Right then, gather round. Let me tell you about the time I had a sales call with a bloke from Gloucestershire and nearly made a complete muppet of myself.
The discovery
So there I was, doing my usual pre-meeting LinkedIn stalking (sorry, "research"), when I spotted something peculiar. My prospect, let's call him Dave (because his name was Dave), had a Forest Green Rovers scarf in his profile picture.
For those of you who don't know, Forest Green Rovers is a football club from Nailsworth. Population: about 6,000 and a few dozen very committed vegans. They're the world's first UN-certified carbon-neutral football club. Yes, really. Their pitch is organic. The food is plant-based. Even the lawnmower runs on solar power, probably.
Now, I'm more of a "proper football" man myself, and by that I mean I support a team that has been disappointing me reliably for three decades. But Dave clearly loved his little green team, and I had 35 seconds and Wallogo at my disposal.
The master plan
I uploaded the FGR badge, picked a rather swanky office style with lots of greenery (seemed appropriate, eco-friendly and all that), and watched the AI do its thing. Seconds later I had a professional-looking office with the Forest Green Rovers badge on the wall as a proper 3D sign.
Green plants everywhere. A badge you could almost touch. It looked like the office of a vegan football superfan. Brilliant.
The call
The meeting started. Dave's camera flickered on: a standard home office, nice enough, IKEA bookshelf, the usual. Then MY camera turned on.
There was a pause. A very long pause.
"Mate," Dave said slowly, his eyes scanning my background, "are you... are you taking the mick?"
I put on my most innocent face. "Whatever do you mean, Dave? I just really appreciate sustainable football. Did you know their stadium has a bamboo structure?"
"It doesn't have a bamboo structure."
"Are you sure? I read that somewhere."
"I'm a season ticket holder. I think I'd know if I was sitting in bamboo."
The turnaround
After establishing that I was, in fact, a complete fraud who had spent about 35 seconds researching his beloved football club, Dave did something unexpected. He laughed. Properly laughed, the kind where you worry someone might pull a muscle.
"You absolute numpty," he said, wiping his eyes. "No one's EVER done that before. Most people don't even know we exist. They think I support Celtic because of the green."
And just like that, we were mates. The meeting that should have been a 30-minute product demo turned into an hour of football banter, a debate about whether vegan pie can ever truly be called pie, and, surprisingly, a signed deal.
The lesson
Here's the thing about making the effort: people notice. Even if your execution is a bit ham-fisted (or in FGR's case, plant-based-ham-fisted), the fact that you bothered means something.
Dave later told me he'd had three other sales calls that week. Generic backgrounds, generic pitches, forgettable conversations. But the idiot who had turned his office into a shrine to a League Two football club? Him he remembered.
Would I recommend it?
Look, I'm not saying you should pretend to support Forest Green Rovers. For one thing, you'll need to learn what "carbon-neutral hospitality" means, and honestly, that's a lot of homework. And use someone else's badge for a laugh with a fan, not as your company's logo.
But taking 30 seconds to make your background relevant to the person you're meeting? That's just good sense. And if you accidentally create something so ridiculous it becomes a talking point? Well, that's just marketing, innit.
The aftermath
Dave and I still keep in touch. He sends me updates when FGR wins (occasionally), and I reply with increasingly elaborate FGR-themed backgrounds. It's become a thing.
Last month I sent him one where the entire office was made of recycled cardboard. He said it was "a bit much." Coming from a man who voluntarily eats mushroom burgers at half-time, I took that as a compliment.
Up the Rovers. (I still don't really know what that means, but Dave assures me it's appropriate.)
Want your own slightly-too-enthusiastic prospect background? Wallogo makes one in about 8 seconds, and you can change it in plain words afterwards: plants, evening light, a photo in the frame. 5 free tries a day; see pricing. No knowledge of sustainable football required.