrimage on the anniversary when they lost their child. You’ve got many people that get engaged down at Pooh Bridge, so it becomes a pilgrimage for them every year because they still talk to each other and go on holiday.
All those exciting things.
So Pooh Bridge, just stop a minute. Stop a minute. Tell everybody about Pooh Bridge.
Yeah, sorry. Pooh Bridge is a wonderful bridge that was built over a hundred years ago. It’s now on its X, Y generation of bridges, but the location itself is such a beautiful spot and it is where AA Milne was trying to just create something that was a fun game.
So Winnie The Pooh and Piglet threw a pine cone over the side of the bridge, then ran to the other side to see which pine cone got there first. Hence the game of Pooh Sticks was created and here we are nearly 100 years on and it’s a pilgrimage for people all over the world to come to this bridge and play Pooh Sticks. So they’ll grab a stick and they’ll throw it over the side and they’ll run to the other side and they will just laugh.
But it is one of those things where you’ve got a wonderful scenario where you’ve got the ability to write about something so simple, but 100 years on people are still doing it. And that’s special in the form of context of writing.
Yeah, it’s very magical. People can walk to Pooh Bridge, can’t they, and then come back and have a cream tea at Pooh Corner and have the full experience.
I think that coming back to your whole logic with the storytelling for business and all those things, for us, it’s a case of we have a direct requirement here to make sure that people, if they’re going to travel 7000 miles, we want them to have a takeaway, not just a bite to eat and a teddy bear. What we want them to do is to learn something about the journey of these amazing people. And I didn’t get to meet anybody.
I’m of a generation that’s too young where I didn’t meet Milne Shepard or Christopher or anybody like that. And sadly, there aren’t that many or there are no descendants along the Milne side. We’ve met a couple of different relatives and other people linked to them in other ways.
And that’s always a joy. But the truth is, every single person that walks through the door has a different reason to come here. Some are just casual where they just want some food and we’ll always look after them and we’ll actually try to educate them as well.
And so many come out feeling like it was a blessed experience because it was so much bigger than they expected it to be, if that makes sense. And that’s a win because what we’ve essentially done is won a fan for life because they realize how much energy and passion we put into the storytelling of the business. The other side of it is that when you have somebody walk through the door and realize that this is something that for them they may have saved up for two or three years.
They may have started the journey as a plan with somebody else but arrived alone. They may have had major, major health care issues or are going through major health care issues. Winnie The Pooh is something that binds these people and it holds them in a way that very few books would.
I’m not going to say no other book would but very few books would. And it’s fascinating to then learn about these people because for us it’s a life journey in learning about their stories. And that’s the beauty of the cyclical thing of actually having something that is forward facing and dealing direct with the public rather than, as you’ve spoke to many people about, is the process of assuming that you’re marketing to a certain group or you’re telling a story for a certain group.
We are actually in this rare position where we get to do it direct to them and in such a beautiful way.
What a lovely answer. Gosh, quite emotional listening to you talking there. That was lovely.
So I’ve got two more questions, but I just wanted to ask you about this, the concept of the brand. Some people might think the Winnie The Pooh brand is so famous, you probably wouldn’t actually need to do anything, do any kind of marketing. People are going to come anyway.
And I was looking up quotes about branding and Richard Branson said that branding demands commitment to continual reinvention. And I mean, I just wanted to know whether that resonates with you in terms of this epic brand that you’ve inherited, but it is 100 years old.
I’ve worked on the theory that I’ve had to reinvent myself 10 times through my working career. And that’s where it stems from, is the fact that, for example, Pooh Corner in January is getting a whole, although we invested only three years ago into this museum and started building it from there, we’re now spending a substantial amount of the money that we’ve earned this year on regenerating it so we can put so much more stuff in that we’ve acquired over the last two years that we just don’t have space for. And you have to constantly look at ways of challenging what would be very easy to be something that you just sit back and enjoy.
I still long for the day where I can take a pound out of the business and say, I’ve earned something from it, but also there’s such a joy of coming down and going, look at that. And you have to look at a business, I guess, especially one like this, and I’m still very emotionally attached, but it’s a living, breathing organism. And you have 20 people that rely on you to get up every morning.
And that’s the thing. It costs a lot of money to run somewhere like Pooh Corner. It’s not a sleepy little tea shop.
It’s actually a very, very popular worldwide location. There’s so many photographs of Pooh Corner on the planet. It’s silly.
And that’s strange because it’s my home. At first, I thought I’d be scared by it, but actually I love it. The nice thing about it is, and to come back to your question, is that if you don’t wake up in the morning and think, how can I make this better?
I think you’ve got to have a day off. You have to be able to get up and go, what can I do today that will… Even if it’s something small, you always need to think about what you’re doing to make your business better and how you can make the experience for the customer better.
And if you can’t do that, some days we might just try three different jams and decide to change different jam. But you know what? That’s still something that moves the business forward.
Other days, we’ll invest 30,000 pounds in a set of books that if we don’t buy them, they’ll be lost forever in a private collection. So every day is different. And you never know what you’re going to do in a weird kind of way.
This morning, while I was setting up for this podcast, two men were knocking on the window, which is quite unnerving sometimes. And they were actually from Playmobil. And we sell Winnie The Pooh Playmobil product.
And they were passing and just wanted to see if they could help. And they’ve now set up a display that we didn’t have yesterday that looks amazing. And these are the kind of things where you think, wow, you know, had I not got up at that time and started work early and cracked on with my day and done these things, I wouldn’t have seen them because they wouldn’t have been here.
But they’ve actually added value to the business. And I love that. I love the fact that every day is an adventure.
Back to the Branson thing. I think reinvention is crucial. Although it’s 100 years old, what we’re now looking at doing is how we can move it into the future for us.
And that will make a big difference.
So I always end the podcast with this question. What does your story look like, your story, for the next five years or so?
I think you have to challenge yourself every day, which is what I do. I started a business with literally one pound in 2012 and made that hugely successful in the world of marketing. In 2006, I started a music production company that I floated on the stock market in 2008.
All these journeys are things that I had no idea where I was going. Because I think if you plan for your future, I think it limits the opportunities that lay ahead. So I’m a little bit of a loose cannon, but I also like the challenge of a business that isn’t working and finding ways to make it working.
So, you know, as things stand today, I work for a few top end brands doing video content. But I also own a guitar company that’s based in America. And we have amazing bands that play our guitars from the 1975 to the Kings of Leon.
And that in itself is creating a story. Every day you have to create a new story on that to make it interesting. And that’s hard because, strangely enough, that kind of world doesn’t move as quickly as, say, something like Pooh Corner.
Because once you’ve set a brand up and you’re making a specific product that’s a high end thing, you can’t change it quickly. It’s like a big boat. It takes a long time to steer.
Whereas Pooh Corner is a delight where you can get up every single day and go, right, we’re going to we’re going to take a quick left here. And then it’s something new for people. You know, we actually have displays here we change every single month.
So when people turn up, there’s a new display and there’s a new thing. And that means that we get a lot of repeat business in other in other ways. You can’t do that in business.
You just it just doesn’t work. But I’d go as far to say, what does what does it look like when I turn 50 in January? I’ve I’ve orchestrated my whole life around the fact that I left school with nothing.
I’ve I’ve made everything on my own terms. And if I get all this right, I’ve retired at 60. So I’ve got 10 years worth of work left.
And actually, it’s heading towards that way. However, I have no intention of giving up Pooh Corner. Pooh Corner is the thing that is a holistic journey.
It’s it’s it’s the most beautiful thing that you could get to do in your life that doesn’t require anything other than just putting out a lot of love to the world.
Love that. Well, I think that’s a brilliant place to end. And if you would like to visit Pooh Corner or get in touch with Neil, all the contact details and the address and the website details you need are all in the show notes.
And that’s it, Neil. Thank you so much for being my guest today. Well, who would have thought a chat about a kid’s book could produce so much grown up content?
Here are my key takeaways. One, educate your customers about your brand. Even if they think they know your story, keep sharing elements they may not know.
Remember, Neil said the Poohseum was constantly being updated to display more elements of the Winnie The Pooh story. He talked about the responsibility he felt to educate visitors and give them a memorable takeaway, and he described it as the story behind the story. You can do that too.
Two, if your business is customer facing, you have a great opportunity to create relationships by sharing stories with your clients, not just telling your story, but listening to theirs. Neil said everyone who visits Pooh Corner has a story to tell about what Winnie The Pooh means to them. There’s a why behind every visit.
So listen to your customers. Find out their why. They’ll be grateful.
They’ll feel seen and heard. And that means they’ll probably be back. Three, brands evolve.
As Richard Branson put it, branding is about continual reinvention. The Winnie The Pooh brand is over 100 years old, but the business needs to be up to the minute. Neil said he starts every day thinking, what can I do to move the business forward?
Whether that’s a tiny change like a new jam, a massive investment like buying something for the Poohseum, or a lucky break like an unexpected toy rep turning up with a new display. If you’re able to be agile and make a quick change within your business to improve things, just do it. Four, keep feeling the love for your business.
Neil has various companies on the go and wants to retire at 60, but he made it clear that doesn’t include Pooh Corner. It’s his business, but it’s also a passion project. Neil said running Pooh Corner was a holistic journey and a beautiful thing, which enabled him and his team to put love into the world.
His business is enriching lives, his life and others. And there’s a goal for us all. Oh, that all got a bit deep, didn’t it?
If you’re a Winnie The Pooh fan, make a date to visit Pooh Corner this year. It’s really lovely. And if you can’t go in person, check out their online shop.
The website details are in the show notes. Coming up in our next episode:
“I’m a 38 year old woman with tattoos pretty much everywhere visible and some places that aren’t usually visible. I’ve got piercings, three nose rings, lip piercing, like massive stretched ears. So I’m not what people expect in the professional world.
I’m not embarrassed to be me and sod the people that don’t like me. And that helped. That helped a huge amount because people felt that they could relate to the different parts of my story.”
The queen of LinkedIn, Leah Turner, shares how being an excellent writer and being herself led to storytelling success. It’s a cracking interview and it’s lined up for you and ready to go now. But for now, I’m off for a little smackerel of something.
See you next time. I’m Katie Flamman, and this is Storytelling For Business.”
From Storytelling For Business: Legacy: Winnie The Pooh, 29 Feb 2024
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