Questions and answers

Steven Millman predicts people will build AI personas of themselves that follow them across devices, recommend news and products, and filter what reaches them. Dom notes this flips marketing from push to pull. Both raise the question of how content will make money, since answer engines and assistants would bypass the sites that currently earn from search and advertising. Hear the full discussion in episode 49

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) would match or exceed humans across the broad range of cognitive tasks, with perfect recall and far more data, and could be told to build better versions of itself. Artificial superintelligence would be thousands or millions of times smarter than humans and think in ways we cannot comprehend. Steven Millman expects AGI within about ten years, though he stresses it would be a tool with no feelings, and ethics lie with the people who build it. Hear the full discussion in episode 79

Steven Millman explains that ordinary computers use binary transistors that are either on or off, while quantum computers use qubits at the atomic scale that can exist in more than two states, potentially making them many orders of magnitude faster. Experts he speaks to expect real quantum computers in three to five years, probably rented like cloud services. They would let AI run massive computations fast enough to make artificial general intelligence practical. Hear the full discussion in episode 78

Subx CEO Jonathan Harris argues most marketing AI speeds up existing processes rather than replacing them, like building faster horses while someone else builds a car. Dynata's Steven Millman adds that you can only build the car once the equivalent of the internal combustion engine exists, and that many companies use AI as a performative 'machine that goes bing'. Both say the goal should be the outcome, such as the right ad to the right person at the right time, not optimising each waypoint. Hear the full discussion in episode 48

Dynata's Steven Millman describes two meanings. One is limiting the data a model is trained on, such as your own technical documentation, so it is less likely to stray, hallucinate or repeat bias from the open internet. The other is locking down your own instance so outside changes to the model cannot break your applications and your private or personal data never goes back to the model's owner. Hear the full discussion in episode 26

No. Steven's rule is 'it's a language model, stupid': LLMs are not maths models and are poor at forecasting. The AI doing most of the practical marketing work today is predictive analytics, recommendation systems, marketing automation and machine learning clustering, which use historical data to find patterns humans might miss. Hear the full discussion in episode 26

Jonathan says AI is essentially maths that transforms data, so poor inputs produce poor outputs. Marketing data comes from many channels and teams with competing objectives, no single point of decision and no view of cause and effect, so its quality is inconsistent. Steven warns about 'synthetic data' tools that generate extra survey responses resembling the ones you have, which add no real representativeness. Hear the full discussion in episode 48

Steven thinks not in time: laws are written by people who do not fully understand the technology and lag years behind it. He says the EU AI Act largely addresses threats from three years earlier, such as facial recognition. Jonathan uses GDPR as an example of a well-meant law that has not made people feel their data is protected, and predicts the data will ultimately win over the law. Hear the full discussion in episode 49

Steven expects AI to move from generating rough creative prompts, which make up about 40% of current agency AI use, to producing usable creative, possibly generated live around themes humans set. Real-time processing could enable hyper-personalisation and continuous rather than periodic market research. Dom notes quantum computing may also be far more energy efficient, but stresses that marketers must protect customer privacy and trust. Hear the full discussion in episode 78

Steven says Sam Altman's claim that AI could do most of what marketers do sounds high but is not out of the ballpark once AGI arrives, because most time in knowledge businesses goes on editing, admin and other non-creative tasks. He worries safety work is being cut as AI companies race each other, and that AI's lack of transparency will help bad actors get around regulation. He sees the film WALL-E, where AI takes away human agency, as a more realistic risk than Terminator. Hear the full discussion in episode 79

Jonathan advises removing subjective, business-centred barriers from the customer journey, such as arbitrarily gated content, so data reflects real customer behaviour rather than internal bias. Steven says to choose the right tool rather than the newest: machine learning is well suited to testable problems like conversion optimisation, while generative AI is harder to validate. Jonathan's team chose reinforcement learning for recommendations because it is dynamic and has a feedback loop. Hear the full discussion in episode 49

Jonathan is investing in the idea that within about five years websites and apps may not exist in their current form. Chat-style interfaces let people describe the outcome they want, such as the right barbecue for their family and location, making the presentation layer irrelevant. This would also give marketers a far deeper understanding of customers than inferring intent from page visits, where typical conversion rates are only 1% to 2%. Hear the full discussion in episode 48

Steven thinks it will look more like the dotcom boom than a wave of consolidation. Big players like Publicis are investing heavily, mostly to find new uses for off-the-shelf tools rather than build their own models, but AI also lets small firms do what big firms can at low cost. Dom describes a CMO who gave her team five hours to find useful AI tools, leading to 17 adoptions, one of which saved £40,000 from her annual budget in the first week. Hear the full discussion in episode 78

Steven says AI is good at 'columns, not rows': predicting how rich, real personas would answer new questions, but poor at inventing entirely synthetic respondents. That could let researchers run shorter surveys, get higher response rates and extrapolate the rest, or estimate answers to questions they forgot to ask. Real survey work will still be needed, because AI cannot read minds and depends on recent, high-quality data. Hear the full discussion in episode 79

Steven recommends clear objectives that every team member can state in one sentence, genuinely cross-functional teams rather than blind handoffs, shared data access and mutual education between data scientists and marketers. Build prototypes and get feedback in loops rather than building the whole thing first, keep privacy and ethics in view throughout, and celebrate progress along the way. Hear the full discussion in episode 26

Richard O'Connor, CEO of B2B Marketing, explains it is a live benchmarking dashboard for B2B marketers, built from an established market research firm's data topped up by members through a 'give to get' model. It tracks three areas: budget, spend and ROI; customer growth and attrition; and resourcing and organisational structure. Members can compare their own metrics with the global aggregate, with sector and regional splits. Hear the full discussion in episode 33

Adrian Coxon argues that when you compete against better-known brands, only product or service can set you apart. His team includes a research analyst who holds accounts with every competitor to monitor their communications, service and roadmaps, and tracks ideas from fintech that could cross over. He sees marketing as the start-up inside the company: at Exante it adopted AI-generated imagery for daily market reports two years before AI became the talk of the industry. Hear the full discussion in episode 53

Geraldine Tenton, formerly of IBM, says a funnel can look perfect at every stage yet still end with a dissatisfied customer or a deal lost to pricing. She argues the real goal is long-term growth from happy customers, measured by lower churn, longer tenure and greater share of wallet. At IBM she used Net Promoter Score across more than 30 touchpoints, with a culture of resolving issues within 24 hours. Hear the full discussion in episode 56

Geraldine Tenton says it often comes down to pay: if sales and marketing have different targets and rewards, they end up competing rather than serving the customer. Customers see one company and expect a consistent experience. She argues every function, from marketing to tech support, should share the same dashboards and be aligned to the goal of client satisfaction. Hear the full discussion in episode 57

Matt Dixon's team analysed 2.5 million recorded sales calls and found 40% to 60% of qualified pipeline is lost to no decision, and some SaaS firms now report 70% to 80%. Only 44% of those losses come from customers preferring the status quo. The other 56% come from customer indecision: buyers who want to buy but fear what might go wrong. Hear the full discussion in episode 44

Matt Dixon's JOLT playbook for overcoming customer indecision has four steps: Judge the level of indecision, Offer your recommendation, Limit the exploration, and Take risk off the table. It was built by studying what top-performing salespeople naturally did with buyers who were sold on changing but afraid of messing up. One way to judge indecision is 'pings and echoes': gently naming a fear the buyer might have so they can confirm or correct it. Hear the full discussion in episode 45

Year on year, marketing budgets rose 3% and the share of revenue marketing is responsible for rose 8%, which Richard reads as cautious optimism and a sign marketers are becoming more commercial. Spend grew in market research, social media marketing, demand generation and events, while external spend on brand fell slightly, suggesting firms outsource short-term work and keep long-term brand work in house. Hear the full discussion in episode 33

FOMO, the fear of missing out, helps get customers to decide they need to change. But once they are intellectually sold, FOMU, the fear of messing up, takes over. This reflects the omission bias: people fear losses they personally cause far more than losses from doing nothing, and nobody gets fired for keeping the status quo. Matt found that dialling up FOMO with urgency, fear or discounts at this late stage actually increases the chance of losing to no decision. Hear the full discussion in episode 44

Many options help attract buyers early, but too many choices near the decision cause procrastination and regret. Matt compares good salespeople to a waiter who recommends a favourite dish, which creates a 'delegation effect' where the burden of the choice is shared. Marketing can help by creating pre-configured packages for different segments so sellers can say 'look at these three, not all twenty'. Hear the full discussion in episode 45

Geraldine starts with the last conversion point, because filling the top of the funnel with paid media is expensive. She checks whether weak conversion stems from enablement, sales and marketing alignment, handover or unrecognised group buying, and only adds more at the top once the funnel works. Dom notes that with poor conversion rates, the audience needed at the top can exceed the total market. Hear the full discussion in episode 56

Diamond teams are cross-functional teams built around the customer, bringing together the best people from each discipline, such as content, data and sales, to work in an agile way. They adjust campaigns and execution quickly while members stay connected to their home discipline so learning spreads between teams. Geraldine says this model is easier to adopt than people think, though it requires accepting some uncertainty. Hear the full discussion in episode 57

Rather than a costly sponsorship like Manchester United, Adrian asks local sales teams what matters to customers in each market; in Latvia that led to a local ice hockey club. Local deals cost far less and make a real difference to communities, but need more people to activate them well. He argues audiences increasingly see through big-money sponsorship and respond to brands that do real, local good. Hear the full discussion in episode 53

Top sellers set expectations below splashy case study results, pointing to a floor that most customers reach so the buyer can over-deliver. They add safety nets such as some professional services support, a mutual value plan with milestones and owners agreed before signing, and advising customers to start smaller and expand later. Matt and Dom also argue that opt-out guarantees show confidence in the product. Hear the full discussion in episode 45

Matt's research found only 13% of buyers are truly decisive, even though nearly all senior buyers see themselves that way. Indecision stems from personality, from worries about the decision itself (choosing the right configuration, doing enough research, and whether promised results will arrive), and from context such as baggage from past failed purchases or budget pressure. Dom argues marketing can help reduce FOMU through education, social proof and consultative support. Hear the full discussion in episode 44

When lockdown removed about half of the planned campaign execution, Geraldine's team 'broke the analytics', recognising past conversion data could not predict the future. Rather than swapping events for webcasts, they recreated a pop-up event experience in a simple 2D metaverse, dropping headsets to keep it easy to use, and refined it daily based on client feedback. She sees digital now handling more of the journey, while face-to-face community building is growing. Hear the full discussion in episode 57

Geraldine says not all leads are equal: what a prospect did, such as writing in, using live chat, attending an event or downloading a white paper, changes the odds of conversion and who should follow up. During COVID her team recreated face-to-face moments at virtual events by texting sellers when their client was engaging with specific content, so they could join the conversation at the right moment. Hear the full discussion in episode 56

Adrian says brands that engage honestly with customers are forgiven when they make mistakes. He cites Abel & Cole, which explains where its food comes from, owns its errors and adds a small gift after a problem, keeping him as a customer for about 20 years. Dom adds that an under-resourced, short-term marketing function builds a brand on sand, while properly resourced marketing creates substance that holds up when things go wrong. Hear the full discussion in episode 53

Average customer tenure among the mostly large organisations surveyed dropped from eleven years to seven, which Richard links to more competition and shopping around, and Dom links to the rise of procurement. Centralised headcount grew 7%, overall marketing team headcount rose around 20% after cuts the previous year, and team attrition fell by 10 points to about 5%. Hear the full discussion in episode 33

Dom Hawes argues B2B is not one sector or market, so it cannot be judged as a whole: expertise in animal health pharmaceuticals says little about marketing pensions. He says the true test of marketing is whether the business succeeds and creates value. Lombard International, which markets wealth solutions through banks, advisers and consultancies in many regulated markets, shows how complex and skilled business marketing can be. Hear the full discussion in episode 74

Sandra Vollrath, who is Lean Six Sigma trained, says process audits almost always find the same seven: underused systems, brand risk, strategy misalignment, unnecessary meetings, interruptions, manual reporting, and lag while waiting for approvals. Brand risk includes different team members using different tones or outdated logos. She recommends service level agreements for approvals, for example 24 to 48 hours, and asking whether everyone invited to a meeting really needs to be there. Hear the full discussion in episode 82

Maya Price, SAP's global head of field marketing events, says people no longer attend just because an event is in person. Customers need permission and must bring value back, so an event must balance an enjoyable, creative experience with an agenda that gives attendees a clear takeaway. A cool venue or famous speaker is no longer enough on its own. Hear the full discussion in episode 66

IBM's Scott Stockwell describes agile as a set of principles, practices and tools built around short, time-boxed sprints with a review at the end of each. It keeps two things in focus: value to the customer and constant improvement. Asking what the customer values stops teams doing low-value work, and frequent reviews remove friction from the next cycle. Hear the full discussion in episode 27

Duncan Daines, head of engagement at Gama Aviation, says much of the agency model depends on long-tail production, which in-house teams can often do themselves or buy as flexible manpower. What he values is agencies showing him what he cannot see: macro trends, risks and ideas from other industries. Rachel Fairley adds that clients should stop over-valuing category expertise and ask agencies how they solve problems like theirs elsewhere. Hear the full discussion in episode 62

Andrea Clatworthy, Fujitsu's head of Europe marketing transformation, describes a hybrid model rather than pure decentralisation. Big strategic decisions and some teams are centralised at headquarters, while faster decisions are made locally near customers. Headquarters teams are also partly replacing the traditional agency model with an internal, follow-the-sun agency that turns work around overnight. Hear the full discussion in episode 25

Scott Stockwell co-located IBM's team with its advertising and PR agencies and created 'punnets': small, bite-sized pieces of content about 90% prepared before the tournament. The agency built animations for predictable moments like the longest rally or fastest serve, and when one happened, the team added copy and published within moments. Backup animations covered cases where expected moments did not occur, an idea borrowed from fast fashion's undyed 'greige' fabric. Hear the full discussion in episode 39

Emma Kriskinans, VP Global Marketing at Tyk, offers three lessons. Follow the money by understanding where revenue comes from and who holds the budget; find the formula of metrics that drive the business, such as trials, qualified trials, SQLs and closed deals; and remember marketing matters. At Tyk, inbound marketing has directly brought in 75% to 95% of revenue every year for seven years. Hear the full discussion in episode 40

Dom Hawes points out that B2B trade accounts for around half of the global economy and half the FTSE 350 are B2B businesses, so claiming B2B marketing is poor makes little sense. These companies bring products to market every day through pricing, distribution and promotion. He argues critics usually mean advertising, which shows they see marketing as only promotion, and that you should judge marketing by the success of the business. Hear the full discussion in episode 83

Maya Price says the message, look and feel, templates, stage design and registration pages can be standardised, which frees local teams from rebuilding the basics. Local teams can then focus on what makes a difference: local agenda content, working with sales to get the right customers in the room, and follow-up. She starts with a standard skeleton, gathers feedback on what does not work and accepts that good enough is often good enough. Hear the full discussion in episode 67

Jamie Gatoff runs a 'ruthlessly pragmatic' commercial marketing team and reports a dashboard to the executive committee monthly. PR is tracked through a media monitoring tool for coverage and sentiment; digital campaigns link to Salesforce to follow engagement from delivery through opens and click-throughs; and video views, forwards, website traffic by market and internal engagement are all measured. Websites are built for each market rather than simply translated. Hear the full discussion in episode 75

Scott suggests bringing in someone who was not on the project to run it. One technique is asking each team member to write a tabloid-style headline for what the project was meant to deliver; very different headlines show there was no shared north star. Another is asking people to score out of ten how much they used their 'superpower' on the project; low scores signal the team was not bringing its best. Hear the full discussion in episode 39

Shadow marketing is when a part of the business feels underserved by the marketing function and hires its own person and budget, usually under a non-marketing job title so it is not absorbed centrally. Andrea says it risks work that is off-brand and off-strategy, and agencies being hired outside preferred supplier processes. Offering strong central tools and support reduces the temptation. Hear the full discussion in episode 25

MoSCoW sorts work into must do, should do, could do and won't do. Once work is sized and prioritised, the must-do row becomes your minimum viable product, which delivers value to the customer quickly and gets early feedback. Scott stresses that teams must be able to say no, and leaders must accept that new requests either replace existing work or wait for the next sprint. Hear the full discussion in episode 27

Emma says start-ups often overlook brand, while Tyk deliberately made its brand different to stand out in its market. They also need enough process, especially documenting what works in a remote-first business, without adding bureaucracy too early. Finally, change management and internal marketing, such as involving people early and running workshops, help new ideas get adopted rather than ignored. Hear the full discussion in episode 40

With a universe of about 100,000 people, Duncan builds segments qualitatively by listening to sales, customer service and delivery teams describe buyer behaviour from first contact to delivery. He has developed around 32 personas that he uses to brief the business, support sales and prepare large government bids. In markets where the business is already on bidder lists, he needs conversion rather than more MQLs. Hear the full discussion in episode 62

Maya starts by finding what regions have in common rather than arguing about differences, then provides a shared foundation with roughly 30% leeway to localise. She argues there is no such thing as global branding, only branding: even a 20-person local roundtable must represent the brand consistently, because customers travel and attend events in different countries. Localisation applies to execution, not to the brand. Hear the full discussion in episode 66

Jamie Gatoff, CMO of Lombard International, follows Ford's 'think global, act local' approach: a global narrative adapted to resonate in each market. With a team where he was until recently the only native English speaker, he summarises and confirms agreements at the end of every meeting to avoid misunderstandings. He built change by finding enthusiastic existing staff to act as advocates, rather than replacing people. Hear the full discussion in episode 74

Lombard, with support from its private equity owner, built a crisis communications playbook covering media crises, business continuity, IT disaster recovery and pandemics, with a system for rating each crisis and an escalation process. It includes prepared lines to take, media training and local agency contacts, and is tested through war games run with the chief information security officer. Jamie stresses keeping contact lists current, pre-briefing sales colleagues and staying calm, and says a well-handled crisis can strengthen relationships. Hear the full discussion in episode 75

Sandra says running her yoga studio for five years taught her more than any MBA could, because she handles every part of the business: product, pricing, place, promotion and cash flow. Dom sees a side hustle as a training ground where you can see all of marketing working at small scale and bring the lessons back to your day job. He argues entrepreneurship and marketing are essentially the same thing: taking a business successfully to market. Hear the full discussion in episode 82

Dom argues it is not either-or. Kotler's segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) focuses on a segment where you can win and differentiate for it, and suits young, small or disruptive businesses with limited resources. The market-based assets theory, linked to Ehrenberg-Bass work such as How Brands Grow, favours whole-category mental availability through distinctive brand assets and wide distribution, and suits mature categories where products are hard to differentiate. The right mix depends on market maturity, product lifecycle and resources. Hear the full discussion in episode 83

Maya pilots new approaches with the people or countries that like change, because others are more willing to adopt what has already succeeded. When a team says something will not work, she asks for specifics, which often shows most of it can work, then collaborates on the rest. She involves people from the start, since nobody likes being told what to do, and notes some global campaigns began as country campaigns, such as one first run in Belgium. Hear the full discussion in episode 67

The events team began experimenting with upgraded iPhones, a green screen and about €300 of basic equipment, filming internal experts and events. When COVID grounded the events team, they built a small studio in Luxembourg, and the CEO, who started during lockdown, used video to reach staff around the world. Jamie's advice is to start with people genuinely interested in the technology, invest gradually, and recognise editing as the critical skill. Hear the full discussion in episode 74

Dom explains that companies selling directly to businesses use push techniques for short-term performance and pull techniques for long-term value, and the pull work is often done outside the marketing department. Companies like Lombard sell through regulated intermediaries, so they push to influence the intermediaries while creating pull with end customers. Jamie's video content works for both, which Dom sees as a reason business marketing is often misjudged by outsiders. Hear the full discussion in episode 75

After two years building a £25 million bid, Duncan's team came second, and feedback showed he had missed a key buying behaviour driving the customer's decision. The contract will not come up again for five years. His lesson is to keep faith in your segmentation and its link to commercial goals, and to resist chasing shiny new opportunities that look like quick wins. Hear the full discussion in episode 62

Sandra suggests gaining sales-level knowledge of your products and speaking to customers as often as you can, as she learned when she found customers taught her more about MicroStation than the product team. Sitting with sales or customer service teams is one way to hear pain points. Dom adds asking colleagues such as the finance controller 'if you were me, what would you do?', and Sandra recommends making daily time for movement and stillness. Hear the full discussion in episode 82

Dom uses the RACI framework: Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and Informed. He suggests the CMO should be accountable for brand and marketing strategy, running a promotional marketing team with agencies, while being consulted on product, price and place so she is confident in product-market fit. It does not matter who owns each part as long as it is done well, because it takes a whole village to bring a product to market. Hear the full discussion in episode 83

Emma highlights commercial acumen, which can be learned, for example through P&L training, and a high tolerance for risk, because priorities change often and ideas must be tested, then doubled down on or dropped. Her advice is to go in with your eyes open, ask founders lots of questions and trust your gut, since early-stage businesses rarely have data. Her father's advice was that the best bets are often 'boring' things everyone depends on, like API management. Hear the full discussion in episode 40

The HBDI is a questionnaire that maps how people prefer to think and learn across four quadrants: why something is happening, how the work gets done, the big picture, and who is involved. Scott found teams become unbalanced when an interviewer unconsciously hires people like themselves. Since roughly a quarter of any audience leans to each quadrant, presenting only in your own style can lose about 75% of the room. Hear the full discussion in episode 39

Scott has run agile teams fully co-located, fully virtual and blended. Fully co-located was the most efficient because questions and mood are picked up instantly, and blended was the least efficient. Virtual teams need extra touchpoints, always-on channels like Slack, and asynchronous working such as recorded walkthroughs so meetings are for discussion rather than presentations. Hear the full discussion in episode 27

Field marketers are closest to customers and hear what they want in real time, which can shape agendas, event length and messaging. Maya suggests simply asking customers what they want to hear about before planning an event. SAP uses quarterly feedback reviews, open forums and a fail-safe culture where teams share lessons; she also recommends marketers with global roles spend time in local roles to stay close to customers. Hear the full discussion in episode 66

Maya dislikes the phrase 'do more with less' because people and budgets can only stretch so far, so the real question is how to do things differently. When a business asks for more pipeline, teams often panic and create something new instead of putting more into what already works. Dom adds that the goal is to do more with what is already working, and she stresses building standard reporting into templates so results can be compared. Hear the full discussion in episode 67

Andrea began with a marketing maturity audit of her own design, with 12 categories and 38 subcategories, run country by country. She used it to find gaps between where teams are and where they want to be, then prioritised those gaps into work streams. The process also built trust, and she stresses communication, coaching and common goals and KPIs over big budgets or new platforms. Hear the full discussion in episode 25

Phil Barden, then at T-Mobile, worked with a neuroscientist and a cognitive psychologist to build the brand relaunch on principles of human motivation. The resulting Liverpool Street flash mob ad doubled store footfall within 48 hours, lifted sales 49%, grew share 6% and tripled brand consideration. Applying the same principles to stores, service and propositions halved customer churn over two years. Hear the full discussion in episode 50

Phil Barden describes the decision interface as the point where a person meets the purchase. Perception beats cognition, so the brain pattern-matches what it sees against memory, which is why consistent distinctive brand assets like Coca-Cola's red script or Cadbury's purple matter. Price signals both pain and quality; Deutsche Telekom boosted sales of its third bundle by adding a pricier fourth bundle shown first, which anchored buyers and made bundle three look like good value. Hear the full discussion in episode 51

Driver tags are 265 psychological descriptors, such as values, personality traits and need states, used to code ads, programmes and audiences. Bill Harvey's team had 22 coders comb the Oxford dictionary for psychological words, narrowing a million words to 1,562. A 1997 machine learning recommendation engine in cable set-top boxes then weighted the words by which ones predicted people watching recommended shows, raising conversion from 3% to 18% and leaving 265 words that mattered. Hear the full discussion in episode 42

Yes, according to the studies Bill describes. When the driver tags in an ad closely aligned with the programme it ran in, the sales effect measured by Nielsen Catalina rose 36% on average. A large CPG study found purchase intent up 37% and first brand mention up 62%, and showed well-placed ads needed far less frequency, which could save significant media spend. Hear the full discussion in episode 42

Daniel Kahneman's System 1 is fast, automatic and dominant in everyday decisions; System 2 is slow, conscious and effortful, like a pilot who mostly lets the autopilot fly. Phil says the brain is the same at work as at home. He tells of a finance director who built a spreadsheet to choose a company car, but only to justify the BMW he had already chosen for status, showing that System 1 often decides and System 2 rationalises. Hear the full discussion in episode 50

Yes. A US 'five a day' campaign quadrupled the share of people who agreed they should eat five portions of fruit and vegetables, but actual eating did not change at all. In contrast, a university canteen changed behaviour through layout alone: putting broccoli first raised its sales 11%, an opaque lid on the ice cream cut sales by a third, and moving sugary drinks behind the counter reversed drink choices. Hear the full discussion in episode 51

Stanford fMRI research found that seeing a desirable product activates the brain's reward centre, while seeing the price activates the insula, which is linked to pain and disgust. Net value equals reward minus pain, and researchers could predict purchase decisions from brain activity. Marketers can increase the expected reward or reduce the pain of paying; for example, removing currency symbols from prices has been shown to reduce the pain. Hear the full discussion in episode 50

Phil says human behaviour is goal-directed, and brands win by helping people achieve both functional and implicit goals, which is why Ariel and Persil hold different positions despite similar performance. A Big Four accountancy firm competing for CFOs was advised to understand each CFO's implicit goals: security and discipline, ambition to become CEO, or novelty and excitement. Each goal leads to different propositions, messaging, events and even corporate gifts. Hear the full discussion in episode 51

Bill cites a Meta study showing scrolling environments like Facebook and Instagram often allow only one or two seconds of attention. That is enough to remind existing customers to buy, but not enough to tell a story that creates positive emotion, brand attraction and long-term memory. He concludes TV and magazines do a better job of growing a brand with new customers, though using all media types together is best. Hear the full discussion in episode 42

Blair Enns suggests agencies make routine, high-volume tactical work as cheap as possible, through offshoring, automation, AI or freelancers, and work with procurement to cut its cost. In return, clients should pay properly for strategic and creative thinking and allow time to experiment. Today's blended rates overcharge for low-value tactical work and undercharge for the thinking that creates value, and timesheets encourage selling thinking by the hour. Hear the full discussion in episode 73

Blair Enns says the main mistake is thinking there is one right way to price; agencies need more creative commercial models that work for both sides. Agencies and clients are stuck selling and buying inputs like time and materials rather than value created, and AI makes this worse because clients expect faster output to mean lower prices. Procurement, rewarded for cutting costs, often buys something different from what the marketer wanted, as in one contract that took 14 months to agree. Hear the full discussion in episode 72

Blair's inofficiency principle states that innovation and efficiency sit at opposite ends of one spectrum: you cannot increase one without reducing the other, because innovation needs slack in time, money and freedom to fail. The problem is not knowing this and expecting both. As organisations grow, efficiency-minded 'optimisers' outnumber 'innovators', pushing creative people out, so a CEO who demands innovation while procurement drives out cost gets neither. Hear the full discussion in episode 72

His model breaks a sale into the probative conversation, the qualifying conversation, the value conversation and the closing conversation, each with its own objective and framework. There is no pitch conversation; the frameworks focus on the questions to ask. In qualifying, both sides vet each other against clear criteria, unlike agencies that present long credentials decks without asking about the client's business. Hear the full discussion in episode 73

Blair says the sale is a sample of the engagement: if an agency behaves as a compliant rule-follower waiting for briefs and RFPs, the client will expect that in the work too, which limits its ability to push for what good work needs. As he puts it, the prospect's mind is malleable but the client's mind is fixed. Agencies that give away power during the sale cannot easily win it back from procurement years later. Hear the full discussion in episode 73

Blair says 'bounded rationality' means individuals in large organisations cannot see the whole business, so they optimise for their department's goals; only the CEO is truly optimised for the organisation. Marketing sits nearer the innovation end and procurement near the efficiency end, so they pull in opposite directions. He believes the fix must come from CEOs who understand the trade-off, and Dom notes siloed departments confuse customers. Hear the full discussion in episode 72

Professor Ben Bensaou found the word innovation intimidates people, because they assume they must deliver the next breakthrough. Innovating is a verb describing an activity: looking for new ideas, testing them and developing the best, with no guaranteed outcome. When he switched to this language in training, the fear left the room; he compares innovation to the tip of an iceberg and innovating to the mass beneath the surface. Hear the full discussion in episode 87

The performance zone delivers products and services to customers and is where the business is judged. The productivity zone holds shared services such as HR, finance, IT and marketing that support performance. The incubation zone runs new ventures like start-ups using a venture capital operating model, and the transformation zone, led directly by the CEO, is used rarely to create a new franchise or change the operating model. Hear the full discussion in episode 36

INSEAD professor Ben Bensaou says innovation is for everybody. At a Starwood conference, 700 frontline hotel managers with no innovation training spent three hours on the streets of Paris observing travellers and came back with 1,700 ideas, one of which became a global family programme. He calls this the 'democratisation of innovation': giving frontline staff permission and simple tools, because more ideas create more chances of a great one. Hear the full discussion in episode 86

LeasePlan's research, run over about four months with focus groups followed by quantitative work, found the problem was not range anxiety but change anxiety. People put up artificial barriers because they dislike change; EV drivers thought there were plenty of charge points while non-drivers thought there were too few. The research also found too few fleet managers had driven an EV themselves, so try-before-you-buy became part of the answer. Hear the full discussion in episode 43

Michelle Booth's team analysed 2 million anonymised spending accounts and found financial stability depends more on behaviour than income. Around 60 in-home interviews and social media analysis showed the target was people who were unconfident about money and focused on the present. Bó was designed as a companion account for spending money, targeted by attitude, to help people spend less than they earn, more like 'Couch to 5K than Strava'. Hear the full discussion in episode 46

Moore says categories are defined by a set of competitors, while markets are defined by a set of customers. A market is a group of customers with a common use case who talk to each other when making buying decisions. Because pragmatic B2B buyers rely on word of mouth from peers, winning several deals in one community makes you the de facto standard, while deals outside your segment do not help. Hear the full discussion in episode 32

Bó succeeded in incubation but was folded amid COVID, competing priorities and executive changes, just before a major campaign launched. Dom notes Geoffrey Moore's view that moving through the transformation zone requires sponsorship all the way to the CEO. The Bó team moved as a unit into NatWest to revitalise its brand platform, bringing its psychological safety and fast ways of working with it. Hear the full discussion in episode 47

After winning a beachhead segment, you move into adjacent segments, either selling new use cases to the same customers or taking the same partner ecosystem to new customers, while keeping a sensible 'fish to pond' ratio. Moore calls it the most reliable play in high tech, capable of taking a company from about $50 million to $500 million. In tough times, focusing on 'trapped value' in a broken business process gives customers a reason to buy now. Hear the full discussion in episode 32

Moore explains that most companies spend their innovation budget making products that are different, with better battery life or a nicer screen, but still close enough to competitors that the best price wins. True differentiation takes your offer outside the circle where competitors sit, as the iPhone did. He also warns that money meant for differentiation often gets drained into protecting mission-critical but non-differentiating activities. Hear the full discussion in episode 36

Research led Neill Emmett to drop a big above-the-line campaign in favour of education. LeasePlan partnered with Robert Llewellyn's Fully Charged YouTube channel on videos showing the steps to go electric, backed by 'People Like Me' case studies showing honest pros and cons, plus free tools and guidance for brokers, large fleets and consumers. The research was also reused to educate staff internally. Hear the full discussion in episode 43

Bó ran as a separate business with its own culture, mission and management, but within the bank's risk profile, which cost some pace but made it robust and scalable. It had top-level executive support, a small cross-functional team including risk, legal and tech, and a culture of psychological safety where mistakes were shared and celebrated. The team built proof of concepts rather than slideware and launched with a 90-day test-and-learn period. Hear the full discussion in episode 46

Ben identifies three: that innovation depends on superstar geniuses, that it is all about big-bang disruptive breakthroughs, and that it belongs only to senior leaders or R&D specialists. Fiskars, a 400-year-old Finnish company, disproved them by studying home gardeners and discovering watering was a key task, leading to its award-winning Waterwheel hose device and entry into a new market. Continuous, systematic innovation can transform even traditional companies. Hear the full discussion in episode 86

Ben found innovative organisations run two engines in parallel: an execution engine delivering today's strategy and an innovating engine building tomorrow's, with protected, regular time for staff to innovate. It runs on three processes: creating ideas, integrating them by connecting, reviewing and piloting them, and reframing. Bayer, for example, made its whole board responsible for innovation, appointed 80 senior 'innovation ambassadors' and created WeSolve, a platform where two-thirds of the best answers came from a different division from the one that posted the problem. Hear the full discussion in episode 87

Michelle Booth says to respect the different culture and show humility, getting people to learn by doing rather than trying to convince them. She uses humour, leads from the front and creates a sense of play and curiosity around a clear goal, while working at the team's pace. To push back when marketing is held down, she digs into data with analysts to test hypotheses in the smallest, safest way before scaling. Hear the full discussion in episode 47

Frontline staff see customer problems daily and senior leaders need innovation to survive, but middle managers are responsible for execution and can block or enable ideas. BASF's Basotect foam became Procter & Gamble's Magic Eraser after a salesperson accidentally discovered it removed stains and his manager immediately connected him with the company's chemists. That link happened because BASF had trained its middle managers in customer orientation and innovation. Hear the full discussion in episode 87

Working with Marcus Rashford on social mobility, the team learned that young people cannot be what they cannot see, and that youth clubs rather than schools were the safe space to talk about money and ambitions. The programme was activated across channels, including a Beano partnership that made international news. Research in youth centres found young people starting to save and signing up for college. Hear the full discussion in episode 47

Michelle notes that people are more likely to get divorced than switch bank accounts, and only about 30% have a will. Banks are designed by numerate people who find money interesting, while the early majority and laggards avoid thinking about money. When her team used colloquial language rather than industry terms, conversations about money online were as large as those about relationships, showing that financial services were not connecting with people. Hear the full discussion in episode 46

LeasePlan ran a separate research study on what influences people to live more sustainably and found neighbours were a major influence. Framed as 'Keeping up with the Greens', it was covered by six national titles and syndicated to 157 regional ones. A paid radio day with Robert Llewellyn reached an estimated 5.5 million listeners, and the campaign won a CIPR award. Hear the full discussion in episode 43

Moore distinguishes performance, which harvests existing market power for financial returns, from power, which is investment that will be monetised later, such as winning a repeatable use case or dominating a segment. He told Microsoft in 2014 it had lost power every year that century because it only held people accountable for performance, and Microsoft added a power component to annual planning. A downturn, when performance is weak anyway, is a good time to invest in power. Hear the full discussion in episode 32

The disruptor's job is to differentiate, but the disruptee's job is to neutralise: get good enough at the disruptor's innovation to stay in the buyer's consideration, then differentiate on other strengths. Microsoft did this repeatedly, catching and overtaking Netscape, WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3, while Nokia and BlackBerry failed to neutralise the iPhone. In a downturn, Moore also recommends 'strategic acts of generosity' to strengthen relationships with your best customers and partners. Hear the full discussion in episode 36

Borrowing from Blue Ocean Strategy, Ben describes non-customers as people outside your usual target: those about to leave, those in other industries who are unhappy, or the large majority your industry ignores. Nintendo moved from boys to girls, then families with the Wii, then older people. In B2B it can mean other departments: Philips failed selling its mercury-free lamp to purchasing on price, then succeeded by showing CFOs the total cost of ownership including mercury disposal. Hear the full discussion in episode 86

Adrian Coxon, CMO at Exante, points to pay as the clearest sign: marketers and copywriters are paid less than peers in roles of similar complexity, and copywriter salaries have barely moved in 26 years. He argues marketing talked itself into promising precise ROI measurement it cannot deliver, so it is now judged on short-term outputs. Few CEOs or board members come from marketing, so leaders often lack an understanding of its long-term value. Hear the full discussion in episode 52

Shane Redding argues marketing is not in the doldrums; organisations are struggling to adapt to large societal, cultural and business shifts while keeping old ways of working. Chris Wilson of Earnest says many foundations are missing, with a lack of strategy caused largely by marketers not being given time to think. Both agree the core strategy models still have value, but how strategy is communicated to stakeholders needs to change. Hear the full discussion in episode 35

Paul Worthington says being purely data driven means using backward-looking information to make forward-looking decisions. He prefers being 'hypothesis driven and data informed': form a hypothesis, use data to support or reject it, and move on. He warns that platform dashboards grade their own homework, and that measurement exists to keep score, not to become the game itself. Hear the full discussion in episode 59

Sandra Vollrath, a B2B marketing operations specialist and former Bentley Systems marketer, says marketing operations is more than technology: it covers the processes and workflows behind the tech, the data, and having people with the right skills. Adding more tools without this creates expensive, unmanageable tech stacks and unhappy teams. She argues the 14,000 martech tools figure is a red herring, since buyers come to market with a specific problem they feel. Hear the full discussion in episode 81

Georgie Gilmore starts with three Cs: commercial, understanding how the business makes money; creative, rather than leaving creativity to agencies; and collaborative, working with other functions without caring about job titles. During the conversation she and Dom add curious, capable and courageous. She stresses going out into the market, studying win-loss reports and asking why customers buy. Hear the full discussion in episode 41

When Dom Hawes asked marketers on LinkedIn to define marketing, every answer was different, and none were wrong. He argues that if marketers cannot agree, it is no surprise colleagues see marketing as the 'colouring-in department' or a lead factory. Because the word means different things to different people, a marketer talking about long-term value and a CFO thinking about leads can have crossed wires. Hear the full discussion in episode 80

Shane advocates replacing departmental silos with cross-functional squads that include pricing, product, marketing and sales people, using flexible resource like Scott Stockwell's 'airline model'. Chris warns that retrofitting this onto legacy organisations can create chaos and may need different people. A practical starting point is a ring-fenced growth or incubation team with clear objectives that is allowed to experiment. Hear the full discussion in episode 35

At Cisco, Georgie saw the company define a handful of Must Win Battles, such as security and wireless, cascaded from the top so every person's objectives and even purchase order codes were aligned to them. This meant marketing, sales and other functions worked towards the same goals rather than handing work over between silos. She suggests CMOs propose Must Win Battles to their CEO and use them to lead strategy. Hear the full discussion in episode 41

Adrian believes marketing should own the end-to-end customer experience, from awareness through purchase, retention and exit interviews. He interviews clients himself and feeds findings to IT, product, compliance and legal, which builds allies across the business. Being the function that best understands the customer lifecycle gives marketing a route into strategic leadership. Hear the full discussion in episode 52

Paul says only two languages are spoken at the top of a company: finance and business strategy. Marketers should frame their work in terms of business strategy and use finance to show proof of results, which earns permission to do more. He also argues CFOs should learn marketing, since brand can represent a large share of a company's intangible value. Hear the full discussion in episode 59

Dom defines marketing as the process of taking a business, product or service to market: the right product to the right market at the right price, made easy for the right customers to buy again and again. Its purpose, borrowing Geraldine Tenton's phrase, is to create a happy customer. The process starts with market orientation and research, then segmentation, targeting and positioning, then the four Ps, with promotion last. Hear the full discussion in episode 80

Sandra opened her yoga studio in January 2020, just before the pandemic. She first promoted it based on what yoga meant to her, then learned to ask customers what they wanted and to reuse their own words in her marketing. She owns all four Ps, held her pricing through the pandemic rather than underselling, and says branding and a studio management system acting as a CRM were her first two priorities. Hear the full discussion in episode 81

Dom notes that product, price and place are often now owned by other teams, leaving many marketing departments with only promotion, and argues that is acceptable if the work gets done. He suggests being honest about remits, for example calling a team 'marketing communications' if that is its job, and reserving 'marketing' for the full process. He also argues ROI claims that marketing is a profit centre are misleading, because they compare this period's spend with sales that may have taken over a year. Hear the full discussion in episode 80

Sandra's core lessons are to know your customer inside out and know your products inside out; being close to the product makes marketing feel more authentic and less 'salesy'. Dom compares this to the All Blacks, whose reputation rests on doing the basics well, and suggests teams ask every quarter how well they really know their customers and products. Hear the full discussion in episode 81

Georgie says many companies sign a contract and ignore the customer until renewal, and that satisfaction is only hygiene. At Vodafone, a marketing team went on site to help a large bank's staff through the switch to Vodafone for several weeks. She also recommends a customer reference programme that matches prospects with existing customers during the buying process, which she was able to link to extra revenue. Hear the full discussion in episode 41

Paul argues much of what B2B marketing teams now do, such as lead generation, ABM and presentation building, is technology-enabled sales and should move to a properly resourced sales team. He often sees large sales teams paired with tiny, under-funded marketing teams expected to generate quality leads across every segment. Following Roger Martin, he suggests combining marketing with strategy, freeing marketers to build the brand. Hear the full discussion in episode 59

Chris suggests changing the language used with stakeholders, for example talking about reputation rather than brand, and setting the expectation that this year's work pays off next year or the year after. Shane points to JCB as a company that kept investing through tough times. Dom adds that if budgets are uncertain it is better to scale back ambition than to stop, because brand returns compound over time. Hear the full discussion in episode 35

Adrian found that at Saxo Bank, a well-known brand boosted by its Tour de France sponsorship, cost per lead, conversion and retention were far easier to achieve. Companies without such brands often ask marketers to replicate the lead numbers without investing in the brand, which takes two to three years to pay back. He compares CMOs to football managers who are changed too often, and notes a Gartner finding that 61% of marketing leaders say short-term demands impede long-term planning. Hear the full discussion in episode 52

In the Christmas special the team revisits Peter Wendt's term for vague, bland values statements written by brand gurus, such as WeWork's aim to 'elevate the world's consciousness'. His advice is that rules should sound like rules, like the signs at a swimming pool. His one-line guide to great content is to tell stories about your customers' pain, and he suggests every business should identify its enemy and write to that. Hear the full discussion in episode 34

The team replays neuroscientist Carmen Simon's finding that after 48 hours people retain only about 10% of a piece of communication. Her advice is to start by deciding what your 10% message is, because many people want to be memorable without knowing what they want to be remembered for. Hear the full discussion in episode 34

Dom argues you can do more with more, or more with the same, but not more with less, because if you could you would already be doing it. He calls it one of two phrases that annoyed him most that year, the other being ROI as a marketing measure. The team also notes that generic AI-written copy tends to sit at the average of everyone's writing, which is not good copy. Hear the full discussion in episode 34

Andrew Davies says Paddle's data shows SaaS businesses that run pricing or packaging experiments every quarter achieve 105% higher average revenue per user over three to four years than those that change once a year. The first step is simply to start, and to set up a pricing committee that meets regularly. One VC-backed company met daily for an hour with C-suite, product and marketing leaders before moving to weekly and monthly meetings, transforming its go-to-market. Hear the full discussion in episode 71

Dom borrows Geoffrey Moore's idea that venture capital markets for power while private equity markets for profit. Building power means growing brand, market share, awareness and reputation; building profit means pricing to market, packaging well and growing accounts in a measured way. Treating a marketing plan like a venture with both levers makes it easier to explain to a CEO or CFO why some activity will not show an immediate return. Hear the full discussion in episode 70

Dr Steve Morlidge says budgeting has barely changed since James O. McKinsey's 1922 book. It is costly, once estimated to take about 10% of managers' time; it is inflexible once set; it distorts performance by judging people against fixed targets that are always wrong; and it creates perverse incentives, since budget-holders win by negotiating low revenue targets and high cost budgets, then spending everything. The result is systematic underperformance. Hear the full discussion in episode 54

Beyond Budgeting began in 1998 when two finance professionals looked for a better way to budget and realised budgeting is one part of a command-and-control management model. It is now a set of 12 principles, six covering process and six covering leadership, that must be aligned. Steve Morlidge stresses it is not a recipe but a set of ingredients each business combines to suit its needs and starting point. Hear the full discussion in episode 55

Duncan Daines says in his aviation market there are only about 25 major opportunities, each on seven to ten year contracts and tied to embedded technologies. Winning two or three points of share organically could take 15 to 20 years while competitors try to displace you. In those conditions acquisitions, joint ventures or partnerships may create more value than campaigns, so marketers should stay agnostic about the solution. Hear the full discussion in episode 63

David van Schaick, former CMO of The Marketing Practice, says years of cheap money fuelled growth-first investment, especially in tech and SaaS, which raised marketing's profile. Now that money costs more and businesses want profitable growth, marketing is seen as discretionary and easy to cut. The risk is that marketing gets narrowed to communications and short-term sales support, losing its role in pricing, positioning, product and long-term value creation. Hear the full discussion in episode 37

Frog has created more than two dozen free, ungated toolkits covering topics like product-market fit, building sales machines and board packs, plus podcasts, videos and downloadable templates. It built a public generative AI tool trained on its toolkits so anyone can ask how to scale their business and get answers from Frog's own expertise. Dominic calls this a 'godfather strategy': giving real value away builds a halo around the brand. Hear the full discussion in episode 85

Dominic Rogers, head of marketing at Frog Capital, explains that Frog invests in purpose-driven European software scale-ups at around €3 million ARR and helps them grow to €10 to 20 million. Its scale-up wheel covers three time horizons: day-to-day execution (customer acquisition, product delivery, customer success and applied analytics), month-to-month planning (strategy, talent and organisation) and long-term sustainability (purpose, resilience and value). Operating partners with hands-on experience work closely with each company's leadership team. Hear the full discussion in episode 84

Peter Russell-Smith suggests studying how competitors acquire, onboard and integrate customers, then going further by actively trying to win their customers. If their customers are easy to take, that reveals weaknesses you can exploit and it devalues the competitor. Dom adds that looking at the quality of a rival's contracts and customer journeys teaches you what to copy. Hear the full discussion in episode 20

Using the Ansoff matrix, Peter explains that selling existing offers into existing markets is the lowest-risk, highest-return strategy, which is why private equity often applies it. Many firms diversify out of boredom even though they hold a tiny share of their total addressable market. Dom notes that when growth stalls, the cause is often business process, not product or market, so the fix is better process rather than something new. Hear the full discussion in episode 20

Revenue quality covers how predictable, recurring, long-lasting and profitable revenue is. David argues that growing the top line 5% while improving revenue quality by 20% can add more value than 10% growth with worse quality. Dom adds that it depends on value-based pricing and contracts that reserve the right to raise prices, and that revenue should come from a definable market you can dominate. Hear the full discussion in episode 37

Ashby's law says an organisation must balance three things: the volatility of its environment, the flexibility of its processes and the tightness of its goals. A volatile market combined with rigid processes and many fixed targets cannot work, so something gives, often the numbers. Dom notes marketers can use it to argue for a tighter market focus, which reduces the complexity the business has to handle. Hear the full discussion in episode 54

A Unilever foods business in Eastern Europe, struggling in a mature market, let a group of local managers design a new way of running the business, which turned out to be essentially Beyond Budgeting. From its first month it grew steadily at about 7% a year while the market grew at 3%. Growth freed more marketing money in a positive feedback loop, so marketers who delivered good ideas, not those who negotiated big budgets, were rewarded. Hear the full discussion in episode 55

Duncan warns that incumbents can become complacent and rely on perfect KPI scores, even when one contract scores 100%. His team starts 12 to 18 months before the end date, identifies who needs to be influenced and which partners to bring in, and rebuilds the bid from the ground up as if they were a competitor. Assuming the relationship will carry them over the line is the main risk. Hear the full discussion in episode 63

Andrew Davies, now CMO at Paddle, helped decide the brand after Episerver acquired several companies including Optimizely. Episerver had strong retention and analyst ratings but low North American awareness, 'epi' is a US medical term, and 'server' was what they wanted customers to move away from. Optimizely was well known in North America for innovation and experimentation, so it became the brand while Episerver's platform stayed at the core. Dom's lesson is to decide early and move fast. Hear the full discussion in episode 70

Andrew says a value metric should grow as the customer grows, rise as the customer gets more value, and be simple to understand. Useful packaging tactics include reducing package thresholds rather than raising prices, combining seat-based and usage-based pricing, and splitting out add-ons that only 20% to 30% of customers want but will pay well for. At Idio, adding a $20,000 implementation fee unblocked a stalled procurement process with a large asset manager. Hear the full discussion in episode 71

Frog believes purpose and growth reinforce each other: for health and safety software firm Evotix, winning business fulfils its purpose and fulfilling its purpose wins business. Dominic says purpose forces focus, builds enthusiasm, drives impact as the business grows and attracts top talent. Unlike strategy, which changes, purpose acts as a constant north star. Hear the full discussion in episode 84

At Frog, operating partners draft each toolkit outline and first draft, Dominic edits, a designer lays it out, and partners review it for gaps; podcasts follow a similar co-creation process. Dom notes CMOs can apply the same model with fellow executives, instead of in-house content teams working in isolation. Dominic describes a flywheel where product insight feeds marketing, sales takes it to market, and feedback returns to product and marketing. Hear the full discussion in episode 85

Peter warns that bogus KPIs are worse than none, because people mistake activity, like logging 300 calls, for success. KPIs should link to the company's financial objectives, with EBITDA and quality of revenue the two that matter most. MQLs are not a real measure; what counts is how many sales were made, at what margin and at what customer acquisition cost. Hear the full discussion in episode 20

Dominic says early-stage businesses rely on performance to prove product-market fit, but as they scale they cannot 'muscle' their way to revenue and need brand and awareness. Since only a small share of the market is buying at any time, communicating purpose builds consideration with those who are not yet in market. He cites Who Gives A Crap, which turned toilet paper into a purpose-led product people display on shelves, and says B2B firms often miss the chance to explain why their product matters. Hear the full discussion in episode 85

No. Frog backs businesses such as Cludo, whose investigation software helps make society safer, but also Modulr, whose payments software improves productivity and challenges legacy systems. Dom warns that marketers asked to define a purpose are tempted to make it as lofty as possible, when a truthful purpose, such as helping keep people safe at work or making jobs easier, is more effective. Hear the full discussion in episode 84

Duncan dismantled his group marketing team in 2021 and aligned marketers into the strategic business units. He now forms dynamic squads from specialists across the business, in pricing, distribution, regulation and operations, to solve problems across product, price, place and promotion. He also uses the title group head of engagement because the word marketing has become associated only with communications, prompting people to ask why 'the marketing guy' is in the room. Hear the full discussion in episode 63

Steve advises building a coalition of like-minded colleagues, especially the CFO, rather than relying on the CEO alone. A CMO can start within their own budget by treating it as one pool and running a continuous competition for resources, backing what is working and cutting what is not. He says the biggest constraint is usually assumptions in people's heads: managers blame 'them', yet he never found the 'them' who was stopping change. Hear the full discussion in episode 55

Steve explains that when a business is off track against fixed annual targets, the two easiest fixes in a marketing company are cutting marketing spend and running promotions that pull revenue forward. Both hit the numbers short term but damage the brand and add costly disruption to supply chains. Annual budgets also act like a bank that opens once a year, preventing money from moving to what is working, so the goal is to frame constraints differently rather than remove them. Hear the full discussion in episode 54

David and Dom argue agencies do their best strategic thinking for free when pitching, then earn money on low-value production work that AI and in-housing are now squeezing. Agencies should tie themselves to client outcomes rather than outputs and move upstream into strategy. David suggests positioning around the outcomes delivered, such as bigger deals or entry into new markets, rather than capabilities like ABM or performance. Hear the full discussion in episode 37

Andrew says US West Coast companies with a big domestic market usually grow by moving up-market to larger customers first. Companies starting in smaller markets such as Lithuania or Serbia sell across borders early and face currency, payment and tax complexity much sooner, leaving up-market growth until later. Paddle's data shows offering multiple currencies and payment methods at checkout helps software companies grow faster. Hear the full discussion in episode 70

Andrew's first question for any business is its thesis: why it exists, why the product matters and how people buy it. Data should then strengthen or disprove that thesis, rather than marketers hunting for meaning in numbers without context. He accepts not everything can be measured, says higher brand awareness lifts all direct response metrics, and prefers campaigns that deliver both demand and brand benefits rather than treating them as separate. Hear the full discussion in episode 71

Dale W. Harrison argues no: demand emerges from needs inside a buyer's organisation, and marketing can only capture it. He says terms like 'demand creation' grew up to avoid talking about brand marketing, which CFOs asked to measure. When pressed, most 'demand creationists' actually mean brand awareness or winning share from competitors, both legitimate goals that already have names. Hear the full discussion in episode 68

Developed by Professor John Dawes at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, it observes that roughly 5% of potential buyers are in market at any time. Dale Harrison calls it a parameterised rule: you calculate your own figure from how often buyers replace a product, such as about every 60 months for CRM, and how long the buying window lasts. If your customers' buying cycles match the industry benchmark, as they usually do, your marketing is capturing demand, not creating it. Hear the full discussion in episode 69

April Dunford says B2B tech companies with a sales team usually already know most of the answers. Sales knows the real competitors and the status quo in accounts, the product team knows how capabilities compare, and after a reasonable number of deals the organisation knows what customers value. A cross-functional workshop can often do the job without heavy research; companies without a sales team or deal history need to do research first. Hear the full discussion in episode 65

April Dunford says prospects cannot work out what the product does, wrongly compare it to something else, or understand it but do not see why anyone would pay for it. For services firms, a common sign is clients saying they like you but do not know when they would hire you, because the positioning is too broad. She defines the problem as the gap between what existing customers understand and what new prospects can figure out. Hear the full discussion in episode 64

Brand strategist Sarah Robb says marketing is unregulated, so agencies invent proprietary frameworks and terms like 'brand onion' to look distinctive in pitches, and textbooks add more. The result confuses marketers, who then feel unable to challenge outside experts and lose control and confidence over their own brand strategy. She notes models are sometimes designed to lead to the work the agency makes most money from. Hear the full discussion in episode 60

Sarah Robb notes about 70% of adults experience imposter syndrome and it is often linked to high achievers. In her Brand Strategy Academy, about 75% of more than 250 students say jargon, models and frameworks are what they find most confusing about brand strategy. She felt it herself for a decade as a senior agency strategist, and advises marketers to challenge anyone using jargon to explain it, since they may not understand it either. Hear the full discussion in episode 61

Rachel Fairley says the customer has a need and you are there to solve it, which takes three things. You must be in their mind before they shop, because it is too late to 'show up at the altar'; you must be easy to buy from; and you must help them get the most from what they bought quickly, or they will churn. She suggests CEOs ask CMOs who the buyer is, what we want to sell them and how, and measure against those questions. Hear the full discussion in episode 38

Liontrust CMO Simon Hildrey argues regulation is not the barrier people think. Marketing should be simple, understandable and truthful anyway, and working closely with compliance means problems rarely arise. Digital and social channels can even help, because targeting professionals only lets you tailor more technical messages to that audience. Hear the full discussion in episode 18

Finastra's head of marketing Joerg Klueckmann once clicked a competitor's ad thinking it was his own company's, because the colours, stock imagery and copy were nearly identical. He argues that heavy A/B testing and data-driven decision making have squeezed out creativity. New ideas are easy to kill in meetings because nobody can prove in advance how much pipeline an untested idea will produce. Hear the full discussion in episode 31

Joerg reserves a set percentage of his budget, around 10%, as a playground for testing new creative, content formats or channels. The key is giving each innovation enough time, often one to three years, before judging it, and then being bold enough to kill it if it fails. Creative ideas must still connect to sellable products and feed middle and bottom-of-funnel campaigns. Hear the full discussion in episode 31

Rachel says the brand enemy for most buyers is inertia: sticking with the existing supplier feels safer than the personal and political risk of change. For Just Eat, the enemy was the phone call to a regular takeaway. Another type of enemy is a completely different use of the same budget, so marketers should understand what drives people into market and what the alternative to buying from them is. Hear the full discussion in episode 38

After studying 182 of the world's most valuable brands, Sarah found they use inconsistent labels but answer the same four questions. Why do we exist (usually called mission or purpose)? What do we do (positioning or value proposition)? Who are we and how do we do things (values and behaviours)? How does our brand look, feel and sound (personality or attributes)? The label matters less than using language the CEO will actually use. Hear the full discussion in episode 60

Guest host Rachel Fairley uses category entry points: telling a finance leader there are, say, eleven reasons people come to buy in a market and the brand is not linked to any of them, so buyers do not think of it. That lands far better than talking about redoing the brand essence, which makes people switch off. Sarah recalls being made to pitch a 'visual brand driver' to Novartis Oncology when the real issue was brand architecture. Hear the full discussion in episode 61

The fill-in-the-blanks positioning statement assumes you already know the best answers for market category, competitors, value and target customers, and only need to write them down. April finds the obvious answers are often wrong because customers see you differently. At IBM she wrote a deliberately silly statement to prove her point, and nobody ever read it. Hear the full discussion in episode 64

April calls customers 'experts in pain', not in solutions. Instead of asking what they love or hate about you, take them back to the moment of decision: what they were doing before, what made them decide to change, how they built a shortlist, who was on it and why they picked you. Answers like 'great support' usually describe retention features they discovered after buying, not reasons they chose you. Hear the full discussion in episode 65

Dale says the iPhone entered a smartphone market already worth billions, with BlackBerry and a dozen other players, and grew in its first decade mainly by draining demand from competitors. By contrast, Apple's Newton was an explicit attempt to create a market: Apple spent about $1.2 billion and sold roughly 200,000 units in a decade. Colgate toothpaste similarly replaced existing tooth powder rather than inventing tooth brushing, and the switch took about 50 years. Hear the full discussion in episode 68

Discounts can raise buying temporarily but not the underlying need. Dale cites Australian research on online mattress brands during the pandemic: heavy discounting caused a sales spike followed by a dip below the long-term average, because future demand was pulled forward. As he puts it, buying six boxes of half-price detergent does not mean you do more laundry. Hear the full discussion in episode 69

Liontrust took a three-year shirt sponsorship to build awareness beyond the financial pages, and it was a big success: Oxford beat Premier League Swansea in the FA Cup and appeared on national news and back pages. The team treated it as a partnership, producing exclusive content with the club and engaging fans without pretending to be supporters. It also reinforced the brand with professionals who already knew Liontrust. Hear the full discussion in episode 18

Simon says brand is not just imagery; it is the words, tone, messaging and everything the company does, applied consistently over time. Liontrust has never done a rebrand, preferring to evolve the brand gradually and take clients and staff with it. Each fund team's distinct investment process is presented as part of the corporate brand rather than competing with it. Hear the full discussion in episode 18

Instead of hosting videos on YouTube, where ads and competitor content distract viewers, Finastra built its own Netflix-style channel for financial services, with series of about ten episodes of no more than 20 to 25 minutes. It gives first-party cookie data and integrates with the website, and users register once for the whole channel. Filming full 45-minute stage talks failed, so speakers now re-record condensed studio versions, and consistent release planning a year or more ahead is essential. Hear the full discussion in episode 31

Make sure you can answer the core questions of why you exist, what you do, who you are and how you work, and how the brand should look, feel and sound, using whatever labels fit your CEO and culture. Avoid overlapping terms, such as a brand vision alongside an existing company vision. Do not outsource the whole project: take control, and tell agencies to answer the questions using your labels rather than their proprietary models. Hear the full discussion in episode 61

Research shows the most overused values are integrity, honesty, teamwork, innovative, accountable and customer satisfaction, which wash over people. Leading brands use short commands that show behaviour, such as Meta's 'move fast' or Airbnb's 'be a serial entrepreneur'. A good purpose is credible and linked to how the company makes money, like Microsoft's aim to empower every person and organisation to achieve more, rather than an unrelated promise to save the planet. Hear the full discussion in episode 60

With subscription models, customers effectively decide every day whether a product is still useful, so by the time they cancel their mind was made up long ago. Dom describes cancelling a dog food subscription after a call centre told him his order was 'just one' of thousands, breaking the brand's promise to make his dog feel special. Rachel argues brand promises must be delivered consistently across the whole business, and share of wallet may matter more than churn. Hear the full discussion in episode 38

The components are competitive alternatives (what customers would do if you did not exist), differentiated capabilities, differentiated value, best-fit customers, and market category. They are all interdependent, and she starts with competitive alternatives, then works through capabilities, value, best-fit customers and category. Repositioning a failing 'spreadsheet on steroids' as an embeddable mobile database turned it into a product that eventually earned more than $1 billion. Hear the full discussion in episode 64

The first is misunderstanding the competition, such as Googling 25 rivals when sales says the real alternative is a spreadsheet or an intern; you cannot beat an intern on ease of use. The second is talking about features without explaining the value, especially for innovative features. Services firms often claim capabilities they cannot prove, and April argues they do better by specialising where they can claim leadership, as she does by only working with B2B tech companies that have sales teams. Hear the full discussion in episode 65

Dom argues the belief shapes behaviour: if you think you can create demand, you treat customers as targets, chase dashboard numbers and over-use promotions that damage pricing or steal future sales. If you see your job as capturing demand and building awareness, you ask where demand would otherwise go, what change you are asking customers to make, and you market to them very differently. Hear the full discussion in episode 68

Dale says cost and rate metrics measure how fast budget is spent, not whether it works, and most marketers divide this period's spend by this period's revenue even though effects lag two to five quarters. Even accurate ROI can mislead: handing 50% coupons to diners who already booked would score brilliantly while bankrupting the restaurant. He compares marketing to a factory building with negative ROI that makes everything inside more productive, raising close rates, shortening sales cycles and reducing discounting. Hear the full discussion in episode 69

Charlotte Lander of Standard Chartered found that conversations about SVB's capital request started on social media two days before traditional media picked them up, and kept rising over the weekend when press coverage dropped. Neutral, factual posts spread as fast as negative ones. Depositors could withdraw from their phones, so trust was lost at speed, and the bank missed chances to counter the narrative because it was not listening early. Hear the full discussion in episode 28

Start with problem statements: the worst things that could be said about your brand, then work backwards. The framework should cover identification, evaluation, response decisions and ongoing monitoring, with assessment criteria such as source credibility and conversation velocity. Define severity levels and escalation paths so the right stakeholders, from comms to legal, finance and the CEO, are involved at each level. Hear the full discussion in episode 28

Charlotte uses Deloitte's four drivers of trust and links each to social metrics. Humanity drives loyalty, measured through follower growth; transparency drives advocacy, measured through employee advocacy; capability drives satisfaction, measured through reach and engagement; and reliability drives conversion, measured through leads and click-throughs. Likes and follows act as micro-conversions to trust that can be tied to business outcomes. Hear the full discussion in episode 28

Paul Worthington argues no. Professions such as medicine, engineering and accounting set minimum standards to prevent death or financial harm, while marketing exists to create competitive advantage, so standardising it removes that advantage. He also asks which theories would be chosen as the standard, and warns that standardisation makes fields less dynamic. He favours continuous on-the-job learning and mentoring instead. Hear the full discussion in episode 58

Simon Hartley worked with a 100-metre breaststroke swimmer who realised his job was not to win, which he could not control, but to swim two lengths of the pool as fast as possible. Reviewing everything in his training against that goal, he found about two-thirds did not help, so he dropped exercises like the bench press and replaced them with work that did, such as removing stiffness in his hips to improve his streamlining. The lesson is to define your real job simply and cut what does not contribute. Hear the full discussion in episode 77

A Marketing Week survey found only about half of marketers are satisfied with their jobs. Sports psychologist Simon Hartley believes it comes from a lack of the things that make people happy: work has become an endless to-do list with targets and measures, leaving people feeling like 'biological robots'. He says leaders should explain why work matters, make people feel valued and give them licence to experiment and make mistakes. Hear the full discussion in episode 76

Paul says the statistic sounds alarming but many untrained marketers are highly effective because they learned through mentoring, experiments and self-study, which makes marketing more like a trade. He cautions against relying on training from tech vendors, which teaches people to operate tools without understanding why numbers move. Dom, who has no formal marketing training, concludes that giving people the basics plus room to experiment matters more than the label. Hear the full discussion in episode 58

Simon suggests three columns: what definitely contributes, what definitely does not, and what might. The 'might' column is usually the biggest, echoing the old line that half of marketing is wasted but nobody knows which half. The task is to find the missing information needed to move every item into one of the two outer columns. Hear the full discussion in episode 77

From asking people 'why do you come here and do this stuff with us?', Simon found every answer fitted four categories: Purpose, Enjoyment, Ambition and achievement, and Recognition and reward. Everyone is driven by all four in different proportions. He argues relying on one pillar is fragile, as with salespeople motivated only by commission whose drive collapses when the economy turns, so a strong environment supports all four. Hear the full discussion in episode 76

Simon suggests using ten blocks across Purpose, Enjoyment, Achievement and Reward, with at least one in each, to map your own or a colleague's motivation, then do the same for the team environment. A medical devices company whose sales staff were purpose-driven former clinicians, not commission-driven, saw results climb after rebalancing its approach. He also recommends incentives that vary from cash to a pat on the back, from individual to whole organisation, and from immediate to annual. Hear the full discussion in episode 77

Simon suggests expanding requests: say what needs doing and why it matters, then afterwards say thank you for something specific and explain the difference it made. Recognise progress, not just finished goals, and make sure customer feedback reaches the people who made it happen. His sports example is praising the player who ran 60 yards to stop a dangerous pass, not just the goal scorer. Hear the full discussion in episode 76

Paul warns that numbers presented with confidence are often believed far beyond their accuracy. He values the principle that far more buyers are out of market than in, but says marketing science wraps social science in the language of hard science and draws mainly on low-involvement FMCG purchases. For high-involvement decisions like cars or cloud providers, buyers research for a long time, so treating people as simply in or out of market can mislead. Hear the full discussion in episode 58