OP Ed: Where Are The Influencers? (Evan Davis We Miss You Already)

Our coverage of Futurebuild 2025 garnered over 10,000 views + downloads this March. The video footage reached 35 hours of watch time on LinkedIn.

But we're not influencers.

Oh no.

Evan Davis. He's an influencer.

Granted, he has a salaried BBC job he earns millions of views from. But he very briefly lent some of that stardust to the Heat Pump Federation (HPF) podcast.

It was originally small beer - maybe a few hundred views per video, but now, thanks to the pressure placed on Davis to withdraw from participating, because featuring on the podcast was deemed to be breaking guidelines on impartiality....

Happy Heat Pump Podcast

Evan Davis & Bean Beanland talk about anything and everything to do with Heat Pumps. It’s a UK objective to replace gas boilers over the coming two decades, with heat pumps being seen as the obvious alternative. It will be a massive project to change the way we heat our homes - we might be installing 25 million of these devices in the next three decades. So what are they? What do they cost? What are the positives and negatives of heat pumps? Always curious about the scale of the transition upon which we are set to embark, Evan & Bean will be looking at heat pumps in a dispassionate way.. hoping to inform you if you’re thinking of buying one, if you work in the industry, or if you are simply interested in the journey to net zero. Please do get in touch with any questions and we will try to answer them in future episodes happyheatpumppod@gmail.com or please leave a happy comment.

YouTube

So now, in it's death throes, like Lazarus, or bless him, in a post Easter rush the O.G. - JC, the podcast is reborn, gaining 200 views per hour right now.

Jeremy Clarkson - The Fossil Fuel Ad Man

So it seems a bit rich, that one of the BBC's most successful programmes boosted the profile of millions of British people's favourite, tubby, grumpy, uncle Jeremy Clarkson .

While he effectively boosted, advertised and promoted the fuel hungry car industry, to make bigger, better, faster cars. It took an assault on his producer to get him off. Not a contentious podcast.

So is promoting car use, and we're not suggesting cars are bad, they are good when they don't burn stuff in their engine. Anti establishment? Or pro?

Is Jeremy Clarkson the most unlikely target for conversion therapy to retrofit?

What if a crack team of beer swilling retrofit 'boyz' descended on the farm and sold up the idea that gaffs that didn't cost so much dollar where a wizard idea, and kids that could have enough lung capacity to beat the old duffer at the great game and some bright young researcher flirted with the GOAT of car use that retro-funk what-fit homes should be his next big catchphrase or something which isn't

"Driving this car is like sitting in a hot tub with your mother-in-law."

It's never going to happen.

The Fear Of Failure - Influencers That Bite

Holding 'truth to power' doesn't grab eyeballs.

Or does it.

[spoiler alert] Yes it does.

In a silent, dedicated campaign, former city trader, now tax activist Gary Stevenson has built a Youtube channel to become one of the fastest growing channels of 2025.

It will hit 10 million followers within the year at the current growth rate - that's almost a quarter of all working age adults in the UK.

Garys Economics

@garyseconomics is focused on teaching people about real world economics. Inequality Economist. Former Trader. Other Economists make predictions, but my ones are actually right.

YouTube

Gary is a geezer. He acknowledges his background, celebrates it, then moves forward with informing his audience with cast iron, experiential examples of why his catchphrase

"Tax Wealth Not Work"

celebrates the spread of capitalist success to everyone, not through trickle down economics, but just simple, direct taxation.

Gary has no fear of failure, because he in an unlikely turn of events, flipped the archetype of Evan Davis and his more middle class colleagues, Gary is from the East End, one of the lucky few.

But Gary does not live in fear of being de-platformed. Or losing his revenue streams - he's already a millionaire.

So where do these different examples leave retrofit? The bastard child of construction.

The A-Team

We already have admirable activists and centres of excellence for the spread of retrofit goodness. Sara Edmonds, and the tireless Rachel Owens, backed by Lynne Sullivan at the National Retrofit Hub (there's some men there too).

We have podcasts and activist groups like Ellora Coupes Her Own Space and Her Retrofit. Imandeep Kaur and the excellent Daniel Blyden at Civic Square.

No wait, we could carry on listing on the A-Teams. But this is about profile. And that is about money.

Collective Effort - Build Your Heroes

With common goals, and common aims, the product manufacturers, financiers and retrofit build companies need to coagulate into a scab of success that support the poultice of power.

To lance the boil of retrofit ignorance once and for all.

Simply put.

Put your egos aside and pay some dollar to make sponsor/ad/media money more accessible to the influencers out there who are already bending the public will. They are already doing the work. They just don't, right now, have the backing that Evan did, Jeremy does and Gary will have - to make the message heard.

And if you need an account manager - we'll do it for gummy bears. You know - the good ones.