Uncensored CMO

Elfried Samba is CEO of Butterfly 3ffect. Samba immigrated from D.R. Congo to the UK at age 14 before rising to prominence in the Social media space through his work at global fitness brand, Gymshark.

Timestamps

• 00:00:00 - Intro
• 00:00:52 - Why Elfried Samba wears a hat
• 00:03:49 - Elfried’s dissertation on social media
• 00:10:23 - The skills most in demand in 2024
• 00:12:36 - Elfried’s early work at Gymshark
• 00:21:11 - The challenges of scaling up
• 00:26:23 - Elfried’s approach to personal growth
• 00:36:01 - How Elfried approaches finding talented people
• 00:41:59 - Why Elfried left Gymshark
• 00:49:26 - Scaling through influencers and community
• 01:00:52 - Power of personal brands

Mark Ritson is back and has convinced me to record in a pub, talking about the top 10 beer ads of all time (while drinking beer) - what could go wrong? We break down some classic ads from Heineken & Stella, Super Bowl hits from Michelob & Sam Adams and round off drinking Britain's favourite pint.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Intro
• 00:27 - The idea for the beer podcast
• 04:16 - Ad 10: Budweiser
• 08:24 - Ad 9: Budweiser
• 10:43 - Ad 8: Heineken
• 13:56 - Ad 7: Stella Artois
• 18:30 - Ad 6: Corona
• 21:46 - Ad 5: Michelob Ultra
• 25:17 - Ad 4: Carlsberg
• 29:10 - Ad 3: Sam Adams
• 36:36 - Ad 2: Guinness
• 46:05 - Ad 1: Heineken

Top 10 Ranking (with System1 Test Your Ad Report)

1. HEINEKEN DANIEL CRAIG VS JAMES BOND (5.6)
2. GUINNESS IN THIS TOGETHER (5.3)
3. BOSTON BEER SAM ADAMS YOUR COUSIN FROM BOSTON (4.9)
4. CARLSBERG THE SEAL (4.9)
5. MICHELOB ULTRA MESSI SUPERBOWL AD (4.8)
6. CORONA TINY UMBRELLAS (4.8)
7. STELLA ARTOIS REASSURINGLY EXPENSIVE (4.6)
8. HEINEKEN WATER IN MAJORCA (4.5)
9. BUDWEISER WHASSUP (4.3)
10. BUDWEISER OLD SCHOOL DELIVERY (4.2)

Kerris Bright is the Chief Customer Officer at the BBC. She was previously Chief Marketing Officer at Virgin Media.

She is a highly experienced leader, bringing a customer-centred, data driven approach to setting marketing strategy and executing with creative flair. Before Virgin, she held senior marketing positions at British Airways, ICI Paints and Unilever. While at British Airways, she spearheaded the development of ‘To Fly: To Serve’, a new purpose for the organisation and a multi-platform campaign and at ICI Paints she transformed the company from a ‘multi-local’ to global brand building organisation. After gaining a PhD in molecular neuroscience from the University of Sussex, she began her career in marketing as a graduate trainee at Unilever.

Timestamps

00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:26 - Why Kerris has a PHD in molecular neuroscience
00:04:04 - Getting marketing training at Unilever
00:09:56 - From Unilever to joining Dulux in crisis
00:18:33 - How marketers can work closely with commercial teams
00:22:12 - Purpose led campaigns
00:31:36 - Lessons from Kerris’ time in Private Equity
00:42:06 - From British Airways to Virgin
00:48:42 - Kerris’ role at the BBC
00:58:32 - The power of the BBC’s editorial independence
01:01:05 - Marketing the BBC
01:05:20 - How the BBC makes engaging content
01:08:13 - Kerris’ advice to aspiring marketers

The NFL is one of the biggest sporting entities in the world and it's reaching the biggest audiences it ever has. So in this episode, I'm joined by their CMO Tim Ellis, and Glenn Cole, co-founder of 72andSunny, their agency partner. We talk about the secrets behind a successful 7 year agency-client relationship, how to consistently make groundbreaking, emotional work, and what it takes to create a leading Super Bowl campaign.

Timestamps
00:00 - Intro
00:43 - Tim Ellis career journey
01:51 - How Tim met Glenn from 72andSunny
04:20 - Secret to a successful client agency relationship
08:21 - The compounding effect of a long term agency relationship
11:51 - Helmets off strategy
15:09 - You can’t make this stuff up campaign
17:40 - This is Football Country campaign
24:41 - Growing the audience for the NFL
27:22 - The Taylor Swift effect
34:32 - The growth of flag Football
39:30 - Growing the sport internationally
42:35 - How to make a great Super Bowl ad
49:07 - The power of emotion in advertising

In this episode, we're talking about one of my favourite subjects; innovation. And who better to talk about it with than Mauro Porcini, who's the Chief Design Officer at PepsiCo, who is also the author of “The Human Side of Innovation”. We talk about what it takes to make innovation that succeeds, and importantly, what characteristics of people can make innovation that works, (and he really knows, because if you've read the book, there are 24 characteristics that he talks about that are essential).

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
00:56 - The office of Pepsi’s Chief Design Officer
02:56 - How Mauro got into design
07:01 - Why you need to focus on people when innovating
16:29 - Why so many innovations fail
23:17 - Hiring the right people to foster innovation
25:42 - Key characteristics of successful innovators
33:50 - How to inspire kindness, optimism and curiosity
40:27 - Finding the balance in character traits
47:58 - The ideal recipe for innovation
51:26 - How to cultivate happiness at work
55:10 - Fighting the dictatorship of normal
57:00 - Pepsi Rebrand

Today I'm speaking with one of the most awarded creatives on the planet, David Droga, founder of iconic agency Droga5, and now CEO of Accenture Song, one of the largest creative groups in the world. Described by David himself as "therapy", this conversation spans topics from his start as life as a copywriter, how he created some of the most creative work on the planet and what it's like to transition from a creative to a CEO.

00:00 - Intro
01:58 - How David Droga got into advertising
07:36 - Working at Saatchi and Saatchi Singapore
12:19 - Pushing boundaries and making yourself uncomfortable
14:29 - Moving to Saatchi London
20:32 - Why David Droga started Droga5
25:55 - Droga5’s first campaign for Marc Ecko
31:23 - The first idea Droga5 presented: GE Olympics Campaign
38:30 - Droga’s Unicef campaign
43:25 - Droga’s Newcastle Brown Ale work
46:25 - Huggies Super Bowl Ad
48:44 - The Coinbase QR Code Super Bowl ad
52:22 - Characteristics of the best CMO’s Droga has worked with
56:23 - What it’s like being CEO of Accenture Song

In this episode, Antonia Wade, CMO of PwC, turns the tables and interviews our usual host, Jon Evans. From tax intern to marketing podcast host, we delve into Jon's journey through entrepreneurial endeavours at Britvic, through to being fired at Lucozade to finding a successful role in B2B at System1. We also discuss lessons Jon has learned from 150 podcast episodes with CMO's, agency creatives, founders and more.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Intro
• 00:43 - Jon’s journey from tax to marketing
• 10:18 - Deciding if you’re more suited to corporate or entrepreneurial life
• 12:35 - Why Jon got fired at Lucozade
• 17:15 - Traits of a confident CMO
• 18:35 - How do you go from tax to research?
• 25:21 - Why Jon chose Richard Shotton as his first guest
• 27:10 - Lesson’s we can take from COVID times
• 30:20 - What makes a great CMO
• 36:49 - Do emotional ads really work?
• 39:44 - Favourite campaign that didn’t perform well with System1
• 41:19 - Is winning a Cannes Lion worth it or not?
• 44:42 - How important is purpose in advertising?
• 48:37 - Is AI the saviour of creativity?
• 52:35 - What has Jon learned about leadership from Uncensored CMO guests?
• 56:25 - Who would Jon love to have on the podcast?
• 57:34 - Happy 50th Birthday Jon!

Welcome to the 150th edition of the Uncensored CMO podcast. To celebrate, I'm joined by Orlando Wood, my colleague at System1 and author of Lemon and Look Out, with the legend that is Sir John Hegarty, iconic founder of BBH. Today we're talking about why they believe a creative revolution is necessary for the industry and why they are collaborating on a new course "Advertising Principles Explained" as the antidote.

Timestamps

00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:22 - Have Oasis created the most effective ad of all time?
00:16:13 - What can we learn from the history of advertising?
00:22:43 - The advertising landscape when John started BBH
00:28:04 - The next creative revolution - Advertising Principles Explained
00:32:32 - The scientific evidence for emotional advertising
00:38:38 - Who is doing the best, most effective advertising today?
00:41:58 - BBH work with Lynx / Axe
00:44:55 - Why we need more humour in advertising
00:49:32 - Advice to CMOs for selling in this approach
00:51:44 - When does Advertising Principles Explained launch?
00:54:42 - Campaigns that didn’t go well for Sir John Hegarty
00:57:11 - What role do planners have in the success of the creative
00:57:33 - How did they sell in flat Eric to Levi’s
00:58:34 - How to challenge clients to think differently
00:59:13 - What emerging trends will shape the future of advertising
01:00:05 - What skills will the CMO of the future need?
01:02:58 - What trend needs breaking today?

Regular listeners of the podcast will know how much I love challenger brands, and Gymbox are one of the best examples of a challenger brand really shaping up their industry. Rory McEntee is the Brand and Marketing Director for the challenger Gym brand, and is responsible for some of the most creative campaigns (which have often come along with a side helping of legal letters) that have really put Gymbox on the map.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
00:45 - Rory’s marketing background
02:27 - Rory’s time at Paddy Power
08:18 - Why Rory joined Gymbox
10:11 - The Gymbox founding story
14:01 - Reframing how people see the gym
16:05 - Using your constraints to your advantage
25:15 - Using every touch point as media
35:11 - Being obsessed with execution
39:27 - Forgiveness not permission with your marketing
46:43 - Dealing with taking risks
48:56 - Why the Gymbox culture is so important
53:44 - How does the business of a challenger gym work

Rebecca Hirst is the Chief Marketing Officer of EY UK, a TEDx Speaker and a winner of Campaign's 40 over 40. Before joining EY and making the switch to B2B, Rebecca was Marketing Director at Samsung and working on brands including Coca-Cola, Schweppes, Kellogg’s, Kleenex, Microsoft, IBM, United Airlines, Lufthansa and Star Alliance.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
00:54 - Winning Campaign’s 40 over 40
04:33 - Being a Ted Talk speaker
08:01 - Rebecca’s time at Samsung
13:08 - Why Jon loves being a challenger brand
17:08 - Working at Coca Cola vs Pepsi
23:00 - How Rebecca transitioned into a B2B role
25:46 - The power of compounding
32:03 - How is B2B marketing different to B2C?
37:36 - How to influence change at a large organisation
46:12 - How EY became UK’s strongest brand
52:14 - Rebecca’s advice to young marketers

Michelle Moscone is the VP of Brand and Content at GEICO, one of the most famous insurance brands in the US. Michele's career has spanned from project management at some of the biggest agencies in the world to leading creative at an organisation where creativity is at its core. In this episode we talk about why humour is so important for advertising and why we're so afraid to use it.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
01:08 - Michelle Moscone background and career
08:18 - How Michelle landed at GEICO
11:20 - Why are there so many characters in insurance?
21:42 - When insurance goes wrong
32:34 - Why humour is so important
36:37 - Why are we afraid of humour?
41:16 - GEICO’s greatest hits
49:51 - How to get the best out of your agency
55:43 - Michelle’s favourite GEICO campaigns

Greg Hahn is the Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Mischief. One of the hottest agencies in the world doing work for the likes of Tinder, Tubi and Coors Light. Previous to Mischief, Greg was the CCO of BBDO NY. During that time BBDO was recognized as the most awarded agency in the world by the Gunn Report. It was also named Agency of the Year at The One Show, ADC and The Webbys multiple times.

Timestamps

• 00:00:00 - Intro
• 00:01:10 - How did Greg Hahn get into the advertising industry?
• 00:02:42 - 14 years at BBDO
• 00:03:52 - Getting fired from BBDO
• 00:06:24 - From being fired to creating Mischief
• 00:11:08 - The extraordinary cost of being dull
• 00:14:11 - Why do so many companies play it safe?
• 00:16:36 - Winning a Grand Effie with Tubi
• 00:19:29 - The Mischief mindset
• 00:26:21 - The opposite of a good idea can also be a good idea
• 00:26:59 - How can you use you disadvantage as your advantage?
• 00:30:50 - How can you change the context and reframe things
• 00:34:10 - What would you do if you weren’t afraid
• 00:38:14 - How to make the best out of being fired
• 00:49:24 - What Mischief believes in
• 00:53:49 - How Mischief hires great people
• 00:55:29 - How does Mischief stay sharp as they grow?
• 00:56:29 - Choosing the right clients to work with
• 00:58:55 - What’s next for Mischief?
• 01:00:10 - Hardest part of growing and scaling Mischief
• 01:03:27 - Advice for starting an agency from scratch

Kofi Amoo-Gottfried is the CMO of DoorDash, the premier local commerce platform valued at over $40 billion and dominates over 65% of the market for restaurant delivery. In his role as CMO, he is responsible for driving growth and engagement across all three sides of the marketplace. Prior to DoorDash, Kofi was VP of Brand & Consumer Marketing at Facebook, having previously served as the company’s Head of Consumer Marketing for internet.org.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
01:03 - What it’s like judging a Cannes lion
02:34 - DoorDash Valentines Day Campaign
04:54 - Kofi’s background
08:56 - Starting an agency in Africa for Publicis
13:41 - From agency to brand side
15:13 - Kofi’s role at Facebook/Meta
18:11 - From Facebook to DoorDash
20:23 - DoorDash backstory
28:10 - Navigating through COVID at DoorDash
33:24 - How DoorDash prepared to IPO
37:23 - How successful have DoorDash been post IPO?
39:12 - How DoorDash stay on top of innovation
44:41 - DoorDash’s Sesame Street Super Bowl ad
48:40 - DoorDash’s most recent Super Bowl campaign
54:00 - In house vs external agencies
55:51 - The culture at DoorDash

Greg Nugent was the CMO for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, one of the biggest events ever to take place. The entire world was watching as Greg’s work came to life. Before working on the Olympics, Greg oversaw the move of the Eurostar to St Pancras, which included creating the world’s longest champagne bar.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:51 - How did Greg get into marketing
00:10:02 - Greg’s time at Eurostar
00:17:47 - The longest champage bar in the world
00:22:43 - Becoming the CMO of the London 2012 Olympics
00:29:49 - How the team was pivotal for putting on the Olympics
00:34:13 - The importance of the legacy of London 2012
00:37:53 - Why the Paralympics became so prevalent in 2012
00:45:38 - What happened after London 2012
00:50:37 - From Olympics to Rising Pheonix
01:01:05 - How to execute on big ideas - Magic and Logic
01:16:35 - The power of persistence
01:23:24 - Telling powerful stories about those with disability

I often get asked why are there not more marketers on boards of companies? It turns out that only around 2.6% of board positions are filled by marketers, so I'm joined in this episode by somebody who really knows what it's like to be a marketer on a board, Chris Burggraeve. Previously he was the Global CMO of AB InBev, he's since been on many boards and has even written a book explaining the playbook for being a successful CMO on board.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
01:00 - Chris’ marketing background
01:43 - What makes a great CMO
05:08 - Making the case for marketing in the boardroom
09:48 - How many CMO's have a seat at the table
14:36 - Why every board should have a marketer
24:06 - Is there a language problem for marketers in the boardroom?
30:03 - Stakeholder outreach
37:00 - What makes a successful board member
40:00 - Skills that CMO’s need to retain a board seat
46:26 - How to find board seats to get on
49:44 - Chris transistion from large to small companies

Ellie Norman has been at the top end of some of the biggest organisations in the world, having held senior marketing roles at Formula 1 and Virgin Media. Most recently, Ellie has been the Chief Communications Officer of Manchester United, one of the most high-pressure jobs in the world. In this episode I talk to Ellie about what it takes to drive success at the very top of your game.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Intro
• 00:48 - Celebrating Southampton FC
• 03:12 - Ellie’s marketing background
• 07:29 - Virgin Media campaign with Usain Bolt
• 12:09 - Why Ellie moved to Formula 1
• 15:12 - How Formula 1 owns the brand
• 17:51 - The Drive to Survive partnership with Netflix
• 25:59 - Moving to work for Manchester United
• 29:51 - Goals for the CMO of Manchester United
• 31:23 - When do people choose the club they support
• 32:59 - What role does social media play for Manchester United
• 35:01 - Dealing with scrutiny as a huge brand
• 37:10 - How Manchester United work with huge sponsor deals
• 41:39 - How do you do a great brand partnership
• 47:59 - Ellie’s one peice of advice for marketers

In this episode I speak with Tom Fishburne, better known as the Marketoonist. Tom likes to poke fun at our industry through his entertaining cartoons saying what we're all thinking. We recently had him join as as our cartoonist in residence at Cannes Lions, where he shared his experience through a cartoon each day. We also discuss some of Tom's greatest cartoons and why humour is good for business.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Start
• 01:16 - How Tom Fishburne became a cartoonist
• 05:00 - Why is humour so important in the workplace
• 06:29 - Going full time as the Marketoonist
• 12:42 - Humour in the creative process
• 19:21 - Outdoor ads
• 22:30 - Discussing some of the Marketoonist’s greatest hits
• 23:17 - IoT cartoon
• 26:59 - Customer funnel cartoon
• 33:05 - Shiny new things cartoon
• 34:13 - Covid Cartoon
• 36:32 - AI cartoon
• 39:44 - The Marketoonist at Cannes
• 42:37 - Day 1 Cannes cartoon
• 45:39 - Day 2 Cannes cartoon
• 49:31 - Day 3 Cannes cartoon
• 53:46 - Day 4 Cannes cartoon
• 54:25 - Day 5 Cannes cartoon
• 57:59 - Jon’s own podcast cartoon

Kory Marchisotto is the Chief Marketing Officer of e.l.f Beauty, a beauty company that surpassed over $1b in annual sales. They're digital first brand builders, taking the internet by storm and connecting closely with their customers. In this episode we talk about why Kory invests heavily in their brand, how every employee is a shareholder and why they collaborated with Liquid Death.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro
01:15 - Kory’s background
06:11 - Founding story of e.l.f
08:39 - How do e.l.f make their products so affordable
11:30 - Why e.l.f are investing in brand building
15:15 - Staying close to your consumer
19:44 - Bringing customer insight into the business
21:23 - Staying agile as a large business
23:43 - Where have e.l.f invested marketing spend
27:28 - The e.l.f customer demographic
30:57 - e.l.f’ x Liquid Death collaboration
33:24 - e.l.f x Chipotle
37:01 - The e.l.f culture and why it’s important
41:00 - Kory’s advice to younger marketers
44:08 - Why Kory shares her learnings so much on LinkedIn

We're again talking about one of my favourite topics; challenger brands. In this episode we've got one of the most successful challenger brands in the world, Gymshark. They're one of the original influencer and social media creative brands, growing to be Britain's fastest growing Unicorn. I'm joined by their Chief Brand Officer, Noel Mack, to give me the inside scoop on exactly how they did it.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
02:29 - Gymshark Origins
04:49 - How Noel Mack bet Ben Francis
07:59 - What is a Chief Brand Officer?
09:28 - How Gymshark do influencer marketing differently
15:17 - Growing the Gymshark community
20:38 - The benefits of being a newcomer
22:59 - Working at a founder-led company
25:36 - When Ben Francis met the Prime Minister
29:09 - The challenges of scaling up fast
37:21 - Launching the Gymshark flagship store in London
43:22 - What’s it like working with Ben Francis?
46:46 - Career advice from Noel Mack

Listeners of have shown me time and again that you want more B2B content, so in this episode I'm joined again by the Les and Peter of B2B, Jon Lombardo and Peter Weinberg (previously of the LinkedIn B2B Institute). We discuss why B2B marketing departments need to put their focus on building brands rather than talking about product features, why distinctive assets continue to be an essential part of any brand, and we find out what the B2B boys will be doing now they've left LinkedIn.

Find out more about Jon & Peter's new company here:
https://www.evidenza.ai/

Timestamps

00:00 - Start
00:49 - The Les and Peter of B2B
02:34 - The biggest B2B revelations
03:52 - Is B2B really different to B2C?
06:28 - Determining buying cycles
08:25 - The brand building opportunity in B2B
20:05 - Why B2B companies need to create fluent devices
30:48 - Why Jon and Peter left LinkedIn to start a new company
33:37 - What does Evidenza do
38:19 - Why AI-powered market research is going to be revolutionary

Every year, the advertising industry descend upon the south of France to meet up in Cannes over a glass of rosé to celebrate the power of creativity. So I thought it was about time that I caught up with the CEO of Lions, Simon Cook, to discuss why creativity matters.

The conversation ranges from how can you make the case for creativity in business while budgets are strained, to what you can expect this year from Cannes Lions.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Start
• 01:37 - Origins of Cannes Lions
• 03:38 - The scale of Cannes Lions
• 05:19 - Creative marketer of the year
• 07:16 - State of the Nation research
• 09:30 - Friction between agencies and clients
• 12:47 - Jon’s two Cannes Lions with Lucozade
• 15:15 - The return of humour at Cannes
• 17:46 - Trends and themes for Cannes Lions 2024
• 18:39 - Will we see an AI category at Cannes?
• 20:01 - Big names at Cannes Lions 2024
• 21:14 - Cannes for creative effectiveness, or just celebrating the craft?
• 23:56 - Cannes embracing creators
• 25:27 - Jon’s pitch for a low budget category
• 27:57 - Advice on how to win a Lion
• 30:20 - How Simon Cook got the CEO job at Cannes Lions
• 32:40 - Challenges Simon has faced as CEO
• 35:09 - Dealing with criticism of Cannes Lions
• 37:02 - The Cannes Lions legacy
• 38:06 - Simon’s proudest moment

In this episode, we talk about one of my all time favourite brands, Cadbury. They're also one of the best performers on the System1 database, consistently creating five star work. To find out more about the work I'm joined by David Boscawen from VCCP, also known as Bosco, and Gui Ferreira who's recently joined Cadbury, bringing an outside perspective on what it means to take over an iconic brand with 200 years of heritage.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:46 Gui's background
• 03:27 David's background
• 04:20 How VCCP and Cadbury started working together in 2017
• 14:24 David and Gui's favourite Cadbury ads
• 21:08 Compound creativity and consistency
• 31:30 Key to a successful client agency relationship
• 39:55 How to write a good brief
• 47:03 Cadbury business results
• 49:41 Future of the Cadbury brand

In this episode, we're talking about a very, very serious topic. Humour. It turns out humour is not just funny, but it's good for business. In fact, humour in advertising is one of the most effective things you can do to make people remember you and buy your products.

I'm catching up with someone who knows all about humour. Trevor Robinson was the creative behind some of the most iconic and funniest ads of all time, including Tango from the 1990s. And I caught up with Trevor to find out more about what makes advertising funny, how do you do it, and what are the funniest ads of all time.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Start
• 00:48 - How Trevor got into advertising
• 03:50 - Landing the Britvic client
• 05:49 - The Tango Ad
• 11:11 - Haribo kids ad
• 20:00 - You need to entertain for commercial gain
• 28:11 - The importance of talent
• 29:30 - How to direct a great ad
• 38:23 - Have we lost humour in the past few years?
• 41:48 - The funniest ads of all time

Monzo Bank has fast become Britain's favourite bank, offering a customer focused online banking approach that consumers were craving. When Monzo started in 2015 they managed to challenge the incumbent banks with their distinctive "hot coral" card and referral scheme. 9 years later they are an established brand in the category and AJ Coyne has been tasked with creating emotional advertising to help continue to grow their market share.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Intro
• 00:44 - AJ’s marketing background
• 02:49 - What can clients learn from agencies
• 07:40 - AJ’s time at Klarna
• 09:48 - Taking the CMO job at Monzo
• 10:49 - The emotion of money
• 14:02 - Focusing on a world class customer experience
• 23:07 - Positioning Monzo as a bank in a sea of neo banks
• 24:09 - Monzo’s new brand campaign
• 27:22 - Embedding Monzo in culture
• 29:15 - Advice for being a young CMO
• 33:05 - How to deal with things going wrong
• 36:33 - Fostering creativity in an organisation
• 37:55 - How AJ is creating the Monzo culture
• 38:45 - AJ’s parting advice

Colleen DeCourcy is the Chief Creative Officer at Snap, having previously spent over a decade at Wieden+Kennedy as co-president and Chief Creative Officer, working on some of the largest brand accounts in the world. In this episode we talk about Colleen's time at W+K, some of her favourite quotes from Dan Wieden and how she's now tackling brand at Snapchat.

Timestamps
00:00 - Intro
01:22 - Colleen DeCourcy background
03:30 - Winning creative leader of the decade
06:30 - Colleen’s tenure at Wieden+Kennedy
13:50 - The TIME Interview
18:39 - From retirement to joining Snapchat
21:56 - The challenges of Snapchat
26:49 - Creating happiness in social media
30:02 - The 3D Chess of Being CCO and CMO at Snapchat
36:12 - What’s it like working for Evan Spiegel
39:07 - Advice to young marketers from Colleen DeCourcy

Scott Galloway is Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business and host of the Prof G and Pivot podcasts. In this episode Prof G lives up to the billing as the most uncensored guest on the podcast ever. We cover lots of ground, including his secret to success with Prof G media, what the #1 skill for all marketers should be, why brand is dead and how to build wealth. We recorded this episode as Scott releases his new book The Algebra of Wealth: A Simple Formula For Success, buy on Amazon UK, or US.

Links

• Jon's LinkedIn
• Jon's Twitter
• Watch the Uncensored CMO on YouTube

Timestamps

• 00:00:00 - Intro
• 00:00:57 - 25 year overnight success
• 00:01:28 - Scott’s biggest failures
• 00:07:38 - How Scott scaled himself
• 00:13:24 - Daniel Kahneman’s impact on Scott
• 00:20:26 - How social media has a negative impact on the world
• 00:28:45 - Scott Galloway on being late
• 00:31:14 - The most important skill for a marketer
• 00:33:32 - The Era of Brand is Dead
• 00:40:19 - Scott’s new book opening Aurelius quote
• 00:42:53 - The power of compound interest
• 00:43:53 - Scott’s advice to young people
• 00:48:33 - Growing your network grows wealth
• 00:56:33 - What does the agency of the future look like?
• 01:03:33 - How to get social media right
• 01:04:50 - Why big firms should stop certification based hiring

Today we're talking about more Boom! and less bust with Scott Morrison, the inspirational, energizing coach that teaches marketing teams how to be more successful, how to turn around business, how to win pitches and more.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
00:47 - Where did the name Boom come from
01:31 - Scott’s background at Saatchi&Saatchi
04:57 - What is Nike’s secret sauce
09:48 - Scott’s career failures
13:27 - Working on the Diesel brand
17:37 - How to go from bust to Boom!
40:11 - How to pitch to CMOs

Today we're talking about what makes a great CMO. One of the CMOs that I've admired throughout his career is Craig Inglis, who famously was a CMO for John Lewis for many years, making those ads that you saw at Christmas and really defining the genre of Christmas advertising.

Timestamps

• 00:00:00 - Intro
• 00:00:50 - Craig’s marketing background
• 00:02:25 - Craig’s biggest marketing failures
• 00:09:34 - How to have a long tenure as a CMO
• 00:13:24 - How to be a great CMO
• 00:23:53 - Guessing the most emotional John Lewis ads
• 00:28:50 - How to move from rational to emotional strategy in retail
• 00:31:17 - How to sell in creative ideas to rational CEOs and CFOs
• 00:36:00 - The business impact of Monty the Penguin for John Lewis
• 00:38:50 - How John Lewis ads does long and short
• 00:41:00 - Focusing on customer experience
• 00:51:48 - From large consumer brands to B2B
• 00:55:11 - Being the chair of the Marketing Society
• 01:00:34 - Working for The Entertainer

One of my favourite campaigns of all time is "Should've Gone to Specsavers" an idea that has completely transformed the Specsavers business. I speak to their CMO, Peter Wright and the MD of their in house creative team, Nicola Wardell, about how they've taken the idea and produced some of the best advertising on the System1 database.

Watch the episode on YouTube.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 - Intro
• 00:59 - How Peter and Nicola ended up on Guernsey
• 03:02 - The Specsavers story
• 04:37 - The secret to Specsavers’ success
• 09:04 - Family owned vs corporate business
• 10:38 - How the “should’ve gone to Specsavers” line was created
• 14:17 - The world’s longest running straplines
• 16:17 - The serious case for humour - Tower Block ad
• 20:18 - Specsavers Vet Ad
• 21:14 - A cross channel idea
• 24:29 - Why Specsavers do all creative in house
• 25:52 - How to attract talent to Guernsey
• 29:23 - Being the client and the agency
• 33:56 - Advice for creating an in-house team
• 34:37 - Wear in vs wear out at Specsavers
• 43:08 - Creating the culture at Specsavers
• 50:14 - Launching the audiology business
• 53:38 - How technology will shape the future of the business
• 56:07 - Peter and Nicola’s proudest work

How does someone create advertising for a brand that is over 150 years old? That is exactly what Stephen O'Kelly has been tasked with as Global Brand Director at Guinness, one of the most iconic brands in the world. Recorded from the Connoisseur bar at the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, this episode of Uncensored CMO is special. Not just because of how much history is involved in the brand, but the fact that Stephen is a fourth generation employee, carrying on the legacy of his family.

Vikki Ross is a copywriting expert. Having worked for some major brand in the past two decades, she knows a thing or two about branding and tone of voice. This episode is a copywriting masterclass. We start by delving into the principles of great copy, before looking at it in action with our very own Copy Safari (where we go out into the world to find real ads), and then round off by asking the big question; is AI going to replace copywriters?

Links

• Eats, Shoots and Leaves book
• Elements of F*cking Style book
• Bland Book
• Vikki's Twitter
• Vikki's LinkedIn

Timestamps

• 00:00:00 - Intro
• 00:00:59 - How Vicki got into copywriting
• 00:03:53 - Advice for people wanting to get into copywriting
• 00:07:34 - Why are car ads so bad?
• 00:09:39 - Is copywriting intimidating?
• 00:11:26 - Why copywriters need a good brief
• 00:14:50 - When copy goes wrong
• 00:18:17 - The principles of great copy
• 00:23:03 - This sentence has five words
• 00:25:49 - Power of a six word story
• 00:26:47 - #CopySafari
• 00:30:13 - Prime - It’s Right Here
• 00:31:58 - Nurofen and Nuromol
• 00:35:28 - Why marketers should work with lawyers
• 00:38:39 - Uber Eats - Just a tap away
• 00:41:19 - Subway - Saver Subs
• 00:43:00 - Lebara Mobile - Blady Blah
• 00:44:27 - Sacla - Spaghetti You Won’t Forgetti
• 00:45:56 - Monday.com - Meet your power suite
• 00:47:32 - TFL - See it, say it, sorted
• 00:49:42 - Greatest copywriting examples of of recent times
• 00:52:00 - Vikki’s favourite campaigns she’s worked on
• 00:55:05 - Will AI take copywriter’s jobs?
• 01:03:28 - Advice for clients on copy

We're doing things a little bit differently this week. I've just recorded a webinar with Mark Ritson on advertising effectiveness with a very special guest, the VP for global marketing, Gui Ferreira from Mondelez. They are responsible for some of the epic Cadbury work that has scored right at the top of the System1 charts. We discussed what makes their advertising so good, what are the principles of advertising effectiveness and what can we learn?

Watch the ads referenced in this podcast:

• Cadbury Garage
• Oreo Twist

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Intro
• 03:23 Why creativity matters
• 04:31 Investing in creativity
• 08:00 Being forced into short term tactics
• 10:46 How to write a better brief
• 14:45 Distinctive assets (Oreo Ad)
• 20:10 Cadbury Garage Ad
• 22:07 Orlando Chart
• 23:21 Cadbury Generosity
• 27:24 How Cadbury approaches creative development
• 29:22 Data vs creative judgement
• 32:53 How to measure creative
• 40:15 Q&A

Today I'm joined by Mike Cessario, the founder and CEO of Liquid Death, a water brand worth $1.4b. With the use of creative brand marketing and punk aesthetic, Mike was able to break into the biggest beverage category in the US and disrupt market dominated by huge brands such as Coke and Pepsi. This is a truly inspirational story on how you can defy the odds, break convention, disrupt a category and do it all on a shoestring budget. If you're a challenger brand, this is a must listen.

Timestamps
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:10 - Mike’s background
00:06:24 - Mike’s brandy startup
00:10:33 - Navigating regulation
00:12:46 - The benefits of being an outsider distrupting an industry
00:14:57 - Coming up with the idea for Liquid Death
00:19:30 - How to create an innovative brand
00:23:48 - Selling the Liquid Death concept
00:27:08 - Raising money for Liquid Death
00:29:50 - Launching on Amazon
00:30:52 - Generating demand in the early days
00:31:46 - Figuring out distribution networks for the drinks industry
00:35:45 - Why limited budgets helped Liquid Death grow
00:44:11 - Why D2C was pivotal for Liquid Death
00:46:12 - Liquid Death’s unique Super Bowl campaign
00:49:54 - The power of the Liquid Death merch
00:53:00 - Innovation for the future of Liquid Death
00:54:15 - Scaling and exit
00:56:02 - Having famous investors
00:57:29 - Maintaining the challenger spirit
01:01:58 - Mike’s advice to aspiring founders

As Chief Marketing Officer, Michelle Taite leads Intuit Mailchimp’s Marketing teams and is responsible for the business’ end-to-end brand, acquisition, performance, product, and lifecycle marketing activities globally in addition to Mailchimp's in-house creative agency Wink. Joining just after Mailchimp's $12b acquisition, Michelle had the task of integrating their marketing into the wider Intuit team.

Intro

00:00 - Intro
00:48 - Starting out desigining sneakers
02:39 - From New Balance to Unilever
04:13 - Doing purpose work for Dove
05:15 - Michelle’s favourite work at Unilever
06:27 - From CPG to SaaS
09:29 - What is Mailchimp and why is it successful
11:06 - Staying close to the customer
13:26 - How to market to marketers
14:54 - Email is not dead
16:15 - Integrating an acquired company
20:40 - Performance vs brand marketing
25:16 - How AI will enhance creativity
29:20 - Mailchimp's distinctive assets
33:21 - How marketing influences the product
35:56 - How to market to marketers
38:35 - Obsessing about the 95% not in market
40:45 - Top CMO advice from Michelle

Jo Shoesmith is the Global Chief Creative Officer at Amazon. She leads lead brand creative, design, production, social, and brand identity functions, as well as agency partnerships, in the largest fixed marketing portfolio investment at Amazon. 

00:00 - Intro
01:04 - From rural Australia to Los Angeles
01:58 - From agency to client side
04:44 - That famous Jeff Bezos marketing quote
05:50 - What does the Chief Creative Officer at Amazon do
07:41 - Creating emotional, brand building advertising
09:22 - Using the brand distintive assets
10:33 - Creating inclusive advertising
13:05 - Advice for writing a really good brief
14:43 - Tenets to inform great creative
15:45 - Benefits of having in house creative (and working with agencies)
17:42 - Managing global creative teams
19:36 - What’s it like making a Super Bowl ad
22:42 - Innovation within Amazon
24:12 - Making things happen in a huge business
25:13 - Simplifying complex creative ideas
28:23 - Work Jo is most proud of
31:39 - How Amazon are using AI
33:44 - Advice to a young Jo

Today I'm speaking with Whyte and Mackay Marketing Director Janice McIntosh and Mr President (their agency) CCO Jon Gledstone about the launch of their new campaign for The Woodsman brand. The "Well Earned" campaign score a whopping 4.8 stars on the System1 test and saw the launch of a brand character, Barry the Beaver, in a move that defies convention in the traditional Whisky category. From internal battles to hurdles presented by the regulators, both Whyte and Mackay and Mr President had to overcome some barriers to bring this campaign to life.

Timestamps
00:00 - Intro
01:01 - Inventing The Woodsman
01:42 - Creating a brand dominated by big players
04:00 - Standing out in a product dominated category
05:46 - Balancing demand and supply
06:31 - Availablity of the brand
07:11 - Overcoming perception barriers
09:15 - Coming up with the “Well Earned” positioning
13:06 - How to sell in breaking convention
16:00 - How the agency helped sell the idea
18:29 - Creating a new character
20:02 - Characters vs Celebrities
21:07 - Using humour in a traditional category
23:23 - Creating a physical barry the beaver
24:18 - The importance of craft in the ad
26:07 - Staying on the right side of regulations
28:23 - A good client agency relationship
30:09 - How important is testing and data to back up creative decisions
31:53 - The importance of mental and physical availability
33:32 - The results
35:01 - What’s next for the brand?

Bozoma Saint John is a Hall of Fame Inducted Marketing Executive, Entrepreneur and Author of her memoir, The Urgent Life. Her career has included roles as the Global CMO of Netflix, CMO of Endeavor, CBO of Uber, Head of Marketing of Apple Music & iTunes and Head of Music and Entertainment Marketing at PepsiCo.

Follow Boz

• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Twitter/X
• Her book - This Urgent Life

Follow Jon

• Jon's LinkedIn
• Jon's Twitter
• Watch the Uncensored CMO on YouTube

Timestamps

00:00 - Start
01:34 - Why Boz wrote such an emotional book
05:02 - The reception to the book
08:32 - Encountering Spike Lee
13:32 - Making decisions based on intuition
16:05 - Working for founder led brands
20:36 - Leading marketing at large organisations
23:55 - Managing the relationship with the CEO and CFO
28:42 - Hire Boz, Get Boz - how to have confidence in yourself
31:57 - Why you shouldn’t “play the game”
33:06 - Dawn always comes; dealing with grief
41:09 - Making the choice to change your life
45:11 - From corporate jobs to entrepreneur
48:24 - What’s next for Boz?

Today we’re diving deep into the high-stakes world of Super Bowl advertising with a very special guest—Ricardo Marques, the VP of Marketing for Michelob ULTRA. Ricardo, a veteran with 19 years at AB Inbev and the marketing maestro behind Michelob ULTRA's growth. He is here to share his playbook on how to score big during the most anticipated advertising event on American television.

In this episode we get an exclusive look at how Michelob ULTRA prepares for the Super Bowl. Ricardo breaks down the importance of the Super Bowl as a platform, not just for audience reach but for creating conversations and excitement around the brand.

But is Super Bowl advertising really worth the investment? Ricardo weighs in on the multifaceted approach to this question, assessing the creative, the conversion, and the long game of brand relevance. Key performance indicators, the intricate balance of novelty versus authenticity, and the seismic impact of this year's Super Bowl on Michelob ULTRA's growth trajectory are all on the table.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Intro
• 00:55 - Why the Super Bowl is such a landmark event for advertisers
• 03:07 - Ricardo’s background
• 03:56 - The best advertisers in Super Bowl history
• 05:05 - Michelob’s Super Bowl history
• 06:03 - Launch before game day, or on the day?
• 07:23 - Michelob’s Ad for 2024
• 10:04 - Is a Super Bowl ad worth $7m?
• 11:09 - KPIs for a successful Super Bowl Ad
• 11:48 - How involved are distributors in the process
• 12:50 - The 2024 Michelob ULTRA Super Bowl Ad with Leo Messi
• 16:14 - The briefing process for a Super Bowl ad
• 17:25 - Brand positioning for a more premium beer
• 18:39 - The core ingredients for a successful ad
• 21:02 - The impact of celebrities in ads
• 22:46 - Advice for people making their first big budget campaign
• 27:26 - Selling in the campaign internally
• 28:52 - Tying campaigns into global events
• 31:25 - Using AI in activations
• 33:57 - McEnroe vs McEnroe
• 36:35 - Lap Against the Legends
• 38:14 - Blind man commentating on NBA game
• 41:45 - How has the brand performed from the campaigns
• 42:38 - The secret to sustained success as a marketer
• 47:29 - Who is Ricardo supporting for the Super Bowl?

Today we're joined by Jessica Myers, CMO of The Very Group. Previously Jess was CMO at Metro Bank and has since made the transition to the highly competitive retail market. At Very, she has overseen the launch of a brand new fluent device; the pink flamingoes. The campaign featuring the new characters scored a whopping 5.7 stars on the System1 scoring platform, Test Your Ad, amongst the very best ads made this year.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
00:52 - Jess’ background
06:11 - Marketing academy fellowship
07:13 - From big brand to challenger brand
10:46 - The modern marketer
11:57 - From finance to retail
15:31 - Dealing with the challenges of joining a new business
18:03 - Nailing positioning
22:09 - Doing long term marketing in retail
23:39 - Agency selection process for Very
27:22 - Understanding your customer
31:50 - The power of testing creative
36:36 - The increasing standard of advertising
38:28 - Creating a new fluent device - The Flamingoes
43:20 - The future of the brand
46:08 - Jess’ advice to aspiring marketers

Dave Kaufman is responsible for the marketing for one of the biggest tech bets of all time; the Metaverse. As Director of Global Marketing for VR and the Metaverse for Meta (formerly Facebook), it's fair to say Dave has a pretty sizeable task on his hands. He's no stranger to large marketing bets, having been on the marketing team for Google Glass, which ultimately failed. But sandwiched in-between working for Google and Meta, Dave worked for Obama's Whitehouse for the United States Digital Service.

In this episode we discuss if the US is behind the UK in terms of marketing thinkers, why marketing education is overlooked, why Google Glass failed and what the future holds in terms of the Metaverse.

Links

• Dave's LinkedIn
• Dave's viral LinkedIn article
• Jon's LinkedIn
• Jon's Twitter
• Watch the Uncensored CMO on YouTube

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
00:58 - Dave’s favourite episodes of Uncensored CMO
01:50 - Elon vs Mark in a fight
02:31 - US vs UK marketing
03:57 - How to not be full of sh*t in marketing
09:16 - Was Google Glass a failure?
15:50 - Launching the Meta X Rayban Sunglasses
20:28 - Explaining the metaverse
24:02 - How to quantify the success of the metaverse
26:29 - When will the metaverse become mainstream?
30:58 - Making virtual reality more familiar
32:28 - Does tech have a marketing problem?
38:20 - Working for founders
46:39 - Working at President Obama’s Whitehouse
53:35 - Working with low budgets
56:47 - Dave’s bets for 2024

Today I'm joined by Antonia Wade, Global CMO at PwC and Author of The B2B Buyer Journey. This episode is a true B2B masterclass. We break down the importance of brand, reputation and relationships vs what people traditionally think is important in B2B. We also break down each stage of the marketing funnel to find out how best to reach them at every point in the buyer journey.

Links

• Antonia's LinkedIn
• Antonia's Book
• Jon's LinkedIn
• Jon's Twitter
• Watch the Uncensored CMO on YouTube

Timestamps

• 00:00:00 - Intro
• 00:01:10 - Antonia’s background
• 00:06:01 - How does B2B and B2C differ?
• 00:09:25 - How to reach B2B customers
• 00:11:52 - Building B2B relationships
• 00:17:30 - The importance of people in B2B
• 00:20:53 - Why brand and reputation are so important
• 00:24:43 - Why having an online presence matters
• 00:29:39 - Marketing from cost centre to profit centre
• 00:34:14 - Marketing at different stages of the buyer journey
• 00:39:54 - Why people think B2B is boring
• 00:46:30 - Why purpose has a bigger role in B2B
• 00:48:38 - Stage 1: Reaching Horizon Scanners
• 00:51:41 - Stage 2: Reaching Explorers
• 00:55:18 - Stage 3: Reaching Hunters
• 00:57:39 - Stage 4: Capturing the Active Buyer
• 00:59:15 - Stage 5: Marketing post-purchase
• 01:01:18 - How will AI transform B2B marketing

One of the most popular episodes of all time was my first with Sarah Carter and Les Binet, so I'm bringing them back to do a review of 2023. We talk about what makes Les cry and if AI is going to take over our jobs.

Links

• Jon's LinkedIn
• Jon's Twitter
• Watch the Uncensored CMO on YouTube

Timestamps

• 00:00:00 - Intro
• 00:01:05 - Les’ favourite ads of 2023
• 00:04:45 - Sarah’s favourite Christmas ads
• 00:07:15 - Wear out
• 00:12:30 - Why familiarity breeds contentment
• 00:17:42 - Have we rediscovered homour in 2023?
• 00:19:47 - The role of purpose in advertising
• 00:29:17 - Diversity and representation
• 00:34:53 - Kevin the carrot and characters
• 00:41:52 - Fluent devices and consistency
• 00:49:01 - Why do John Lewis run christmas ads every year
• 00:50:40 - How did the first ad to ever air score?
• 00:52:51 - The highest performing advertising categories
• 00:55:04 - Lowest performing advertising categories
• 01:00:12 - Outperforming your category
• 01:03:08 - US Superbowl vs UK Christmas
• 01:04:02 - Les and Sarah’s thoughts on AI
• 01:14:03 - How reliable is ESOV
• 01:15:52 - MMM Models
• 01:19:32 - The best performing Adam and Eve ad
• 01:21:42 - Predictions for 2024

Now in this episode, we're talking about one of the most competitive markets in the world - insurance comparison. Anyone who's followed this market will know just how intense it is. And how do you build a brand when you don't have a product yourself, but you're selling someone else's product? Well, it's one of those situations where marketing is all important and advertising can make all the difference to your success.

I'm catching up with Sam Day, who's been the CMO of confused.com, for the past 6 years, who successfully challenged this market and taken it from 4th to 2nd place on very limited budgets. So I want to find out from Sam the secret behind the success of the campaigns that he's run over the last few years, how he's transformed their business and what his plans are for the future.

Links

• Jon's LinkedIn
• Jon's Twitter
• Watch the Uncensored CMO on YouTube

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
03:53 - Sam’s advice to a young marketer
06:27 - Sam’s greatest failure
08:44 - Management and leadership advice
12:27 - The secret to an extended CMO tenure
19:41 - Getting c-suite buy in with data
22:50 - Consistency
24:26 - Marketing when you don’t have a product
26:01 - Brand vs price
28:43 - Why name the brand after the problem (confused.com)
31:24 - Branding against one of the best branded characters of all time
34:02 - Why there’s no silver bullet for success
37:02 - Spontaneous awareness - how to win an effie
39:50 - Selecting an agency
42:01 - Great examples of populous advertising
44:14 - How agencies should pitch to CMOs
49:39 - What’s next for Sam Day

Today I'm revisiting episode 3, with Adam Morgan, founder of eatbigfish and author of Eating The Big Fish, The Pirate Inside and A Beautiful Constraint to find out what it takes to become a successful challenger. Adam shares his tips for creating a challenger brand, transforming your culture and the power of constraints to driving innovation.

In this episode:

• Why being No.2 is better
• How he turned the anger of his project being shelved into a career-defining opportunity
• Being turned down by Phil Knight and where the idea of a Challenger brand came from
• The importance of over-commitment and being obsessed with execution
• How Tony’s Chocolonely have become a truly challenger brand
• How to be a pirate in the navy without getting fired
• What you can learn from a catwalk show and how constraints can turn into your greatest advantage
• The curse of data and how it leads us to a decline in creativity
• The furtile zero and what to do with no budget
• Adam shares his worst career moment
• Why the meeting is never really the meeting and why the Japanese fall asleep in meetings
• The one thing Adam has never told anyone before

Follow me:

• Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
• LinkedIn

Contact me:

• Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
• Email – [email protected]

Adam Morgan:

• Twitter | @eatbigfish
• www.eatbigfish.com
• Eating The Big Fish
• The Pirate Inside
• A Beautiful Constraint

Today I'm joined by Phill Agnew, senior product marketer at Buffer and host of Nudge, the only podcast dedicated to consumer psychology, and the other podcast that regularly hits the top spot of the UK marketing charts. In this episode we share 5 behavioural science "nudges" and 5 marketing lessons that we've taken from our respective podcasts and careers.

Links

• Nudge podcast
• Jon's LinkedIn
• Jon's Twitter
• Phill's LinkedIn
• Phill's Twitter

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
01:19 - How did Phill get into podcasting
04:03 - Bonus Nudge - The Halo Effect
06:29 - Nudge 5 - The Labour Illusion
09:40 - Marketing Lesson 5 - The Power of Getting Fired
13:25 - Nudge 4 - The Pratfall Effect
19:26 - Marketing Lesson 4 - The Power of Purpose
24:49 - Nudge 3 - The Curiosity Gap
30:03 - Marketing Lesson 3 - Be Distinctive
35:26 - Nudge 2 - Social Proof
41:14 - Marketing Lesson 2 - The Power of Creativity
45:10 - Nudge 1 - Fresh Start Date
48:59 - Marketing Lesson 1 - The Power of Consistency

Today I'm joined by Susan O'Brien, who is the VP Brand at Just Eat Takeaway. Just Eat are famous for their ads with celebs such as Snoop Dogg and Katy Perry, but are even more well known for their catchy jingle "Did somebody say...?". In this episode we break down Susan's career and how to make such an effective campaign.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Start
• 01:16 - How Susan got into marketing
• 03:43 - Freelancing
• 07:30 - The secret to longevity as a marketer
• 09:44 - The realities of being a CMO
• 14:25 - The CMO’s view on Cannes
• 16:44 - The “Did Somebody Say” campaign
• 20:54 - The impact of audio branding
• 24:11 - Operating in a fiercely competitive market
• 26:01 - Choosing to invest in celebrity talent / Snoop Dogg
• 29:06 - From Snoog Dogg to Katy Perry
• 31:31 - Secret to an effective client agency relationship
• 32:44 - Coming up with new ideas
• 35:47 - Using your gut vs using the data
• 39:35 - Advice to marketers in scale ups

Anselmo Ramos is the co-founder and Creative Chairman of GUT, a global independent creative agency with offices worldwide. He, along with his co-founder Gaston Bigio, opened GUT in 2018 with the goal of being the go-to agency for the world’s biggest brands, including Popeyes, Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Tim Hortons, among others, who are looking to do brave work and long-term bold brand building. Prior to co-founding GUT, Anselmo was the co-founder of award-winning global creative agency DAVID, and he was also previously the Chief Creative Officer of Ogilvy Brazil.

Timestamps

00:00:00 - Start
00:01:04 - Why Anselmo is an ad nerd
00:03:12 - Favourite Ogilvy quotes
00:07:38 - Most proud of from time at Ogilvy
00:17:20 - Founding the DAVID agency
00:18:43 - Founding the GUT agency
00:20:55 - Being an independent agency
00:25:35 - Winning business in the early days
00:30:30 - What makes a great CMO?
00:33:00 - How to find good clients
00:37:30 - Agency of the year
00:40:59 - Stand out Grand Prix winners
00:45:29 - The one line brief
00:47:05 - Who else is doing great work?
00:48:46 - Scaling while staying true to your values
01:02:06 - Expansion

Vicki Maguire is the Chief Creative Officer at Havas London, responsible for some of the best ads of all time. Notably Asda's Elf ad in 2022 which is the happiest ad we've ever seen at System1, and the British Heart Foundation campaign with Vinnie Jones that literally saved lives.

Timestamps

00:00 - Start
02:41 - Vicki’s background
07:32 - How Vicki got into advertising
11:53 - British Heart Foundation and Vinnie Jones
20:30 - The Asda Elf Ad with Will Ferrell
35:39 - Taika Waititi and Michael Buble campaign
46:13 - Cannes Lions judging

Nancy King is the VP of Marketing at Airbnb. She leads Airbnb's global brand marketing team, performance marketing, marcom and social media teams. Prior to Airbnb, Nancy 20 years working across a mix of agencies, start-ups and as a founder of a strategy consultancy.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Intro
• 00:48 - Nancy’s background as a creative
• 05:16 - What can people learn from both agency and client side experience
• 07:08 - Origins of Airbnb
• 08:42 - The phases of Airbnb
• 09:54 - Losing 80% of the business overnight
• 17:47 - Deciding to re-invest in advertising
• 21:23 - The challenges of not owning your product
• 25:03 - The best Airbnb ads
• 26:52 - Making creative in-house rather than using agencies
• 30:00 - The impact culture has on the work at Airbnb
• 31:51 - Working in a founder-led business
• 35:12 - How Nancy’s role has changed
• 40:12 - Power of industry events
• 42:00 - The most expensive Airbnb

Dr Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, writer, and former Oxford literary scholar. McGilchrist came to prominence after the publication of his book The Master and His Emissary, subtitled The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. His work formed the basis of Orlando Wood's books on advertising, Lemon and Look Out.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
01:09 - Iain McGilchrist background
06:05 - Hasn’t the myth of the right and left brain been debunked
12:48 - The changes in society based on right brained dominance
16:36 - Are we seeing a left to left brained shift in society today?
22:10 - How are the big discoveries made?
24:39 - How understanding attention could change the world
26:34 - How the left and right brains do things differently
29:19 - Is attention crested by us or the world around us?
31:18 - Can we train ourselves to be more right-brained?
35:13 - AI asks Iain a question
37:13 - How did Orlando Wood connect with Iain McGilchrist
45:02 - Orlando’s most profound piece of Iain’s work

In this episode I'm joined by Tass Tsitsopoulos, Strategy Director, and Brandon Pracht, Managing Director for the McDonald's global advertising team at Wieden+Kennedy. I catch up with them to find out how they brought McDonald's swagger back with some of their most memorable and effective work in recent years, including the "Famous Orders" and "As Featured In" campaigns.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
00:56 - The difference between UK and US agencies
03:15 - How did Brandon get into advertising
04:52 - What makes the culture special
08:07 - How W+K won the McDonald’s account
11:34 - Importance of connecting with real people
12:52 - What happens after winning the pitch
15:15 - What was the best McDonald's ad?
19:19 - The "Famous Orders" campaign
23:46 - The impact of the campaign
27:00 - The financial results
27:49 - Investing in long term having short term effects
29:05 - The “As Featured In” campaign
31:09 - Building fame
36:03 - How to thrive with a client like McDonald's
39:02 - What happens when things don’t do well
41:44 - Advice for clients wanting to make great work

Josh Feldman serves as Global Chief Marketing Officer, NBCUniversal Advertising and Partnerships. Feldman is responsible for driving how the NBCUniversal’s Advertising and Partnerships division shows up in the marketplace, leading creative executions that span Upfronts and industry-first events. 

He oversees the entire Marketing and Content Partnerships group, comprising the division’s Commerce, Content and Talent Partnerships, Creative, Marketing, Strategic Initiatives, and Trade Marketing teams. This group operates the division’s full scale creative agency; leads NBCU’s development of an innovative suite of commerce solutions, such as One Platform Commerce; and furthers the company’s commercial innovation commitments.

Previously, Feldman served as the division’s Executive Vice President, Head of Marketing and Advertising Creative. Prior to joining NBCUniversal, Feldman started his career at Turner Broadcasting, where he took on various roles including Senior Vice President & National Sales Manager, Vice President & New York Sales Manager as well as Account Executive, where he oversaw client relationships for Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, truTV, TBS and TNT.
  

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
00:35 - Josh’s Career Story
02:50 - How does being creative help with sales
04:17 - B2B strategies that make NBCU successful
07:58 - Why Cannes is important to NBCU
09:41 - NBCU’s iconic programming
11:05 - The secret to building strong client relationships
14:21 - Funnel marketing and the importance of end of funnel
16:34 - The popularity of Bravo
17:46 - BravoCon
21:00 - The best brand activations at BravoCon
22:51 - How brands can work with talent
24:49 - Being a media partner for the Olympics
27:59 - Josh’s advice on creativity and landing your message
31:39 - Helping smaller brands

One thing we don't talk enough about on the Uncensored CMO is B2B. Specifically, B2B companies that are investing in their brand. One such company is Salesforce, who are a true force in the B2B tech world. I caught up with their EVP of Brand Marketing, Colin Fleming, a former Red Bull Racing driver, who gave us an insight into why their brand marketing has been so effective. From Super Bowl ads and partnering with Matthew McConaughey, to building recognisable brand characters and even creating their own huge event, Dreamforce.

Links:

• Follow Colin
• Follow Jon 
• Salesforce 
• Example ad with Matthew McConaughey

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro
01:44 - Colin’s life as a racing driver
04:07 - From motorsport to marketing, what did Colin learn?
06:01 - The Salesforce journey
10:20 - The 95/5 rule in B2B
14:30 - The payback of investing in brand
15:27 - Investing in brand assets
19:31 - Why is a B2B company doing a Super Bowl ad?
21:26 - How Matthew McConaughey is involved in Salesforce
23:37 - Thoughts on AI
25:57 - Why Dreamforce is so big
32:28 - Why do people go to conferences
35:36 - Brand partnerships with Formula One
41:53 - Colin’s advice for marketers

Tash Courtenay Smith is a serial entrepreneur, renowned digital marketing expert, and best-selling author. Starting out as a journalist for the Daily Mail, Tash went on to found Talk to The Press, the Notting Hill Shopping Bag Company, Luminositie and now runs Bolt Digital. Tash also runs D2C Live, an event bringing together the best minds in Direct-To-Consumer. This conversation with a true entrepreneur covers topics such as the state of D2C, building a personal brand and inspiring the next wave of entrepreneurial talent with Biz Kids.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
00:45 - Starting out in journalism
01:30 - What can marketers learn from journalism?
05:03 - Why become a founder
06:49 - The unforgiving life of a journalist
10:37 - Challenges building and selling a business
16:08 - Advice to new entreprenuers
20:58 - What makes a good business to invest in?
26:03 - The best approaches for scale ups
30:11 - The turbulent D2C market
34:24 - Cutting through the D2C noise
36:00 - Which brands are nailing D2C?
37:00 - Creating a D2C live
40:13 - Writing and finding your own voice
41:17 - Building a personal brand
45:32 - The secret to a successful personal brand
51:17 - Going viral
53:44 - Biz Kids
59:41 - Parting advice

The Gary Vee of Australia is back in the Uncensored CMO hot seat. That is, of course, everyone's favourite marketing professor, Mark Ritson. In this episode we talk about the best campaigns of the year, Mark's most popular articles and why he thinks the US is lagging behind the rest of the world.

• Watch Cadbury Garage

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro
00:31 - What’s going on in marketing in 2023?
02:19 - Why US marketers are off the pace
05:10 - Ehrenberg Bass and academic literature
06:53 - Mark’s contradicting viewpoints
07:23 - The Gary Vee of Australia
08:42 - Jon made a top 100 list
10:38 - Ritson’s biggest stories of the year
12:33 - Guiness
17:29 - The long and the short of it
20:38 - Cadbury
29:02 - Wear in vs wear out
36:43 - Running the same ad vs running a variation of a campaign
39:16 - Difference vs distinctiveness
45:51 - Is authenticity overrated?
48:12 - Do marketers use a brand’s history enough?
57:43 - Quick fire round

Julia Goldin is the Global Chief Marketing and Product Officer for the world's no. 1 toy brand, LEGO. Prior to joining the LEGO Gin 2014, Julia was Global CMO at Revlon. She also had a 13-year career with Coca-Cola, where she held several senior global and regional marketing roles, including Division Marketing Director of Northwest Europe and deputy Chief Marketing Officer of Japan.

Timestamps
00:00 - Intro
00:53 - Julia’s background
01:57 - How did Julia become a CMO?
04:46 - What’s the secret to being a successful CMO?
07:51 - The secret to a long CMO tenure
09:37 - Staying on top of trends
11:30 - The LEGO mission and importance of plau
12:24 - Why play can help work
14:27 - Is working at LEGO as fun as it sounds?
17:51 - Product innovation at LEGO
20:02 - Collaborations and partnerships
23:11 - The best LEGO advertising campaigns
25:27 - The LEGO approach to sustainability
27:07 - Working with agencies
28:52 - Where should a CMO focus?
30:59 - Julia’s marketing career advice
36:23 - Getting the business to buy-in to marketing
40:26 - What will be important in the future

Tom Goodwin is back for our first ever live event in London. As uncensored as ever, we cover all things digital transformation to the biggest myths in marketing, this time with some thought provoking questions from a live studio audience.

Timestamps:
00:00 - Start
01:06 - Tom’s background
03:21 - Why Tom kept getting fired
05:08 - What technology will change our lives?
08:34 - We don’t care about consumers
10:21 - What opportunites are there?
12:45 - Things that aren’t changing
16:52 - Jingles
18:02 - Are brands dead?
20:32 - Questions
20:53 - The online advertising emperor has no clothes
25:38 - Why are brands not calling out social media companies?
28:28 - Biggest barrier to deliver on digital transformation
31:45 - Should marketers be more respected?
37:04 - How important is trust?
42:17 - Why did Tom keep getting fired?
44:49 - Is there ageism in marketing?
49:22 - Does not having kids make Tom more uncensored?

For a very special edition of the podcast (episode 100!) I'm joined by a very special guest, Rob Mayhew, TikTok sensation and Creative Director at Gravity Road. Rob's witty commentary on the industry comes in the form of his hugely entertaining short-form videos, which often go viral on TikTok and on LinkedIn. Having found himself between jobs during COVID, Rob dug into his comedy roots and started posting up to 8 videos a day on TikTok which have grown in popularity exponentially over the past few years. He now finds himself striking some impressive brand partnerships who all want a slice of his comedy gold.

This episode covers the serious to the absurd. From Rob's story of how he got into the industry, to pitching a new British Airways ad to a special guest. I couldn't think of anyone better to have as guest 100.

Watch some of Rob's TikTok's if you enjoy laughing.

Timestamps

00:00:00 - Start
00:03:41 - Rob’s backstory
00:07:32 - Rob’s comedy background
00:09:39 - How Rob got into TikTok
00:13:11 - Coming up with content ideas
00:16:50 - Rob’s most popular TikTok
00:19:25 - Landing a partnership with Pret
00:21:12 - The ultimate sponsor
00:23:34 - Jon’s pitch horror story
00:30:06 - Finding Rob new sponsors
00:31:17 - Pitching Nils Leonard Rob’s idea
00:37:07 - Sponsor brainstorm
00:38:51 - Cannes
00:40:39 - Making a career switch at 40
00:43:09 - Making a living from making online content
00:46:47 - Why Rob called his new agency Dunning Kruger
00:49:09 - Struggles of working for yourself
00:50:03 - Who are Rob’s heroes
00:53:47 - Dealing with inbound volume
00:54:39 - Rob’s new book
00:56:38 - Agency radio show
00:57:34 - Jon’s favourite guests
00:59:42 - What guest would Jon like on the pod?
01:02:22 - Rob getting fired
01:06:58 - The difference a good boss can make
01:09:21 - Something Rob has never told anyone else before
01:13:50 - How to be good on TikTok
01:14:47 - How to make B2B sexy again

Advertising legend Sir John Hegarty returns to the podcast to discuss why he created a course focused on the business of creativity. If you've listened to the podcast before you'll know how important I think creativity is to drive business results, and so when Sir John announced he was creating this course, I had to get him back on the podcast to discuss.

Learn more about the course here.

About Sir John Hegarty
He was a founding partner of Saatchi and Saatchi in 1970. And then TBWA in 1973. He founded Bartle Bogle Hegarty in 1982 with John Bartle and Nigel Bogle. The agency now has 7 offices around the world. He has been given the D&AD President’s Award for outstanding achievement and in 2014 was admitted to the US AAF Hall of Fame.

John was awarded a Knighthood by the Queen in 2007 and was the recipient of the first Lion of St Mark award at the Cannes Festival of Creativity in 2011. John has written 2 books, ‘Hegarty on Advertising - Turning Intelligence into Magic’ and ‘Hegarty on Creativity - there are no rules’.

In 2014 John co-founded The Garage Soho, a seed stage Venture Capital fund that believes in building brands, not just businesses.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
01:37 - Why clients want to see ads
05:52 - Sir John Hegarty’s top 5 ads
06:47 - Ad 1: Audi - Villas
07:41 - Ad 2: K Shoes - Creak
08:41 - Ad 3: Levi’s - Launderette
11:24 - Ad 4: Xbox - Champagne
12:06 - Ad 5: Levi’s - Flat Eric
17:16 - Has advertising got too serious?
20:22 - The secret to pitching to a more rational audience
23:58 - How to make the most of your agency relationship
26:34 - Improving the brief
29:45 - Have we lost the art of brand building?
33:46 - The business of creativity
39:39 - Collaborators on Sir John’s Course
41:41 - The production of the course
44:33 - The legacy of Sir John Hegarty
47:26 - The format of the course
48:15 - Why training is important
50:29 - The case for creatives in leadership
52:36 - How would Sir John Hegarty launch a new agency

Marketing waste is one of the biggest issues facing our industry. So when marketing legends Peter Field and Adam Morgan reached out to me to talk about their new work on the impact of dull advertising on brands, I immediately got them on the podcast.

In this fascinating episode we discuss why you really can’t afford to bore your audience with your ads anymore. What have Adam and Peter learnt over 40 years about the actual cost of dull marketing to businesses, to brands and even to your career?

And for those marketers really hellbent on safety, we discuss the role of danger and a new upcoming mastersclass in how to make the dullest ad ever.

Links

• https://thechallengerproject.com/lets-make-this-more-interesting
• www.orlandonadvertising.com
• https://theexaminedlife.org/ - Stephen Grosz
• https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/b2b-institute

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Intro
• 01:13 - Who is Adam Morgan?
• 02:38 - The best challenger brands
• 03:08 - Has being a challenger changed?
• 06:25 - The legacy of the long and short of it
• 11:01 - Who had the higher ranked Uncensored CMO podcast?
• 11:45 - How Adam and Peter met
• 12:26 - The inspiration for the extraordinary cost of dull
• 15:24 - How are there effective, yet dull campaigns (big budgets is the answer)
• 19:13 - The System1 Data on the cost of dull
• 22:41 - Why is advertising so dull?
• 26:21 - Why are the best marketing organisations trending towards more dull?
• 27:29 - Making demonstratably unskippable ads
• 30:55 - The role of danger and constraints in getting to great work
• 33:05 - The % of B2B ads that are dull and the work The LinkedIn Institute is going to reverse this
• 35:06 - How dull is approached in different categories
• 39:01 - Orlando Wood’s current research
• 41:48 - How will AI affect dullness
• 45:27 - Which categories are doing a good job of being interesting?
• 53:57 - Why we need a masterclass for dull

How do you create a brand in a sub-category where only a handful of major brands operate a product line, from scratch, having never worked in the industry before? Well, Luke Boase did exactly that when he founded Lucky Saint, the worlds first alcohol free only brand. From finding a brewing partner to create an enjoyable alcohol free beer, raising money from investors to almost losing the business during COVID, this episode has it all.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro
01:23 - Life before Lucky Saint for Luke
06:02 - Coming up with the Lucky Saint idea
08:28 - Creating a new category
09:59 - Why do non-alcoholic only?
11:36 - Convincing breweries to get on board
13:56 - Finding the perfect brewing partner
17:07 - The ones who rejected Lucky Saint
18:33 - The advantages of being a category newcomer
20:27 - When did Luke go all in on Lucky Saint
20:55 - Raising money
24:35 - Starting over with the brand
29:18 - Creating a non alcoholic beer that actually tastes good
31:08 - Being a single beer brand
33:15 - Some of Lucky Saint’s investors
35:29 - Ad execs on the investor team
37:07 - Working with Rankin
40:06 - Naming the brand Lucky Saint
41:35 - How Covid almost wiped them out
47:25 - Creating their own pub “The Lucky Saint”
50:06 - Alcoholic vs non-alcoholic beverages
51:46 - Convincing people to try alcohol free beer
57:21 - The secrets to Lucky Saint’s success

Long time returning guest Orlando Wood is back in the hot seat, talking all things advertising. We look back on his two IPA bestselling books, Lemon and Look Out, to discuss how the two sides of the brain attend to the world differently and how this impacts advertising both on TV and digital. We also discuss some of Orlando's favourite recent adverts and why he likes them.

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro
01:32 - Who is Orlando Wood
02:50 - Orlando’s latest work
03:54 - Is Orlando only talking about digital?
05:18 - How to build brands through digital
07:55 - How can advertisers achieve an effective message
10:26 - "moto e azione"
13:35 - Why Ian McGilchrist’s work was so profound for Orlando
14:25 - Right-brain vs left-brain in advertising
21:00 - Trends with left and right brained advertising
22:24 - Is the change in advertising due to social media?
24:13 - The impact of creativity on attention
26:29 - How the choice of media can impact ESOV
27:22 - Is humour making a comeback?
31:32 - Fluent devices
35:13 - Orlando’s favourite ads
39:31 - Jon’s favourite recent ad
43:31 - Orlando’s new course

Emily Kraftman is the Managing Director for UK & Europe for a brand who are disrupting a category no one else thought to, toilet paper. That brand is, of course, Who Gives A Crap. Their quirky nature, fun packaging and strong stance on sustainability are helping them make a dent in a big-brand dominated category. Emily has had quite the career, starting out working on Stella Artois, before leaving the corporate life to join a young Deliveroo to head up their "Rider Marketing" division. She's since made the switch from Marketing Director to Managing Director, learning to deal with all the challenges that come with the broader remit.

Watch Who Gives A Crap new TV campaign "Uncrap the World'

Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
01:07 - Dealing with the challenges of a unique brand name
03:26 - How Emily got into marketing
05:27 - Emily’s time working on Stella Artois
08:26 - How successful was Stella Artois’ innovation in cider?
10:37 - From corporate brand to joining Deliveroo
12:24 - Not fitting in after a career switch
14:37 - Challenges of going from a safe work environment to a crazy one
17:39 - The challenges of such fast growth
19:40 - Brand positioning in a fast growing market
21:35 - From Deliveroo to Who Gives a Crap
24:13 - Who Gives a Crap Backstory
27:17 - Why go into the toilet paper market
30:24 - Power of purpose in marketing
32:54 - From DTC to retail
35:13 - Growing with small budgets
37:20 - Why B2B can help when you have small budgets
39:01 - Launching their first TV campaign
42:22 - Transitioning from Marketing Director to Managing Director

The return of Uncensored CMO podcast legend Tom Goodwin. In this final flourishing episode recorded from Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, in what has become our annual chinwag, we riff on everything from how advertising thinking can build big businesses to why marketeers invest in celebrities, despite the data not backing the value equation. What would our ideal Cannes festival look like? What would we do differently next year…. and where? And why we want to bring back the Tango Campaign!

If you want more Tom, we'll be holding a LIVE Uncensored CMO at The Curzon Soho (not Scunthorpe) with the man himself, on 6th September 2023, discussing the 10 Biggest Myths in the Marketing Industry. Grab your tickets here -> https://system1group.com/uncensored-cmo-live

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro
00:46 - What’s Tom been up to in the past year?
04:30 - The state of Cannes
06:10 - AI has it’s place
07:22 - The power of re-using good creative
15:26 - How AI can solve customer exeperience
17:43 - Catergories that should be in Cannes
19:43 - The Zero Budget Category
21:11 - Cannes in Margate in February
22:23 - Most fascinating relevations from the pod
24:35 - The marketing bottom
28:54 - The best work in Cannes
31:10 - Working with budget constraints
33:03 - When to invest in innovation
34:16 - What Orlando Wood tells us about how art history can inform great communication strategy
36:09 - Why are great adverts only made for the SuperBowl and Christmas…. And then not run for long enough?
37:48 - Should you use characters or celebrities in your advertising?
40:06 - Most impressive thing in Cannes
45:06 - The Giant Cheeto at Cannes
48:22 - Why we’ve stopped having fun in advertising
54:00 - What will we be talking about at Cannes next year?

Links:

• Winning Cheetos Ad
• Super Bowl insights
• System1 analysis of the decline of humour

Nils Leonard is returning to the Uncensored CMO podcast after selling his agency, Uncommon to Havas. We discuss what's next, why he feels it's an investment not an acquisition, what AI means for creativity, culture and more.

Timestamps
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:11 - Selling Uncommon to Havas
00:02:10 - What does partnering with Havas allow them to do?
00:08:22 - How did the team react?
00:09:50 - Expanding to the US
00:12:22 - What’s changing?
00:14:42 - Part 2: What’s new with Uncommon?
00:16:33 - Keeping creativity alive
00:19:20 - Is advertising dead?
00:21:21 - Getting Chat GPT to write a new British Airways Strapline
00:22:49 - Chat GPT writes an ad for British Airways
00:24:46 - What car brand Nils would most like to work on
00:27:01 - The work Uncommon actually did for British Airways
00:28:52 - The importance of advertising internally
00:29:59 - Making 512 different productions for BA
00:32:13 - The power of simplicity
00:34:26 - Making out of home powerful
00:35:22 - What does AI mean for creativity?
00:38:09 - Do CMOs understand the value of creativity?
00:43:58 - Biggest problems we as an industry need to solve
00:47:27 - Demonstrating the value of creativity
00:50:57 - Creating culture in a growing agency
00:55:11 - Power of generosity
00:56:26 - Uncommon’s “faff tax”
00:58:45 - The world’s #1 podcast by Jon Evans
00:59:59 - 2 Uncommon stories
01:02:51 - What what Nils do if he wasn’t running Uncommon?

In this episode, I am talking to one of the titans of our industry, someone who I think has had a bigger impact on our industry than perhaps anybody else. He is Sir Martin Sorrell founder of WPP, the biggest holding company in the world.

He has since gone on to set up S4 capital, so now finds himself in the challenger position rather than the dominant player. I wanted to talk to Sir Martin about what he sees as the biggest challenges facing our industry today and what are the disruptions coming down the line that are going to shape our industry in the future?

What's his advice to CMOs? What does CMOs need to care about and what should they be doing? What skills they need to deal with the challenges coming at them in the world today. And because this is a special edition recorded live at the Cannes Lions Festival, I wanted to ask him about AI.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
01:11 - Background
07:18 - How do you assess the state of creativity now?
12:02 - what should CMO’s be concerned about?
16:08 - How real a game changer is AI?
18:34 - Do we lose creativity with AI?
26:19 - What skills do marketing teams need to make the most of AI?
29:01 - What will be the biggest disruption to our industry in the next 10 years?
32:08 - What advice would Sir Martin give his younger self?
39:35 - Ethical considerations about how advertising uses our personal data
41:26 - Biggest decision Sir Martin regrets making
43:01 - What was the secret to the growth of WPP?
45:33 - Why start again after exiting WPP?
46:21 - How close is Succession to the Murdochs?
47:34 - Tell me something you’ve never told anyone
48:50 - What would Sir Martin’s fantasy agency look like?

In a special live from MAD//Fest edition of Uncensored CMO, I'm joined by some of the country's top CMO's on a panel about riding the storm in retail. Very’s Jessica Myers, Alex Rogerson from Morrisons, Adam Zavalis (formerly Aldi) and Pete Markey from Boots join me on the panel.

But, ladies and gentlemen, there is more! This is a double header of Uncensored CMO, as I also caught up with some people live on the floor at MAD//Fest, including Heineken CMO Michael Gillane and revealing some new research from System1, JCDecaux and Specsavers.

Enjoy this bonus, bumper edition of Uncensored CMO.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:06 MAD//Fest Live
• 22:46 Break
• 23:06 Michael Gillane
• 30:33 System1, Specsavers & JCDecaux
• 39:55 Outro

In a career that's spanned selling Tea to the British as Marketing Director at Twinings, to now CMO at the largest e-commerce business in Latin America, Sean Summers knows a thing or two about marketing (at all levels). I catch up with him at Cannes to discuss his career, what it's like scaling a business from $300m to $10b in revenue and what he thinks of the latest trends like AI.

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
01:04 - Why is Sean in Cannes?
02:25 - What creates an award winning campaign?
03:21 - How to make the most out of your agency
06:41 - What is being a CMO actually like?
10:01 - Marketing language / business jargon
11:35 - The awful 360 campaign
14:10 - Sean’s biggest failure
20:16 - A tough time: running marketing teams in the UK
23:25 - What is Mercardo Libre?
26:08 - From $300m to $10b
28:49 - Marketing for Mercado Libre
31:36 - Working with very constrained budgets
34:46 - Managing a multi-faceted company
39:57 - Becoming a media owner
42:08 - Learnings from running a media business
44:19 - The importance of building an online brand offline
46:16 - How the pandemic helped them
48:06 - Sean’s thoughts on AI

Allessandra Bellini is the Chief Customer Officer at Tesco, the largest supermarket in the UK. Previously she's held roles at agencies, before 21 years at Unilever rising up through the ranks to some very senior positions. Tesco are a huge household brand to represent in the UK, and Allessandra and her team have created some exceptional work over the years, including the well received "Food Love Stories" campaign. We talk all about those campaigns, how they scored on the System1 database and what it takes to run such a large brand.

Links

• Follow Jon
• Watch UCMO on YouTube

Timestamps:

00:00 - Intro
01:13 - Starting out in advertising
03:18 - From creative agency to joining corporate Unilever
05:24 - What do you learn in 21 years at Unilever?
06:32 - Most challenging and most proud moment at Unilever
08:16 - The secret behind uncomfortable conversations
10:06 - What is Allessandra most proud of from her time at Unilever?
11:26 - From Unilever to Tesco
13:28 - How to get close to the customer in such a large organisation
15:51 - What are the changed
18:15 - Downtrading and uptrading
20:44 - The power of Clubcard Data
24:57 - Cost of living crisis: every little helps, right?
27:47 - How to communicate price
30:35 - How much to spend on brand vs activation
32:14 - Doing both long and short term advertising
33:41 - Food love stories
41:11 - Ad 1: Food Love Stories: Eid Mubarak
45:31 - Ad 2: Sue’s Crispy Pork Noodles
49:43 - Ad 3: Helen’s Homecoming Lamb
51:45 - Ad 4: Barbecue
54:40 - Being president of the Ad Association

Tom Rainsford has been named as one of the Top 50 creative minds in the country.  After a surprising start to his career (that still stands him in great creative stead even now), Tom has grown a challenger brand into a household name and now leads the Marketing at one of the coolest brands on the planet – Beavertown Brewery.

What does Tom see as the magic ingredients for successful brand growth, why does he believe culture and fact-based emotion are they key and how is he going to top his show stopping MadFest opener from last year

1. Dancing your way to a top job in marketing
2. Should you do a marketing degree?
3. The first kickstarter brand? David to Goliath on Giff Gaff: 10 years building a genuinely different business model - how to outsmart the big boys
4. Are great brands emotional or rational?
5. The problems with tech marketing are…..
6. Watch your internal language doesn’t end up in your communications
7. Why Tom believes in In-housing: how to nurture creativity within a company
8. Why creativity is not valued in business.
9. The important questions businesses need to ask themselves about why their creative is wrong
10. The importance of Culture: Does pizza on a Wednesday help?
11. Was COVID a blessing for marketeers?
12. Art and advertising reflecting culture: A discussion about Orlando Wood’s Look Out
13. Why pubs can be the answer the growth.
14. Beavertown Neck Oil: Jon and Tom drink at 11am!
15. Has craft beer jumped the shark?
16. Is consistency important in marketing after all?
17. Why Logan (Robert Plants son) founded Beavertown and what’s it like working in Founder led businesses.
18. Why Beavertown innovation works (according to System1)
19. Why Tom wants you to steal his pint glasses.
20. What makes Beavertown stand out?
21. The importance of a stonking product
22. Shifting to Heineken ownership - have things changed?
23. Ensuring innovation succeeds within a titan mothership
24. Madfest: How Tom is planning to top his mobile phone/trust gig
25. How culture delivers brand trust and helps brands ride the storm
26. Can you learn to do what Derren Brown diss in a month?
27. Why being a CMO can be a lonely affair.
28. The importance of making more noise in bad times
29. Do people do good work when they are knackered?
30. Marketing artists vs marketing scientists
31. The biggest failure in Tom’s career (and what he learnt)
32. The reward of messing up
33. Why the more senior you get the less you know.
34. “To do” lists vs “to think” lists
35. What everyone’s next big business question needs to be……

Live from Cannes, third time returning guest Rory Sutherland gives us his views on just how good this year’s Festival of Creativity is, what should be awarded, AI vs AI, what we should be looking for as marketeers in current trends and the value that behavioural science brings to creativity.

He also talks about what he is looking forward to on the road to another great festival – Madfest, and why he is doing his Mad Masters course.

What we covered in this episode:

• Why Rory thinks this Cannes Lions Festival is the most wonderful ever.
• The backbone that Rory thinks System1 and WARC bring
• The Campaign for a new Behavioural Science Award
• Festival of creativity or advertising?
• The brilliance of ABInbev brewers for bread campaign
• Rory on re-writing the advertising rules
• Jon’s 5 most creative moments
• What excites Rory about behavioural science
• Rory’s definition of creativity
• The story at the heart of Crocs growth
• Should there be a Cannes Lion for zero budget campaigns?
• Fashions in psychology
• The problem with chat GPT is……
• Outlier vs average impact on creativity
• The value Artificial Inquisitiveness and Interestingly wrong
• People’s value in business vs automation
• System1’s learnings on AI creativity and innovation
• Why brand partnerships should be awarded.
• Encouraging people to think more widely about what they should be testing.
• Does Rory think the world needs Apple Vision?
• Should Google have persisted with Google Glass?
• Why all Europeans report to distain automatic cars.
• Rory’s ideas for the tech world innovation
• When are people happy being happy cut off from fellow men?
• The most important economic thing about Zoom meetings.
• How Rory is plotting to get more cash for creative people
• Why Rory keeps coming back on The Uncensored CMO
• The value of “crap creativity” – why the obvious solution could sometimes be better
• Rory’s Road to Madfest  - what he is looking forward to and why he is doing Mad Masters

Links

• Follow Jon
• Watch UCMO on YouTube

In this episode I'm joined by three more effectiveness titans in my Cannes special coverage. Karen Nelson-Field, Rob Brittain and fan favourite Orlando Wood join me to talk about the triple opportunity of attention.

Following on from the IPA EffWorks and WARC session on the Terrace Stage in Cannes, I speak to effectiveness legends, Les Binet, Grace Kite and Tom roach to outline the big shifts in advertising effectiveness in the digital era, suggesting that we’re leaving the trough of disillusionment and moving onto the plateau of productivity.

• Register for the IPA webinar: https://ipa.co.uk/events-listing/the-3rd-age-of-effectiveness

Digital once promised so much in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, tracking, and accountability. But the reality didn’t live up to the hype. And now we’re entering a new era - one where the best understanding about things have always worked are being blended with new ways of doing things, and the evidence suggests things are beginning to work better as a result.  They challenge the narrative that creativity is declining and digital is the culprit. On the contrary, analysis of the ARC database shows effectiveness is improving in some places, (less so in others). 

It will also shine a light on brand-building in the platform world, specifically, creativity within the platforms. Tom talks about how clients, agencies and creators are getting to grips with the new environment, showcasing examples of effective creativity from around the world.

Lex Bradshaw-Zanger is the Chief Marketing & Digital Officer for L’Oréal South Asia Pacific, Middle East & North Africa Region. Prior to this role, Lex was the CMO for the UK & Ireland, held roles in the Western Europe Zone and was Chief Digital Officer for the L’Oréal Middle East and Africa Region. Prior to L’Oréal, Lex was with McDonald’s and Facebook. He is a recovered ad-man having spent over 10 years in the agency world, with both WPP and Publicis – his last role was Regional Director for Digital Strategy & Innovation for Leo Burnett MENA.

Work is fundamentally important to the quality of our lives and we are surrounded by more change and choice than ever before. Our careers have become far less predictable and increasingly 'squiggly'. In this episode I have a chat with Helen Tupper, co-founder of Amazing If and co-author of "The Squiggly Career: Ditch the Ladder, Discover Opportunity, Design Your Career".

Subscribe to the podcast on YouTube ->

Find out more about Helen:

• The Squiggly Career Book
• Squiggly Careers Podcast
• Amazing If
• Helen's LinkedIn

What we covered in this episode:

1. How Helen and Sarah started their business on napkin
2. Why the career ladder is not necessarily the path to success
3. 5 years of experimentation to develop the Squiggly business
4. How Helen and Sarah went from starting The Squiggly Careers Podcast to 330 episodes
5. How to create a growth flywheel for your brand or business - making content more useful
6. Why creating something of huge value for free is the key to B2B growth - remaining relevant
7. Trusting in reciprocity - why helping people authentically is so important for growth
8. Why you shouldn't worry about your weaknesses
9. The Squiggly Careers Book - The 5 Key Skills you need
10. The importance of deliberately choosing what you want to be known for
11. Your 2 week energy audit - How to discover your core skills and values
12. Jon and Helen's 12 month career high and why it mattered
13. Building high trust teams and emotional safety
14. Less budget =  happy teams
15. Confidence Gremlins and limiting beliefs
16. Teaching yourself to draw on the positive
17. Learning how to fail.... and that this means for success
18. The pressure pedestal - we are not all Simon Sinek!
19. Jon's advice on presentation skills
20. Networking Events - how to reframe the fear
21. Fired? Redundant? How to get back into employment....fast!
22. Why you should only share what you really care about
23. How curious career conversations will set you up well in you next job
24. Creating a constant flow of future job opportunities
25. How to use your mobile phone contacts to find the perfect role
26. Redefining the definition of progression
27. Helen shares whom Squiggly Careers is for and whom it can help
28. Helen's advice on crafting your best career story

Follow Jon:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter

Edward Pilkington is the Chief Marketing & Innovation Officer at Diageo North America, managing a portfolio of the biggest brands in the world, including Guinness, Johnnie Walker, Baileys, Smirnoff and more. If theres anyone that understands how to run marketing for huge brands, it's Ed, and he certainly brings his wealth of experience to this conversation.

Nishma is responsible for leading brand and reputation marketing for Google in the UK. She has led many of Google’s acclaimed projects and campaigns including Digital Garage, This is My YouTube, the Google Executive Summit, Brandcast, ThinkwithGoogle and Be Internet Legends.

Nishma is a Board Director at the School of Marketing and is proud to be a Fellow of the Marketing Society. Her accolades include Ad Age’s Woman to Watch, Europe (2018), Campaign A List (2017, 2018 and 2019), Drum Digerati and was recognised in the Hospital Group’s h100 list as one of the most influential and innovative people in the UK’s creative industry.

When she’s not looking after her twins or at work, you’ll find her in sparkly shoes dancing in the sun or under the stars!

Talking points

00:00 Intro
00:32 The inspiration behind MadWomen
04:18 How Teletext was the Google before Google
07:54 The responsibility of managing the Google brand
12:20 How Google makes you look clever
13:30 What search reveals about humanity
16:08 "It’s Ok to Ask" campaign with Uncommon
17:59 Why Marcus Rashford helping out with the campaign
20:37 It’s not what we ask it’s what we do with the answers
20:47 The role of humanity in Google's work
24:05 Why we shouldn't just sell cheese
26:01 How the Google Pixel phone makes technology accessible to new audiences
30:17 CODA, How Google helped people understand the life of someone with two deaf parents
34:02 How diverse advertising unites the audience
36:40 Telling one person's story well
39:40 Diversity and representation in media
42:28 How technology democratises the ability for creators to get funded
46:54 Creating the worlds first augmented reality brand
48:00 Top tips for YouTube creators
50:20 How creators and collaborators can grow your brand
51:05 The role of AI to democratise tech
53:13 Advice for advertisers using YouTube
58:01 The surprising effectiveness of brand building style advertising in digital
01:00:35 Nishma’s biggest ever failure
01:02:36 Outro

Yusuf has worked across most flavors of planning and strategy making him one of the few genuine hybrid strategists. His experience spans a number of the world’s leading corporations including Microsoft, BMW, Samsung, Kimberley-Clark, Kraft and Verizon. He is currently EVP, Client Strategy at NBCUniversal. 

1. Early ambition to become a city trader
2. Falling into media planning
3. Wearing trainers to work
4. Selling the internet in 1995
5. Crossing the creative and media divide
6. Why all things are not equal
7. The birth of planning
8. Why so many Englishmen end up in New York
9. Why 90’s sitcoms are still so popular
10. The power of stories to attract a global audience
11. The special relationship between audience and programming
12. The 3 aspects of Fandom
13. 98% of commercial airtime is as engaging as the content
14. Pricing media based on emotion
15. Reflecting people identity on screen
16. Satisfying cultural curiosity
17. The representation hierarchy
18. The diversity divided when people feel seen
19. The power of empathy to connect with audiences
20. How empathy and sympathy are different things

Today I'm joined by one of the most influential and successful CMOs on the planet, Fernando Machado, of legendary Burger King fame. He went on to work at Activision and now is CMO at NotCo.

Fernando is a creative genuis, he's been awarded many, many times I've started to lose count (over 200 Cannes Lions). I wanted to catch up with Fernando and find out what makes a great creative marketer, was that "Mouldy Whopper" campaign actually worth it, and why did they sponsor a low league English football team? We also talk about what is he doing now working for a plant-based company and how AI plays a crucial role for them.

Links

• Follow Jon
• Follow Fernando
• Watch UCMO on YouTube

Topics covered:

• What makes an influential CMO
• The culture that leads to award winning work
• The importance of influencing an organisation QUOTE
• The two hidden P’s of the CMO
• The importance of a shared creative ambition
• Why shared values and purposes is so important
• What it takes to create award winning work QUOTE
• Why is takes time to build up the credibility to take risks
• Why huge failures are similar to most campaigns QUOTE
• If your creative isn’t noticed everything else is academic
• Why attracting the best creative talent means committing to bold work
• The more creative work you do the more creative you are likely to get
• When you have a smaller budget you have to get more creative
• Sharing the results for Mouldy Whopper in public to address the critics
• Where the idea for the Mouldy Whopper came from QUOTE
• What Fernando learnt at Activision Blizzard
• The power of networking in finding a perfect role
• The biggest challenge facing NotCo
• Why the best creative work gets done on small budgets
• How AI is accelerating the development of plant based products
• How AI beat the Nike design department
• How AI created the most average Pizza advert
• Why the brief matters when using AI QUOTE
• From curation to creative, why AI is a tool and not a replacement of the marketing function
• Why Notco is advertising old animals
• Think of a colour that doesn’t exist
• The one piece of advice for marketers

Richard Warren has spent his career working in and growing agencies, but most recently has worked in house at one of the UK's largest banking group, Lloyds. In 2000 Richard founded DLKW as Director of Strategy, which grew to become the the UK’s largest independent agency, before merging with Lowe in 2010. As someone who has spent time on both sides, I wanted to catch up with Richard to find out how to make the most of the agency-client relationship.

Rebecca Dibb-Simkin is the Chief Product and Marketing Officer at Octopus Energy Group. Previously at British Gas, Rebecca has helped scale Octopus into an impressive challenger brand with over 50k customers and $10b in revenue.

What we covered in this episode

• Responding to a job ad written by Rory Sutherland
• From the tax department to marketing
• Being rejected on graduate schemes
• Poetic job applications
• Marketing jargon that needs to be ditched
• Why being close to the customer matters
• The marketers role in the middle of the spiders web
• From energy industry giant to start up
• The spontaneous moment that led to Octopus energy
• Jon blags a speech on the Internet of things
• The surprisingly short distance to the edge of our atmosphere
• The cost advantage of green energy
• Which energy sources are the cleanest
• The tricky of balance of managing variable sources of energy
• Advantages of smart energy
• How octopus are helping with the cost of living crisis
• The red tape holding us back
• How to incentivise people to adopt wind power
• The 40,000 electric blankets helping people in crisis
• From 50,000 customers to 5 million
• The secret to seriously rapid growth
• The Brewdog question that drives growth
• How to handle 80k job applications
• Keeping the core management team together
• The advantages of an in house agency
• Outrageously good customer service with humans
• Now the octopus came about
• The science behind animals as mascots
• In praise of simplicity and products that work
• Running the same campaign over and over again
• The role of industry awards

Jo Arden is the Chief Strategy Officer of Ogilvy UK, and she joins me on the podcast to talk all things strategy. What's involved, why it's important and how to make a career of it. Jo's experience is vast, not landing a "strategy" role until her 30's and since has had senior roles at Publicis•Poke and MullenLowe.

Here's what we covered in our chat:

• How Jo got into strategy
• Her winding path from PR through business development and into strategy
• What does a Chief Strategy Officer do?
• The role of generosity in being a great CSO
• The business case for involving your strategy team on a core business problem
• The one question you should always ask your customer
• “Making your thinking as funny as possible”
• Why the winning ads in technology don’t take themselves seriously
• The ‘good sense of humour’ approach to planning
• “If you aren’t having fun you aren’t doing great work”
• In praise of Dove and it’s purpose in advertising
• “If it didn’t sell it wasn’t creative”
• Why the industry loves a crisis narrative
• The crisis in creativity is more of a trend than a crisis
• Cannes Lions role in creative exploration rather than effectiveness
• Jon was left out of his own Cannes Lion winning party
• The one Campaign award no-one wants to win
• Why Turkeys eat Lions for breakfast
• “The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife”
• The challenge of bringing the consumer into the room
• The importance of doing normal things
• Spending the most time out of the office
• Rabbits in the office and other fun things at Ogilvy
• Generating borderless creativity
• Putting pressure on the task and not yourself
• How to create an environment for creativity to happen
• What Jo would advise her 21 year old self
• Jon share his almost unbelievable imposter syndrome story
• Using the power of your network

Chaka Sobhani is Chief Creative Officer of Leo Burnett London. With 20 years of experience as an award winning director, writer and creative director, she has worked for the biggest broadcasters, brands and agencies worldwide. She hasn’t had a conventional advertising career, having spent over 10 years as a film maker and in television. Chaka was recruited by ITV to set up and ECD their first in-house creative agency, production company and design studio. She has worked on countless brands including McDonalds, Boots, Coca Cola & more.

Watch the McDonalds ad.

Talking points:

• Celebrating Campaign Creative Leader of the Year
• Getting rejected 200 times before breaking into the industry
• Setting up ITV’s in-house creative department
• Learning production techniques at ITV
• How to make great work on a budget
• What its like being a global Executive Creative Director
• Helping others being successful
• Getting industry acclaim and audience success for McDonalds
• Where the ‘raising your arches’ idea came from
• System1 Test Your Ad scores for McDonalds Raise Your Arches
• The subtle branding for McDonalds that stood out
• The challenge of casting eye brow raising
• How Raise Your Arches became a Tik Tok sensation
• The state of diversity and inclusion in the industry
• How advertising doesn’t reflect the society we live in
• Treating diversity with the same passion as new business
• Telling one persons story well
• The diversity dividend of representative advertising

Professor Jenni Romaniuk is the International Director of the world-famous Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and author of Building Distinctive Brand Assets and How Brands Grow Part 2 - revised. 

Jenni is a leading expert in brand equity, mental availability, brand health metrics, advertising effectiveness, distinctive assets, word of mouth and the role of loyalty and growth. Through her work at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute she has advised many of the world’s biggest brands.

Jenni is an engaging and entertaining keynote speaker that has presented her research at leading industry conferences globally. 

Her latest book Better Brand Health: Measures and Metrics in a How Brands Grow World, is for anyone who wants to get better at brand measurement and improve their brand health tracking.

What we covered in this episode:

• The soft porn scam version of Jenni’s new book
• The one question Jenni hasn’t been asked
• Publicity over persuasion
• How even academics don’t always have the right beliefs
• Can you have too many distinctive assets?
• How marketers over estimate the number of assets they have
• Why Ehrenberg Bass use an owl as their distinctive asset
• How do you measure a distinctive asset
• Does the time frame of measurement make a difference
• The difference between new and super light buyers for Lucozade
• Brand tracking on a small budget
• Why differentiation is the most surprising discovery by EBI
• What inspired the book  
• Starting with the laws that shape how brands grow
• The important of asking the right questions
• Calibrating your tracker for your brand size
• Which definition of brand awareness to use
• The importance of non-buyers to your trackers
• Designing for the category not your own objectives
• Why brand awareness is a lot less stable than you think
• The probabilistic nature of memory and why recall changes
• The power of Donald Trumps hair
• Types of brand attributes and the role they play
• How many category entry points does a brand need
• Mental market share and how to measure it
• Distribution points of the mind
• The importance of share of mind
• Jenni writes a song to brand love
• How to measure your marketing  
• Some advice for Word of Mouth
• The role of physical availability on brand health
• The importance of physical availability to convert customers
• Shopping distinctive assets

A return for podcast guest number 1, Richard Shotton, following the launch of his brand new book "The Illusion of Choice: 16½ psychological biases that influence what we buy".

"Every day, people make hundreds of choices.

Many of these are commercial: What shampoo to pick? How much to spend on a bottle of wine? Whether to renew a subscription?

These choices might appear to be freely made, but psychologists have shown that subtle changes in the way products are positioned, promoted and marketed can radically alter how customers behave.

The Illusion of Choice identifies the 16½ most important psychological biases that everyone in business needs to be aware of today – and shows how any business can take advantage of these to win customers, retain customers and sell more.

Richard Shotton, author of the acclaimed The Choice Factory, draws on academic research, previous ad campaigns and his own original field studies to create a fascinating and highly practical guide that focuses on the point where marketing meets the mind of the customer.

You’ll learn to take advantage of the peak end rule, the power of precision, the wisdom of wit – and much, much more."

What we covered in this episode:

• Why the podcast 4.9 star rating is the best one
• The meanest tweet Uncensored CMO ever had
• Social proof gives you wings
• Why the new book has 16 ½ chapters
• Feel free to ignore this chapter in the book
• Why biases affect professionals as well as consumers
• The Russian tank effect and how AI can be misled
• How AI design a better pair of Nike Trainers
• Recency, primacy and the peak end rule
• How behavioural science supports the laws of marketing
• Jon ranks the biases
• The Zuckerberg t-shirt principle (red sneaker effect)
• Why breaking convention is associated with higher status
• Always use concrete phrases not fluffy marketing nonsense
• The more visual the phrase the easier to remember
• Relatable stories beat cold hard statistics
• Telling one persons story well is better than trying to represent a group
• How well can experts predict a successful Super Bowl Ad
• Experts are trained to see novelty rather than broad appeal
• We are all rewarded based on sophistication and complexity rather than simplicity
• How thicker paper led to more charity donations
• Why marketer can’t predict how well their own advertising will do
• Professional forecasters are no better at predicting than the average person
• Why freedom of choice leads to much greater perceived value
• Why we would rather suffer a loss if we now someone else has done better
• Adverts aren’t trying to be funny anymore even though the funny ones work
• Why making a joke would increase your tips
• Making it easy is the best way to make someone do something
• We radically underestimate the impact of removing friction
• Removing friction beats customer benefits every time
• How to frame your pricing so people buy your preferred product
• What colonoscopies can tell us about the peak end rule
• Why ads with a peak end perform better overall

Links

• Follow Jon
• Follow Richard
• Watch UCMO on YouTube

Les Binet and Sarah Carter are planning royalty. Starting out at the iconic BMP, the agency which evolved over time to become adam&eve today, they are the planners behind many famous campaigns. Not least John Lewis which lasted an impressive 14 years. A few years ago their popular myth busting column turned into the well known book ‘How Not to Plan’ taking conventional wisdom and turning it on its head. I catch up with the dynamic duo to pick their considerable brains on the topics they think marketers least understand.

Talking points from this episode:

• The real godfather of effectiveness
• How John Lewis changed Christmas
• Les & Sarah pick a favourite ad
• Why vignette ads are a cop out
• What the John Lewis econometrics reveals about the campaign
• Why you should make people feel something not show them feeling
• Jon discovers the Long & the Short of it
• The best way to really upset Les
• That famous key visual
• Can you ever achieve both long & short at the same time
• Why consumers don’t give a s**t
• How myth busting inspired the book
• Being turned down by Marketing Week
• Why there are more P’s than Promotion
• How to involve planners early
• The BMP Philosophy of planning
• How not to get caught Short
• Why 60% of campaign results are long term
• How not to be consistent
• Knowing what to change and when to change it
• What advertisers can learn from designers
• A little plug for Orlando’s fluent device work
• It’s only advertising and no-one died
• The case for animals and music
• How not to make sense
• How not to change your pricing
• Why EPOS data switched spend from communication to price promotion
• Digital attribution is the new price promotion
• The more detailed the measurement the worse the marketing has got
• Jon shares his only Effie case study
• How not to be different
• Why how you say something matters more than what you say
• Les takes down the idea of loyalty
• The one topic which wasn’t covered in the book
• Finding things to get angry about

In this episode I'm joined by Sam Conniff, the author of Be More Pirate, creator of Uncertainty Experts and stand-up comedian. I speak to Sam about what marketers can learn from the pirates (which is a genuinely interesting look back in time), how we can deal with uncertain times and find out what his best joke is in his new hobby, stand-up comedy.

To win a copy of Sam's book, you just have to guess the number of books he's sold. Send me a message on LinkedIn with your guess.

What we covered:

•  Why hot pink is the colour of a punk rebellion
•  Creating a challenger brand pirate operation inside a large soft drink company
•  The fear and loneliness of the challenger
•  Why piracy inspired a book about being an entrepreneur
•  How today is like the golden age of privacy
•  The forward thinking nature of Piracy that are relevant today
•  How piracy is a creative rebellion
•  Pioneering fair pay, equal relationships, insurance scheme, democratic process
•  How the pirate flag became the worlds first super brand
•  How ‘surrender or die’ was a very effective strap line
•  Protecting the pirate brand guidelines
•  The power of shared values in victory
•  What do you do with no money
•  Why values based results never materialised
•  How fear drives decision making
•  Navigating yourself off the map
•  The pirates that work in the Navy
•  How the pirate code ensured strong accountability
•  The role of advertising in a post consumer society
•  The fantasy of the ‘business plan’ compared to lived values
•  What are you willing to fight for?
•  The best modern day pirates
•  How pirates end up becoming the navy
•  Turning land-fill firehoses into luxury items
•  The 5 Pirate Principles also known as the 5 ‘Rrrrr’s’
•  The upheaval that led to becoming an expert on Uncertainty
•  What you can learn from gang members in prison
•  How the pandemic was predictable
•  The truth in most situations is ‘I don’t know’
•  There is discovery in doubt
•  The profound impact of increasing your uncertainty tolerance
•  Sam shares a surprising new talent

Nir Eyal is back for the second part of this 2-part Uncensored CMO series. This episode, we talk about the book that made him famous - Hooked - and how you can apply habit-forming techniques to your own marketing work.

Some more about Nir:

Nir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. Nir previously taught as a Lecturer in Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. 

Nir co-founded and sold two tech companies since 2003 and was dubbed by The M.I.T. Technology Reviewas, “The Prophet of Habit-Forming Technology.” Bloomberg Businessweek wrote, “Nir Eyal is the habits guy. Want to understand how to get app users to come back again and again? Then Eyal is your man.”

He is the author of two bestselling books, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

• Why the AdContrarian decided to end his weekly newsletter

• The irony of Bob getting an award for best speaker at an AdTech conference

• A surprising honour from Byron Sharp

• The freedom that comes from being an independent

• Bob’s most contrarian ever statement

• The shocking amount of personal data gather about every person

• How the marketing industry is complicit in on-line tracking and division in society

• The issue of tracking and how we managed just fine beforehand

• Why advertising works better when it isn’t personal

• The primary role of advertising to create fame for the brand

• System1 data to show the value of Fame building

• Why most people don’t care about your banner ad

• How targeting devalued creativity

• Why AI will just lead us to more average creative work

• The insanity of M&M’s withdrawing their characters in a moral stance

• Why the industry isn’t taking the failures of adtech seriously

• Explaining ‘programmatic poo’ and why it matters

• The 40,000 websites your ad appears on

• The 9 billions ads that suddenly disappeared

• The important distinction between ad impressions and views

• Why only 9% of people actual see a banner ad

• What happens when we start media buying based on attention

• The things your Gran could have told you about advertising

• Why your audience aren’t ‘buying into the conversation’

• Is my toilet paper pro Brexit?

• The scale of ad fraud and why it isn’t news

• Ad fraud is bigger than Coke or Nike

• The scale of ad fraud funding criminal activity

• Why low CPM’s drive the wrong behaviour in the digital world

• How 3rd party data only predicted gender 46% of the time

• Whether its time for legislation to fix the issues

• The 3 things every marketer can do to help

• What works in marketing doesn’t work in advertising

• Introducing the Marketing Bottom and what most marketers don’t know

• Why people buy what makes them feel good

• How Fame, Feeling & Fluency predicts success

• The one topic we should be talking about

• The case for being silly and having more fun

Nir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. Nir previously taught as a Lecturer in Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. 

Nir co-founded and sold two tech companies since 2003 and was dubbed by The M.I.T. Technology Reviewas, “The Prophet of Habit-Forming Technology.” Bloomberg Businessweek wrote, “Nir Eyal is the habits guy. Want to understand how to get app users to come back again and again? Then Eyal is your man.”

He is the author of two bestselling books, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life.

What we covered in this episode:

• What motivated Nir to write Indistractable
• The one topic that hadn’t been written about
• Focusing on what works in practice and not just in theory
• How the book helped work, life, family and health
• Why we get in our own way
• What it’s like to see your own book on the shelf
• Who Nir really wrote the book
• Why yellow is the best colour for a book and podcast
• Understanding what causes distraction
• The role of intent in separating traction and distraction
• Why you shouldn’t write a to-do list
• Focus on what is important rather than easy
• How work tasks can also be distraction
• The internal and external triggers of distraction
• The shocking 90% of distractions that come from within us
• How we have to master our internal triggers
• The secret hack of planning our time rather than to-do’s
• The myth of will power of a depleting resource and the one group for whom its true
• Why you should avoid seeing yourself as a victim
• Changing the narrative we tell about ourselves
• Living to your own values rather than other peoples
• Making time for traction by turning values into time
• Being generous with your money and stingy with your time
• The importance of planning time for fun and interacting with people
• Dividing work into reflective vs reactive work
• Using your calender rather than email to determine your day
• The tyranny of the to-do list
• How to a get to a higher level of team productivity
• Using communication tools like a hot-tub
• How to manage your boss
• The role of culture in supporting its people to be Indistractable
• How BCG changed their business culture
• Work hard and go home – the lesson from Slack
• Why focus is the superpower of the century
• How to approach meetings
• Why 80% of meetings have no agenda
• The surprising number for the optimum number of people in a brainstorm
• The only reason to have a meeting
• The homework required before every meeting

Mark Ritson is back on the Uncensored CMO podcast, and he's more uncensored than ever. This episode brings his ever candid thoughts on the best ads of 2022, who f*cked up and who he's been most impressed by. Strap in for Ritson's Review of 2022.

Watch Uncensored CMO on YouTube here.

What we covered in this conversation:

• Biggest marketing cock up of 2022
• The 2022 new entry on Mark’s Marketing Bulls**t Top 10
• The biggest surprise of 2022
• Which brand impressed him the most in 2022
• Who taught him the most in 2022
• The short term pay off of long term brand building
• The challenge of stagflation in 2023
• Why pricing is a big opportunity for Marketers
• The importance of framing and communicating price
• Have we passed the peak Christmas Ad yet?
• The strategy behind Aldi’s successful Christmas Ad
• The power of Fluent devices to connect short & long
• The under leveraged power of music to drive effectiveness
• How Coke Holidays are coming owned Christmas
• How doing less leads to more
• The one time a client changed agency and kept the creative the same
• Jon & Mark review the best ads of 2022 on the System1 database
• How Cadbury hit 5 Star in only 10sec with hardly any production
• The power of consistency for Cadbury
• How the emotional response varies by category
• How Kelloggs owned the breakfast category
• What Mark learnt about branding whilst writing articles for the BA magazine
• How Go turkey made the Top 5 but remained forgettable
• How to value the impact of the music
• Mark and Jon create the perfect advert
• How agencies could guarantee a pitch win with System1
• When Jon lost out on a Hollywood Director
• Why marketing is so often seen as a cost not an opportunity
• Jon reveals the No.1 Ad of 2022 (excluding Christmas Ads)
• Jon reveals the Top 5 Advertisers of 2022
• How Magnum reflected older people so well in their Advertising
• Marks most famous MW column on Cannes and how it compares to System1 data
• Jon reveals the No.1 Advertiser of 2022
• Why simple beats clever every time
• Brands are tiny and un-important in consumers lives

What does it take to be the CMO of an iconic British high-street retailer, like Boots? Pete Markey shares his valuable wisdom and insights from a career at the very top.

What we covered in this episode:

• The difficult second album making Boots Christmas Ad
• Rediscovering the joy of Hall & Oates
• Why Retailers are so good at making Christmas ads
• Making people feel more festive
• The importance of escaping reality at Christmas
• How Boots landed on Joy as a proposition for Boots
• The purpose of making gifting easier and more joyful
• Being CMO of a high st retailer during covid & recession
• How Boots is using pricing and Advantage card to help customers
• Going from ‘good old Boots’ to ‘oh wow Boots’
• How Boots is using advertising to reflect the full diversity of society
• The importance of telling one persons story well
• Wising up and showing older people in a better light
• How ‘Summer be ready’ campaign reflected older people as part of the story
• The role of purpose and whether it can also deliver profit 
• Never drink the kool aid on your own purpose
• How to tell your brand story internally as well as externally 
• Making the finance team your best friend
• Being shortlisted for Brand of the year in two awards
• The power of Boots advantage card as a media channel
• Meeting the challenge of Black Friday
• Being on the Campaign and Marketing Week Top 100 lists
• Impressing the kids with a Hollywood style photoshoot
• The secret to being a Top 100 CMO
• How the reality of being a CMO is different to the perception 
• Creating the framework for success and unleashing the talent 
• The hidden P’s of Politics and Persuasion
• The importance of non-marketing skill set for a CMO
• Pete’s advice to the aspiring CMO – be curious, get trained & build your network
• How Jon got a job that was never advertised
• The hidden power of your network
• What you should do right now to build your network
• How Jon accidentally ended up doing a speech at the wrong event
• The 100 day plan to meet 100 people
• Pete’s aim to terrify himself via improvised comedy

As Christmas ad season is in full swing, I speak to the planning and strategy team from McCann Manchester, the agency that created Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot.

What we cover in this episode:

• Why Darren and Jamie bring a life size Kevin’s to meetings
• The benefit of doing strategy as a pair
• Convincing a sceptical customer to shop at Aldi for Christmas
• Taking inspiration from John Lewis the reigning king of Christmas
• How the humble carrot being the big idea
• Selling the idea into Aldi
• Why they didn’t want to recreate a brand new campaign every year
• The challenge to beat Kevin every year
• Inspiration from light entertainment and why’s its harder than it looks
• Sticking to what works whilst always finding ways to keep it fresh
• How to balance Christmas, a cost-of-living crisis & Christmas
• The importance of entertainment even in tough times
• Jamie & Darren rate this years crop of Christmas ads
• Beating the benchmark Coke Truck Index
• How Kevin successfully leverages the Long and Short of it
• Using System1 testing to screen for early stage ideas
• Why the simplicity of the System1 metrics are so important
• The case for testing a 4 min long animatic
• How media is like renting a stage upon which to put on a show
• The astonishing business results delivered by the Kevin campaign
• Proving that being cheaper doesn’t mean you can’t be better
• The power of combining fame and consistency
• Wear in vs wear out on the System1 Test Your Ad database
• Why we are over familiar with our own work vs the audience
• How little attention advertising actually gets
• The power of jokes you know the punchline to
• Being lovably pirates rather than the navy
• The powerful purpose being Aldi’s mission to make good food affordable

The most returned guest in Uncensored CMO history, Orlando Wood, is back. He made a brief cameo last episode but I wanted to dive deeper into creative styles that work in difficult times and if you should re-use old creative.

What we covered in this episode:

• How Hovis proved the power of wear-in with an almost 5 Star
• Creative inspiration from an ad that is almost 50 years old
• How the romantic era is reflected in the Hovis ad
• The role of the right-brain in capturing attention
• What covid taught us about creative wear-in vs wear-out
• The accidental creative experiment that occurred during covid
• Proof that ‘wear-out’ is a marketing myth
• The difference in campaign length between the US and UK
• How right-brained features perform better in recession
• Why Christmas 2022 Advertising is the best yet
• The role of nostalgia in difficult times
• How Kevin the carrot delivers consistent 5 Star success
• Great creative shouldn’t just be for Christmas
• The power of fluent devices in advertising and re-using old work
• Orlando’s top 3 tips for investing in a recession
• How good advertising can support price increases in recession
• How brand building helps you come out of recession better
• Orlando’s top 3 tips for making creative work in a recession
• Why focussing on character, incident and place make effective creative
• The role of humour in difficult times

Storm clouds continue to gather over the global economy. With the latest quarterly UK GDP figures released on November 11 and the US and other parts of the world also bracing for a recession, this special recording of System1’s webinar dives into how brands can navigate tough times.

However, tough times also bring opportunity. As the late great F1 driver Ayrton Senna once said, ‘You cannot overtake 15 cars in sunny weather… but you can when it’s raining.’

In possibly the most comprehensive study of recession, Nitin Nohria found that 9% of companies come out of a recession in better shape than they went in.

We're joined by Professor Mark Ritson, brand consultant and creator of the Mini MBA in Marketing, and Orlando Wood, author of IPA best-selling books Lemon and Look Out, to understand how brands should approach this challenging period.

WATCH: The ad Orlando referenced: Hovis - Boy on a Bike

What we covered in this episode:

• Which brands won and lost during covid
• Why the CEO expects the CMO to step up in a crisis
• The 4 issues that hold businesses back in a crisis
• Why marketers must do their market orientation and get their strategy in place first
• The over-whelming evidence that supports investing in a recession
• What happens when brands go dark and why small brands suffer most
• How ESOV can be more achievable in recession and what it means for the long term
• The very strong business case for investment
• The role of operational efficiency and innovation to help come out strongly
• How to get your pricing strategy and communication right
• Whether you should be changing your communication
• Inspiration from a campaign that is as good today as it was 50 years ago
• How right brained creative features are connecting better in recession
• Why wear out is a myth based on thousands of ads on the System1 database
• What we can learn from the current Christmas Adverts
• The role of character fluent devices to make your advert more memorable
• Top 3 reasons to invest in creative right now
• Top 3 ways to make creative emotionally engagement and effective
• Mark and Orlando answer some tough questions
• Why marketing professors don’t teach how marketing actually works

Susan Coghill is the Marketing Director at Tourism Australia and they've got one of the best performing ads on the System1 database, with their new campaign "G'Day". But this wasn't without taking some risks, such as introducing a new brand mascot, getting high profile stars to feature and producing a 9 minute film.

Watch the ad here.

What we covered in this episode:

• Why Susan has the best job in the World
• How to set KPI’s for a tourism brand
• Why Tourism Australia kept advertising through the pandemic
• What System1 learnt about advertising during covid
• Winning the only Effie for a travel company during lockdown
• Planning ‘Come and say G’day’ a new global campaign to announce Australia is open again
• Which distinctive assets are the most Australian
• Creating Ruby Roo the new brand mascot
• What we can learn from the Entertainment industry
• Putting on a show rather than selling
• Why it’s important to remember you are not the audience
• Making a new version of Men At Work’s ‘Down Under’
• The role of celebrities in making the ad more distinctive
• Justifying spending $125m on the new campaign
• How System1 testing gave confidence to make creative decisions
• Getting a 4 Star in the animatic testing
• How to reassure your stakeholder the creative will work
• Inspiration from the best Christmas adverts
• Adapting creative for different markets
• The long term plan for Ruby
• The decline of fluent devices and why you should use them
• Whether Ruby will appear as a character in real life
• Why we should all be more like Churchill the dog
• Revealing the official countdown of the UK’s best advertisers

Sophie is the CEO of The Marketing Society and the author of Superfast: Lead at Speed, in which she offers insight into energy management, purposeful leadership, and keeping pace with breakneck innovation. She is also a passionate advocate of flex work as the future of effective companies, and regularly speaks about innovative approaches to balance business and family life. Her career began at Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola Great Britain, Interbrand, and then Leo Burnett Dubai. She went on to become CEO of The Caffeine Partnership, an innovative consultancy helping leaders with purpose and pace. Most recently, in July 2020, Sophie became CEO of The Marketing Society, a global community of progressive senior marketers whose purpose is to empower brave leaders.

What we covered in this episode:

• Why Sophie chose a career in marketing
• The loneliness of the marketing leader
• How the Marketing Society is creating a community
• The importance of celebrating marketing's role in creating change
• What inspired Superfast
• The exhaustion that comes from the speed of information
• How the best leaders manage to set the right pace
• How to write a book and manage the day job
• Which books inspired Sophie the most
• The importance of managing your energy
• The SHED technique to energy management
• Understanding what energises your team
• The times when you shouldn't go fast
• The power of strategic laziness
• How a clear business purpose can drive pace
• How Lucozade Sport created a clear purpose around Made to Move
• How the world's most successful business people make decisions
• Why being too fast and too slow can be dangerous
• Why being closer to your customer makes decision making easier
• The importance of timing
• How Jon failed to kill the QR code
• Sophie's guide to whether the Metaverse will become a success or not
• Why it's what you do with good luck of bad luck that really matters
• What's next for the Marketing Society

Professor Karen Nelson-Field is Founder and CEO of Amplified Intelligence, and Professor of Media Innovation at The University of Adelaide. Karen is a globally acclaimed researcher in media science, is a regular speaker on the major circuits, including Cannes and SXSW, and has secured research funding from some of the world’s largest advertisers. Her first book, Viral Marketing: the science of sharing, set the record straight on hunting for ‘viral success’. Her most recent book The Attention Economy and How Media Works explains the stark reality of human attention processing in advertising. Karen’s commercial work combines tech and innovative methodological design to look closely at attention metrics in a disrupting digital economy.

Listen to my first episode with Karen from Cannes.

What we covered in this conversation:

• Reaction to Cannes Lion Triple Jeopardy talk
• Karen’s career journey to now
• Making the jump from Academia to Business owner
• Why not all reach is created equal
• How few people actually pay attention to your advert
• The variability of time in view vs actual attention based on platform
• The technology that allows attention to be measured
• How the ESOV and reach based model are broken
• The 2.5second rule and how memory is created
• How repetition of advertising helps in low attention platforms
• How attention has an elasticity based on the platform
• The role of creative in attention rich platforms
• The importance of adapting your creative based on the attention of the platform
• How to approach media planning with attention in mind
• Will wearable technology help improve attention measurement
• Karen’s response to Byron’s recent comments on attention
• What level of push back the focus on attention is getting
• What’s coming next for Amplified Intelligence

Now, a topic in this episode very close to my heart. Why are car ads all so bad? I spoke with Kirsten Stagg from Skoda, who's the UK Marketing Director and has made some pretty good ads herself. In fact, Skoda are responsible for the best ad on the System1 database. We also talk a lot about the move to electric vehicles, the biggest revolution since the combustion engine. How do we get more people into electric vehicles over from petrol? And what are the car industry doing to save the planet? So, no shortage of big questions in this episode.

What we covered in this episode:

• Jon explains his failure to get a job in automotive marketing
• How Kirsten got a job in the automotive industry despite not owning a car
• How you actually pronounce Skoda and why they changed the use of it
• Why VW changed their approach to brand building based on how people choose cars
• Kirsten’s favourite VW advert of all time
• Jon puts Kirsten on the spot about why all car ads look the same
• Local insights vs global execution
• The thinking behind ‘it’s a Skoda. Honest’
• Why the Skoda cake advert is the best in the category
• A ‘driver’s best friend’ and how Skoda inverted the relationship between car and dog
• The biggest disruption in the automotive industry since the combustion engine was invented
• Jon explains how he ended up meeting the director of HR at Daimler Benz who turned him down
• How Mercedes have already made their last V8 engine
• The role of concept cars in gauging potential customer interest
• The barriers to EV adoption and how to overcome them
• Kirsten gives the pitch for making the switch to an EV
• How the EV is changing people’s brand perception and encouraging switching
• Why very long-standing agency relationships have helped ensure strong creative work
• Top tips for getting the best creative work from your agency
• Why you should work with Directors who have low egos
• The best ads Jon ever made were with up-and-coming Directors

Leo is the founder of Eden Lab, a new kind of consultancy and venture studio, they don't just advise on how to win in the Net Zero future, they build it with you. He's the former CEO and Chief Strategy Officer of ad agency Grey London, founder of Grey Consulting, speaker, writer and start-up mentor.

He believes businesses can help shape the planet for the better. To do that he says we need to invent - and reinvent - companies for a post-carbon world. He scouts, designs and assembles new business models, products and services that actively create a better future for all of us.

What we covered in this episode:

• The state of the industry
• Why CMO spend so little time on comms
• How to ask better questions
• Solving every problem with a poster
• Post Covid hybrid leaving do’s
• The biggest challenges the world faces
• Good intentions vs real action
• The one mission to end all missions
• What is stopping marketers making a difference
• Climate change ignorance
• Not all growth is green growth
• Bridging the gap between sustainability and the consumer
• Why fear and ignorance is holding us back
• The £12trillion cost of saving the planet
• How do we create the change we need to see
• Why it’s time to commercialise sustainability
• Moving from shame to seduction
• The gap between consumer experience and sustainability
• Why Backmarket models a customer centric approach
• The importance of the green business model
• The tension between costs of living crisis and doing the right thing
• The power of an impossible brief
• Why brands will be punished in the future for lack of green credentials
• The future value of your customer book
• What is your clean share of market
• Putting creativity into the heart of the problem
• Commercialising ESG to create change
• Buying trainers for life
• What every brand needs to do now

Meghan Farren spent 10 years at KFC UK, spending the last 5 as CMO. What does it take to run a marketing department of one of the biggest consumer brands? What do you do when you run out of chicken as a fast food chicken joint? How do you change your strapline when it involves licking fingers during a global pandemic? And how a strong culture is pivotal for all this creativity to happen.

What we covered in this episode

• Going back to KFC after a year - back to school vibe
• The realness of working in a KFC restaurant
• Research vs real world experience
• How Meg got into marketing in the first place
• From finance to marketing
• How to transition industry
• Experience vs action and impostor syndrome
• How to nail a new job
• Importance of culture
• Hiring the best talent
• Being close to the customer
• Marketing week brand of the year
• Power of consistency
• The FCK campaign
• How taking a big risk can pay off
• How humour in a crisis can help
• KFC’s many distinctive assets
• How to do brand innovation well
• Advice for aspiring CMOs

Now it's the summer holidays, and that means everybody's taking a well earned break from all their hard work. And that includes the Uncensored CMO, but producer James never wants to let me off an episode, And he said, why before you go away, why don't you just do a quick episode. So, I thought, why not do a little bonus episode?

It got me thinking, what subject do I know a little bit about that might be useful to my listeners? And, this is where I have to put my System1 hat back on, because what we do better than anybody else is advise people on how to make advertising that works. We like to frame that as how to make a five star ad. So in this special edition episode, I talk about why emotion and advertising matters and how I can prove it. And some of the tips that we give all our customers on how to make advertising that actually works.

What I covered in this episode:

• The crazy amount of money spent on adverts
• Why 50% are still a waste of money
• The data for why your creative matters
• Why Creative is your most important tool
• Why emotional beats rational advertising
• Why System1 was created
• Orlando Wood and his masterpieces
  • Lemon
  • Look Out
• Why we make decisions
• ESOV and how creativity is an amplifier
• The reason to pre test your advertising
• Right brain vs Left brain advertising
• The decline in creative effectiveness
• The importance of Fluent devices
• The 5 things that make a 5 Star ad
• Why you should take no notice of awards
• A shameless plug for System1

Do you think the advertising industry has a problem with age now? In my experience, the majority of marketing departments are run by people under 40. Sometimes the majority, even under 30, and that's reflected in creative agencies as well. I think that's a real problem because if you look at the statistics, people over the age of 55 represent the majority of people in the UK, they have enormous buying power, lost disposable income, and often a bit more time on their hands to spend it as well.

So it's such a shame that we as an industry are neglecting a very significant part of the population. Recently that MullenLowe have released a new report called "The Invisible Powerhouse", looking at the lives of over 50s and how we can market to them better. In this episode, I speak to MullenLowe UK CEO, Jeremy Hine, about the report and what we can do to address this problem.

What we covered in this episode:

• 52 year old Jeremy introduces himself
• What inspired ‘The Invisible Powerhouse’ report on age diversity
• Why age represents the greatest disparity in Advertising representation
• How do older people feel about the way in which they are portrayed
• The business case for people ‘Feeling Seen’ in advertising
• Almost half the population are over 50 and own 70% of all assets
• Why not all over 50’s are the same
• The age people feel rather than the age they are
• What segmentation by attitude reveals
• Inspiration from the gear lever design in a Jaguar
• The dominance of youth in the ad industry
• How to brief to ensure older representation
• The importance of seeing and understanding the older generation
• Why Entertainment matters to an older audience
• Inspiration from the Magnum campaign featuring older people
• The value of spending time with older people
• What we can learn from TikTok
• The stereotypes of older people in advertising
• Taking inspiration from Top Gun
• Why women experience an even greater invisibility in advertising
• How Mullen Lowe led the Governments covid response
• How a crisis super charged creative work & collaboration
• Where to get more help on marketing to an older audience

A double header episode as I speak with JP Castlin and James Hankins on the back of their Cannes 2022 talk, in partnership with WARC, "The Gravity of e-commerce".

JP Castlin is an independent consultant who coined the term naturalized strategy-making and created the ABCDE framework. JP has been featured in Marketing Week, The Drum, WARC and more, and he also wrote "Strategy in Polemy". James Hankins is the founder of Vizer Consulting & Global VP Marketing Strategy and Planning at SAGE.

View JP & James' WARC report here.

What we covered in this episode:

• How the pandemic inspired the Cannes collaboration
• The one question everyone was asking at Cannes
• What is driving the sudden adjustment in e-commerce valuations
• Presenting straight after Gary V’s Cannes talk and our obsession with new things
• The threat of Stagflation and how it will impact the economy
• Returning to the 4 P’s for the solution to the problem
• The gravity effect of e-commerce and the challenging cost efficiency
• Defining the model as a shift from one-to-many from many-to-one
• Why marketers are needed to solve this problem
• The real cost of returning e-commerce products
• The long and short effect of guaranteed returns
• How Amazon mitigated the cost of product returns
• Why marketers needs to see the whole picture to solve the puzzle
• The Nike business model and how even they struggle to do e-commerce
• Why growth-first companies like Uber Eats fail to make a profit
• The Vegan Sausage roll principle and the challenge of second-hand car buying platforms
• Why fulfilment capability is so critical for e-commerce businesses
• Why Cinch are set up to beat Cazoo in the car e-commerce war
• The importance of understanding your business model first
• Using creativity to solve the most fundamental commercial challenges
• What we can all learn from the Next annual report and their emergent strategy
• The pivotal role of the CMO in a commercial crisis

Today we're joined by David Hieatt, founder of Hiut Denim Co., and The Do Lectures.

What we covered in this episode:

• How to pronounce Hiut and its origins
• What inspired David to start a jeans company
• Pitching a business aged 14
• Raised by wolves at Saatchi and Saatchi
• Setting up their first business Howies
• Surviving without pay for 6 years
• How it feels to sell your business
• The impact of having a dad in the merchant navy
• The importance of making people feel something
• Having a purpose and bringing your values to work
• How to find your purpose
• Why saving Britains biggest jeans factory inspired David to create Hiut
• Coping with 6 months orders in one month
• Why a newsletter is your most important communiction tool
• Getting geeky about newsletter stats
• Trying to beat your best newsletter
• Writing a book in 30mins a day
• Learning from Paul Arden
• The importance of choosing your boss carefully
• Focussing on being the most influential 30 person jeans company
• Being better today than yesterday
• Saving the planet with the No Wash Club
• Coping with 3 years of repairs in 3 months after offering free repairs for life
• The 88 hours it takes to win business
• The inspiration behind the DO lectures and the irony of 'doing one thing well'
• Don't just stand there, do something. Making change happen.
• Selling tickets to Do lectures out in an hour
• Talks from a cowshed in west wales

I've always had a bit of a love, hate relationship with Cannes. It's wonderful that we celebrate creativity with this event, but seeing how the festival rewards a certain type of creativity, particularly short term activation and purpose recently, I'm starting to wonder how effective Cannes Lions winners are in the real world.

So who better to talk to about this than Tom Goodwin, who isn't short of uncensored opinions, to find out what he really thinks of Cannes. Is it just a jolly for the industry? or is it something more?

-> Listen to my previous episode with Tom

• Whether Web3 is the next big thing
• How dis-interested we are in real people’s lives
• The cost of luxury opinions
• Having a seat at the Davos table
• Why normal people do all the wrong things
• How purpose has replaced creativity
• Making good advertising that sells
• How big tech stole the creative football
• Comparing Cannes to previous years
• How the Cannes experience can vary
• The status symbol of Cannes passes
• The future of travel to Cannes
• Tom’s view on Gary Vee’s talk
• Inventing the perfect Cannes
• The case for seducing and entertaining

For the 50th episode of Uncensored CMO, I'm live in Cannes to talk about the triple threat to creative effectiveness. Why effectiveness has been declining over the years, how attention has impacted mental availability and what we can do about it. Fresh off the stage at Cannes Lions 2022, Peter Field, Orlando Wood and Karen Nelson-Field talk us through what they're calling Triple Jeopardy.

From Peter Field himself: "Triple Jeopardy is three things: the withdrawal of money from brand and putting it into performance marketing and the short-term on a massive scale. That has drained the mental availability fuel supply, if you like"

What we covered in this episode

• Karen, Peter and Orlando's triple jeopardy Cannes panel
• How effectiveness has progressively declined throughout the years
• What's causing the decline? Is it a focus on short term activation vs long term brand building?
• Why are you calling this triple jeopardy?
• Why short term activation is damaging mental availability
• Measuring inwards vs outward
• Why we need to change attention metrics
• Active vs passive attention
• 85% of ads sit below the attention memory threshold
• Viewablity metrics are failing us
• How the elasticity of attention varies
• So how do we solve this? How do we sustain attention?
• Why we need more right-brained features in advertising
• What captures attention?
• Are you paying attention to this very message on this podcast? (and in these show notes?)

Margaret Jobling is the Group Chief Marketing Officer at NatWest. Margaret has spent the majority of her marketing career in FMCG, before to joining the utilities sector in 2014, as Director of Marketing at British Gas. At the beginning of 2016 she moved into a CMO role at Centrica, transforming the firm’s marketing capabilities across all regions. Then in 2020, joining NatWest as CMO.

In September 2020, Margaret was announced as one of Marketing Week’s Top 100 Most Effective Marketers for her work at Centrica.

What we covered in this episode:

• How Marg went from laser chemistry to marketing
• Blagging her way through her first job in marketing
• Capturing an emotional response in a rational way
• How to look smart giving creative feedback to an agency
• The ABC of assessing a piece of creative
• Why marketers face a much more complex context today
• How marketing is like sex and driving
• Using the language of business in the Board room
• Why marketers should focus on customers and commercials first
• The two hats every CMO wears
• Creating a culture where people can test and learn
• Inverting the pyramid and supporting the marketing team
• Why the store manager is king
• The power of showcasing what has gone wrong
• Marg’s hidden showreel of what went wrong
• Jon’s best training talking about his biggest failures
• Why Marg wouldn’t go back to fast moving consumer goods
• The importance of a consistent customer experience
• How service sector and FMCG differ
• Defining what marketing is
• The inspiration behind ‘tomorrow starts today’
• Why procrastination is the largest barrier to your success
• What NatWest is doing to protect the climate
• How banks can finance a greener economy
• Which technology we should be paying attention to
• Why not even the tech giants know what the future holds
• If it saves time, money or effort it will work
• What being in the Top 100 CMO charts does for Marg
• Leaving the world in a better state than we found it

Tom Goodwin is an author of a quote you might just have heard of: "Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening."

He does other things too, like spending an immense amount of time on LinkedIn and writing some seriously impressive books - two of them in fact - Digital Darwinism 1 and 2 (out now in the UK).

What we covered in this episode:

• From architecture to advertising
• Coping with job rejection letters
• Jon blags himself a job
• The terrifying feeling of going solo
• Being a Decathlete rather than sprinter
• The importance of saying No
• How the industry lost its way
• Why customer service has been lost
• The story behind THAT quote
• Potential applications of the insight and its limitations
• How we may be coming full circle
• Why is better to leverage existing tech rather than gambling on new
• The challenge of the Metaverse and how society will reject it
• How technology should be making us more human not less
• Technology as augmentation rather than replacement
• Why nothing new has happened in the past 8 years
• The power of Nowism vs Futurism
• The biggest barriers to innovation inside larger corporate businesses
• Where the next big innovations should be
• The ‘in the office’ auto reply
• Tom’s new book is out now

Links

• Follow me on Twitter: @uncensoredCMO
• Follow me on LI: LinkedIn
• My website: www.uncensoredcmo.com
• Email me: [email protected]

It's 40 years since the founding of one of the most famous and iconic advertising agencies; BBH or Bartle, Bogle, Hegarty. Today I speak with founder, Sir John Hegarty to find out what it's been like to be at the helm of one of the world's most successful ad agencies for 4 decades.

We take a look back over a long history of advertising to see what's changed, what we can learn and maybe what new techniques today are worth investing in. We touch on many of the great campaigns that come out to BBH, two of my favourites in particular being Levi's from the early eighties and more recently, Audi, which was in fact, one of their founding clients and spanned the entire 40 year history of the agency. As you would expect an amazing storyteller full of wit and wisdom and lots of great advice.

Here's what we covered:

• How Sir John got into advertising
• What advice he would give after 5 decades in Advertising
• Why you should entertain rather than inform
• How advertising followed cultural trends
• Why advertising appears to be making worse creative but expect better results
• The lack of evidence for brand building via social media
• How BBH turned Levi’s around and inspired their own agency positioning
• The making of Levi’s iconic Laundrette advert
• Why the model ended up wearing Boxer shorts
• How Levi’s ad revitalised famous music tracks
• The longest running BBH client
• How the ‘factory visit’ inspired one of the most famous taglines
• Why being illogical can be the right thing to do
• Being defined by your work
• The importance of creative people at the top of the company
• How creativity helps solve business problems
• Advice to clients for how to get the best out of their agency
• How the audience ended up coming last in our priorities
• Why we are all making creative decisions and how to be more creative
• The importance of being Fearless and not being afraid to fail
• Advice for selling in creative ideas to clients
• The one piece of creative work John is most proud of
• Why purpose gets you on the pitch but doesn’t win you the game
• Advice to a 20 year old John

Links

• Follow me on Twitter: @uncensoredCMO
• Follow me on LI: LinkedIn
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Pip Murray is the founder of Pip & Nut, which she launched in 2015 and it's now stocked in over 3,000 stores around the UK. It's the fastest growing nut butter brand around, and it's clear to see why. Pip is full of stories and insights in journey building the company, from humble beginnings in her kitchen and at craft fairs to becoming a staple brand on the shelves of all major supermarkets.

What we covered in this episode:

• Why Pip started a nut butter business
• From kitchen table to full scale production
• The constant trial and error to find the perfect recipe
• The confidence that comes from being close to your customer
• The importance of the right manufacturing partner and selling them the dream
• The challenge of minimum production run when you get started
• Pip&Nut’s first customer and the importance of focussing on it
• What to do when you have no marketing budget
• Bootstrapping and crowdfunding to cover the first couple of years
• The pro’s and con’s of starting a business when you are young
• How easy it is to convince yourself our of an idea and the power of intelligent naivety
• How the biggest doubts come in as you scale and stakes get bigger
• The opportunity cost of doing too much
• Betting big on brand identity from the start
• Inspiration from the B&B studios portfolio and finding the right chemistry
• The 3 things every Private Equity company does when they acquire a brand
• Finding the right design and why Pip used her name in the brand identity
• The challenge and opportunity of a national retailer listing
• The trade off between focussed distribution and full scale distribution
• Why keeping it tight is so important
• What we can learn from the best soft drink launches
• The advantage of playing in the niche to begin with
• Cash flow challenges of a scale up
• Sources of funding for growth and finding the right people to invest
• The messy nature of startups and the power of empathy from an experienced investor
• What the hardest moment of Pip’s journey taught her
• Divesting yourself and learning to delegate to the team
• The nerve wracking moment of going on TV for the first time
• The importance of B-Corp status and making a sustainable brand
• How Pip would define success
• The energy you gain from a crisis
• Why the best way to learn is doing
• Pip’s advice for her 24 year old self

Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo are the heads of research and development at the B2B Institute, a think tank at LinkedIn that studies the laws of growth in B2B. You can follow Peter and Jon on LinkedIn.

What we covered in this episode:

• Introducing the youngest B2B marketers on the planet
• Jon & Peters favourite Super Bowl ads
• The very low hurdle of writing a B2B article
• How half the economy is in fact B2B
• Is B2B really different to B2C
• Sales vs Product led B2B companies
• The Product Delusion and why it damages marketing
• How B2B ads compare to B2C on long term brand building
• What everyone can learn from Salesforce
• How brand advertising is good for sales and talent
• The power of cuddly furry animals
• Publicity vs Persuasion in Advertising
• Plug for ‘Why does the Pedlar Sing’ by Paul Feldwick
• Introducing the 95:5 rule
• The best search engine is the one in your head
• The importance of aligning marketing with finance
• Sponsoring the first ever B2B Cannes Lion
• Advertising is the tax for having a bad product
• Their least successful Marketing Week article
• Liberty Mutual and the power of sound
• What we can learn from Boston beers Super Bowl winning Ad
• How emotion regulates what we pay attention to
• Why characters are the most underused tactic in advertising
• Wear in vs Wear out and why incentives for agency and client aren’t aligned
• The Originality Delusion and the power of old ideas
• Bitcoin maximalism and the power of blending something old and new

Andrew Robertson has been President and Chief Executive Officer of BBDO Worldwide since June 2004, and has worked with major clients including AT&T, ExxonMobil, FedEx, Ford, GE, Mars Inc, PepsiCo, SAP and Visa.

It has been named Network of the Year at Cannes a record-setting seven times and the world's most awarded agency network according to The Gunn Report/World Advertising Research Center for thirteen years in a row. Since 2005, BBDO has been honoured as Global Agency of the Year in Ad Age, Adweek (three times) and Campaign (five times). BBDO Worldwide was also recognized as the Most Effective Network in the world by the Global Effies in 2011, 2014, 2015 and 2017.

Andrew first came to BBDO in the UK in 1995, joining Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO where he subsequently served as Chief Executive. In 2001, he moved to BBDO North America to serve as President and CEO.

He began his advertising career at Ogilvy & Mather, London as a Media Planner. He switched to Account Management and was appointed to the Board of Ogilvy & Mather in 1986. In 1989, he joined J. Walter Thompson and in November 1990, was appointed Chief Executive of WCRS.

Andrew has a degree in Economics from City of London University. He currently serves on the Boards of Autism Speaks and Hope Funds for Cancer Research. He is a past Chairman of The Advertising Council.

What we covered in this episode:

• Falling into advertising after starting out in civil engineering
• Why Andrew learnt selling insurance and gambling through the night
• The late night conversation that led Andrew to advertising
• 18 years at the helm of a global adverting business
• Why getting the people right is the most important task of any CEO
• The importance of time spent with customers
• Learning to love problems and embrace them as opportunities
• Loving what your business creates
• Where the trophies of ‘The most awarded network agency in the world’ are kept
• Why ‘meaning it’ is the secret to staying on top of your creative game
• Building a strong network bottom up with strong local creative agencies
• Attracting a limited pool of truly exceptional people
• Why emotion is the most effective thing you can do
• The power of platform ideas
• Don’t understand the value of craft
• Calculating the downside risk to help you take the leaps that lead to upside
• The pursuit of certainty leads to the norm
• How the snickers creative idea was ‘caught’ in a line of copy
• Why all great ideas are obvious after their invention
• The power of a new way of seeing an old idea
• Why Andrew’s favourite ad was one that delivered bad news
• The benefits of sleeping with a homeless guy
• It’s hard not to buy from someone who makes you smile
• How confidence in the team beats the silver bullet when it comes to pitching
• The expectation of agencies to deliver effortlessly seamless and connected communication at every tough point
• Half my advertising is wasted but it’s gets a lot worse in digital

Jon chats with CMO of Boston Beer, Lesya Lysyj, who has nearly 30 years of marketing experience in the food and beverage industry. Prior to joining Boston Beer, she served as President U.S. (Sales and Marketing) for Welch’s Foods.

Watch the ad here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9GUnNAL9yY

What we covered in this episode

• Counting down the Top 10 Super Bowl ads of 2022
• The power of humour and nostalgia for Lays
• Why babies are the stars of many Super Bowl ads
• The reason car ads are so predictable
• Robo puppy and why Kia made the best car ad
• The winning Super ad of 2022 and no it wasn’t a set up
• Inventing ‘Your cousin from Boston’ and why it works
• The power of sticking to the same creative idea
• Why we get bored of our own ads before our customer does
• The case for releasing a Super Bowl ad early
• Creating 2 billion PR impressions from the campaign
• The power of Your Cousin From Boston lock up
• Taking a big swing with the company dollars
• Why a CMO can’t enjoy the Super Bowl when they are advertising
• The actual robot dogs that protect Boston Dynamics
• How Boston Beer approach testing advertising
• Why the idea you like is not always the best idea
• Founder Jim and his famous post it notes
• How to get payback from a Super Bowl ad
• Lesya’s top 3 tips for making a winning Super Bowl ad
• Why the CFO is such a fan of System1
• How do you top a winning Super Bowl ad

Byron Sharp is a Professor of Marketing Science and Director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute – the world’s largest centre for research into marketing. 

His first book How Brands Grow: what marketers don’t know has been called one of the most influential marketing books of the past decade (Warc, 2015) and was voted marketing book of the year by AdAge readers. In 2015 he published the follow-up How Brands Grow Part 2 with Professor Jenni Romaniuk. He has also written a textbook Marketing: Theory, Evidence, Practice which reflects modern knowledge about marketing and evidence-based thinking. The revised 2nd editionof the textbook was published in 2017.

Byron has co-hosted, with Professor Jerry Wind, two conferences at the Wharton Business School on the laws of advertising, and is on the editorial board of five journals.

What we covered in this episode:

• Being turned down for a publishing deal for How Brands Grow
• Why experts are terrible at predicting the future
• Marketers getting distracted by Purpose with little empirical support for it
• The ethical reason we should be focussed on the best return on marketing
• Byron responds to Peter Field’s Purpose research
• The top marketing myths exposed by How Brands Grow
• The No.1 surprise in How Brands Grow
• Why your customers are mostly the same as your competitors
• The law of Double Jeopardy and why we are over exposed to our own brands heavy buyers
• The paradox of very small brands having a larger customer base than expected
• Physical and Mental availability overlap
• How similar the top brands look vs ten years ago
• Lucozade sugar tax backlash and how that proved the laws of marketing
• The surprising importance of light and very light buyers
• Why a lot of your sales come from people who haven’t bought you for at least a year
• The importance of not changing your design
• Whether the laws vary depending on category
• Why market research is designed to highlight difference rather than similarity
• The importance of distinctiveness and being remembered
• What Levitt, Kotler and Akker got wrong about differentiation
• Why even bankers can’t tell their banks apart
• The power of pink concrete mixers
• Asking an 8 year old to tell you what’s different about your brand
• The real role of advertising for your brand
• How search works just like point of sale to catch people as they fall
• How the laws remain the same in B2B
• Why Apple isn’t your typical brand when it comes to selling product differentiation
• Why Ehrenberg Bass has just own distinctive asset
• Why fruit doesn’t need packaging
• The biggest unanswered question in marketing
• Plans for Ehrenberg Bass to make training available to marketers
• What Byron missed out in How Brands Grow
• The importance of marketing the research and highlighting the implications
• Describing Mark Ritson as the best business journalist in the world
• What Byron thinks about the environment and the role of marketing in it

Abba is the CMO at the FinTech start up Habito, the fastest growing online mortgage broker in the UK. Prior to Habito, Abba worked as director of strategy at News UK, pioneering the moves towards digital content and as a planner at agencies UM and Carat.

What we covered in this episode:

• Begging Dan the founder for a new job
• How Habito are disrupting the Mortgage market
• The power of anger and frustration to fuel business
• Convincing Uncommon to be a founding client
• Taking inspiration from Skateboard art and Santa Cruz
• How to make mortgages ‘gnarly’
• Switching off advertising due to too much demand
• How to measure the impact of your campaign
• Why Habito went straight to TV as a channel
• How mortgages can ruin your sex life
• Producing the mortgage Karma Sutra
• Writing an erotic novel about mortgages
• Why Habito sponsored the gnarly world of Skateboarding UK
• What it takes to train for an Ironman
• Business lessons from Ironman
• The generosity of the UK Fintech scene
• Abba’s top advice for getting into Tech
• How to create ‘strategic serendipity’

• Where to go for a 7 x salary mortgage

Kev Chesters is the co-founder of Harbour Collective and co-author of "The Creative Nudge: Simple Steps to Help You Think Differently". Previously Kev has been Chief Strategy Officer at Ogilvy UK, Head of Planning at W+K and Planning Director at S&S.

What we covered in this episode:

• How Kev got sued by Dr Dre
• Bumping into famous people in urinals
• Why creativity in business really matters
• The power of advertising to sell jeans
• Why creative is not the same as making ads
• The creative power of business constraints
• How dancing horses can sell mobile tariffs
• The feel good power of internet memes
• Why creativity is the underdog’s most competitive advantage
• How short deadlines actual reduce creativity
• Why nothing good ever came out of a workshop
• The importance of never giving up
• Jon’s most creative achievement with no budget
• What would you do if your budget was your Dad’s money
• The power of discontent to drive creativity
• How being scared signals real creativity
• The tyranny of average that holds us back from being brave
• Why creative is the only key to progress
• How to create the conditions for creativity to thrive
• Why anybody can be creative in the broadest sense
• The twin conspiracy of biology and societal conditioning
• The power of positive dissent and why consensus should be killed
• Why ‘the meeting’ is never the actual meeting
• What you can learn from the Devil’s advocate
• The importance of failure to our success
• Getting used to the feeling of fear
• Creative nudges that will help you become more creative
• How algorithms are great for efficiency but terrible for exploration
• The importance of being unreasonable
• What we can all learn from Lady GaGa

Tony's Chocolonely is on a mission to make chocolate free of child-labour and slavery worldwide. I catch up with Lord Chocolonely III, or Ben Greensmith who runs Tony's in the UK about what it's like to run a mission-focused challenger brand in 2021.

About Ben

Ben started his career in food and drink over 20 years ago at IRI and then working for Unilever in a mixture of sales and category management roles. He joined innocent drinks in 2007 and was there for 8 years, holding a number of senior commercial roles and helping build the UK business that was eventually sold to Coca-Cola in 2013 for £0.5 billion. He left in 2015 to join Proper Snacks, most recently holding the position of Chief Operating Officer. Ben has been working for Tony’s Chocolonely since September 2018 as employee number 1 in the UK and is responsible for leading the business in the UK and Ireland. His official job title is Lord Chocolonely iii.

About Tony's

At Tony’s Chocolonely our mission is to make chocolate free of child-labour and slavery; not just our chocolate but all chocolate worldwide. Tony’s has been around for 15 years in our home country, the Netherlands, where we’re now the number 1 brand with a 20% market share. Tony’s launched in the UK in January 2019 and already the 6th biggest chocolate bar brand and the fastest growing.

What we covered in this episode

• Being named Lord Chocolonely iii
• How the packaging was invented in 15mins
• The truth about inequality in the cocoa supply chain
• The food unwrapped programme that inspired Tony’s
• How Tony prosecuted himself for crimes against chocolate
• The lonely battle to end child labour that created Chocolonely
• The principles that ensure Tony’s helps make production slave free
• Why Tony’s wants the competition to copy them
• Challenging the removal of an endorsement by Slave Free Org
• The different ways Tony’s are making an impact on living wages
• Why Tony’s bars are created with unequal chunks
• How Ben convinced Tony’s to let him launch the brand in the UK
• Creating a £30m chocolate business in just 3 years
• Challenger brand lessons from Tony’s
• How Tony’s rate of sale compares to the Chocolate giants
• The price per gram of Tony’s and how it compares
• Creating headline news with an Advent calendar
• SPOILER ALERT: some days may contain extra chocolate
• Celebrity endorsement for the calendar
• Customer reaction to the missing chocolate on Day 8
• Getting on Have I Got News For You
• What should be making the news
• Results of Uncensored CMO poll asking whether it was a good move
• Why Tony’ back a sugar tax and High Sugar, Fat & Salt (HFSS) legislation
• Answering the challenge of being responsible for making people fat
• How to protect your culture as your business grows
• Crazy about chocolate and serious about people
• The power of healthy dissatisfaction
• How to be more outspoken in 2022
• The importance of fitness to create energy for the demands of the job

How do you run marketing for one of the best known insurance brands in the UK, Direct Line? That's exactly what I find out from their CMO, Mark Evans, who has been at the company for a decade.

What we covered in this episode:

• Starting a podcast during lockdown
• Where Mark gets his energy from
• The importance of being tuned into your purpose
• Career lessons from Jimmy Carr
• Why you should always coach from a position of strength
• What you can learn from a World Cup winning Rugby squad
• Lessons from being made redundant 4 times
• Why you should embrace your failure and learn from it
• How Mark survived a decade as CMO at Direct Line
• Why you should fire yourself every 18 months
• Whether it’s better to work for a Marketing or Finance CEO
• Why marketing needs to be more than the ‘colouring in department’
• The importance of knowing your numbers
• Why Direct Line decided to retire Winston Wolf
• The success trap - improving your game even when you are winning
• How Direct Line positioned itself for success
• Flipping ‘last brand standing’ to becoming the ‘first brand standing’
• Discovering the importance of insurance the hard way
• How covid changed the new ‘We’re on it’ campaign
• Topping the charts on the System1 insurance category
• Why it’s worth sticking with the same agency
• Who is tipped to be the next Superhero
• Record profits in a tough year
• How Churchill make Insurance feels effortless
• Churchill’s plans to Chill some more in 2022
• The power of music to change our the audience feels
• Marks most popular podcast episode on ‘oh the places we go’
• The importance of being true to your audience

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• Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
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Contact me:

• Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
• Email – [email protected]

Dom Dwight former editor & journalist who, just over a decade ago, discovered a passion for doing marketing properly, most notably through Yorkshire Tea but with a growing focus on coffee for Taylors of Harrogate. He's on a mission to prove that brands can connect with consumers in a way that benefits business, people, and (if it's not too ridiculous) the world.

What we covered in this episode:

• What a Proper Yorkshire Tea business card would look like
• From journalist to CMO of the UK’s best loved Tea brand
• Starting out on Twitter in 2008 to connect with ex pats who love tea
• Going from No.3 Tea brand to No.1 in just a couple of years
• Transforming market share from 13% to 33%
• Yorkshire Tea for Yorkshire people using Yorkshire water
• Why communication was the strategy to unlock growth
• How social media informed Yorkshire Tea’s tone of voice
• The serious case for more humour
• Discovering the ‘where everything’s done proper’ idea with Lucky Generals
• Why targeting new users was critical for brand growth
• How well known Yorkshire celebrities helped the brand reach new users
• Getting Sean Bean to run the company induction
• Using the Brownlee Brothers for deliveries
• Asking Michael Parkinson to do your interviews
• Hiring Kaiser Chiefs to produce the hold music
• Focussing on quality over quantity for Ad production
• Turning the Advertising engines off during covid but gaining some useful tailwinds
• Jon tests Dom on his ability to predict which Ad perform best on System1
• The power of movement to capture our attention
• The importance of creative instincts when making a great ad
• Why trust is so important when delegating to your team
• How Yorkshire Tea discovered a sense of humour
• In house social on a budget vs agency high production
• The power of low ego at Lucky Generals
• Inventing the social distancing teapot during lockdown
• Quietly going carbon neutral and painting the story on pack
• The importance of culture to the performance of the brand
• Time invested in genuinely asking ‘how people are; that supports during challenges
• The Importance of a stable management team over the long term
• Turning loyal brand drinks into advocates to recruit new ones
• Customer complaints about not screening the full version of the Sean Bean TV ad
• Debating which Christmas ads work and which don’t
• Praising the power of M&S ‘this is no ordinary’ Advertising
• Yorkshire Tea’s ambition take on the World

In this episode I talk with editor-in-chief of Marketing Week, Russell Parsons. We talk about our favourite news stories of the year, the Mark Ritson effect and if we should still be putting "digital" in job titles.

Russell's Bio:
Russell is the award-winning editor of the UK’s most prominent marketing title. He is responsible for leading Marketing Week’s content strategy across several platforms. Russell is also a trusted authority on marketing issues, delivering keynote speeches and hosting and appearing on panels at industry events. He first joined Marketing Week as a reporter in 2009.

What we covered in this episode:

• How Russell became editor-in-chief of Marketing Week
• Making decisions based on effectiveness rather than efficiency
• Discovering purpose back in 2011
• The Mark Ritson effect on Marketing Week
• Why every marketer should claim to be digital first in a job interview
• How Unilever put digital transformation in the CMO remit
• The importance of putting strategy ahead of digital tactics
• Is B2B really that different to B2C
• The one question Mark Ritson always gets asked
• Why we are all B2B marketers but just don’t realise it
• What Peter Field really said about Purpose
• The importance of demonstrating business impact
• How Direct Line have focussed on their real purpose
• The biggest bit of good news for every Marketer
• Putting performance into brand and brand into performance
• Building the world a better funnel with Tom Roach
• Russell’s mission to make Marketing Week as nerdy as possible
• If its fundamental and flawed it gets read
• Why all models are wrong but some are useful
• Fake gold BrewDog cans, ASA bans and employee letters
• Why negative BrewDog stories might create a recruitment problem
• Russell’s favourite Christmas ad of 2021
• The case for Aldi being the quintessential Christmas ad
• Predictions for what we will be talking about in 2022

Rory's Bio

Rory Sutherland is the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, an attractively vague job title which has allowed him to co-found a behavioral science practice within the agency. ​Before founding Ogilvy Change, Rory was a copywriter and creative director at Ogilvy for over 20 years, having joined as a graduate trainee in 1988. He has variously been President of the IPA, Chair of the Judges for the Direct Jury at Cannes, and has spoken at TED Global. He writes regular columns for the Spectator, Market Leader and Impact, and also occasional pieces for Wired. He is the author of two books: The Wiki Man, available on Amazon at prices between £1.96 and £2,345.54, depending on whether the algorithm is having a bad day, and Alchemy, The surprising Power of Ideas which don't make Sense, to be published in the UK and US in March 2019.

Buy the book, Transport for Humans.

What we covered in this episode:

• What Rory thinks of Orlando’s new book
• The danger of big data, economic theory and the assumption of ergodicity
• The strangeness of focus groups
• Why we’re all trying to project the ‘right answer’ in public forums
• Why reading novels makes you more attractive to the opposite sex
• The appeal of true live crime to women
• Why we should switch mile per hour to minutes per hour
• Are we nearly there yet? The behavioural science of transport
• What trains should always leave 2mins late
• Why we all need a season ticket from the Isle of White to go anywhere in first class
• Why going first class should be based on length of service rather than status
• How Brexit is good for employee benefits
• How the invention of the tube transformed working class access to jobs
• How the breakthrough happens when you’re doing what everyone else isn’t doing
• Lucozade Energy and how the perception of change is worse than the actual change
• The real WHY and the hidden WHO
• Better for the reputation to fail conventionally than succeeds unconventionally
• The safe course of action in corporate life is always to be boringly conventional
• Quality of reasoning isn’t quality of outcome
• What every second hand car salesman knows
• The case for making decisions when drunk
• How behaviourial science can save the planet
• Never solve a problem based on the average
• Why we should be able to choose our own contribution to the climate crisis
• The climate case for a vintage Aston Martin - known as the Kazzoom-brooks postulate
• The case for choosing premium brands over cheap ones
• What you can learn from the 4th man in Wales to own a dishwasher
• Why you shouldn’t post a picture of your car in social media
• Changing the currency of status signalling to solve climate crisis
• Rory’s favourite ad campaign of the past 10 years
• The case for Germany as a tourist destination
• Why VW should have put cup holders in their cars in the US
• What we can learn from the German approach to the environment
• Why we shouldn’t politicise the environment otherwise it creates reputational loss
• Why winning an argument and holding attention are not the same thing

In this special episode of Uncensored CMO, Jon finds himself on the other side of the mic being interviewed by producer James McKinven, who grills him on some unusual career moves. After a promising start in the City Jon makes a large u-turn and decides to become a marketer instead where he goes on to learn his early craft at Britvic. His next big break came at drinks business First Drinks where he notoriously closed down the London underground after causing a terror threat. After recovering from that he returned to Britvic to launch brands in International markets and from there set up a new team of challenger brands. With the entrepreneurs bug he poured his life savings into a management buy in which didn’t end well. From there he went ‘major league’ as Marketing Director of LRS before being fired. Then landing his dream job Brewdog he only managed 3 months before being fired again. But the story ends well as you find Jon as host of Uncensored CMO and CMO for System1 talking about what makes advertising work. In this episode he shares everything he has learnt in his career and why being fired twice in one year wasn’t the setback you might imagine.

What we covered in this episode:

• What inspired Jon to go into Marketing
• Making the giant leap from Business Finance to Marketing
• Getting a big break launching Fruit Shoot at Britvic
• How small conversations can make a big difference
• Why leaving Britvic was the best way to get promoted at Britvic
• Learning the marketing ropes at First Drinks
• Causing a terror threat in the London Underground
• Appearing on Have I Got News For You
• How sometimes it pays to go back
• What you discover in International marketing
• Creating a challenger brand from within the company
• Betting his life savings on a Management Buy In
• What you learn when you have nothing
• Landing a grown up CMO role at Lucozade Ribena Suntory
• Working with a Boxing legend Anthony Joshua
• Imposter syndrome when going from nothing to £50m budgets
• Managing perception vs reality in a large corporation organisation
• Creating the best performing OOH ad ever
• How to screw up the Lucozade reformulation
• Getting fired despite delivering every single KPI
• Jon’s 100 day plan to meet 100 people
• Landing his dream job at BrewDog
• Getting fired (again) after only 3 months
• The power of being unreasonable
• Was James Watt a good CEO to work for?
• The unexpected source of work after being fired
• How Uncensored CMO was born
• The episode that made him cry
• What happens next for Uncensored CMO and how he wants to help you

Ade joined ITV as Head of Diversity Commissioning in 2017. She was later promoted to Director of Creative Diversity, before taking on the role of Group Director of Diversity and Inclusion and joining the Management Board in 2020. She has responsibility for all diversity and inclusion related matters across the Group, including leading, developing and growing ITV’s Diversity and Inclusion strategy on and off-screen. Prior to joining ITV, Ade spent over 10 years at Channel 4, most recently as Creative Diversity Manager, where she supported and nurtured the careers of diverse creative talent and sought out and commissioned a slate of developments which encouraged diversity, risk-taking and innovation. Ade is currently a Trustee of BAFTA, Chair of BAFTA’s Learning and New Talent Committee, and a Trustee of the National Trust.

What we covered in this episode:

• From making Shirley Bassey’s tea to Director of Diversity & Inclusion at ITV
• The excitement of seeing a black person on screen in the 80’s
• Advice for how to get into TV
• Being inspired by the arrival of Channel 4
• How Ade created diversity on and off screen at Channel 4
• Thanks for the warm up – positioning the Paralympics in 2012
• How Channel 4 led the change throughout the entire industry
• How the Paralympic advertising beat the Olympics
• The impact of the pandemic on Diversity & Inclusion
• Talent is equally distributed so cast your net wide
• Hiring the best talent vs the people we are most familiar with
• You can’t be what you can’t see and the importance of role models on screen
• ITV’s role is to tell a story for everyone
• Telling someone’s story well rather than everyone’s story badly
• How off screen diversity has been transformed
• Learning about other people’s culture through drama
• The opportunity for more action on social class and disability
• Why we should stamp out unpaid work experience
• Top advice for creative Diversity change
• We are changed when we are seen as we are changed by what we see
• Proving the commercial case for Diversity in the Feeling Seen report
• What is good for society is also good for business
• Nike Toughest Athlete and the power of seeing black pregnant women on TV
• The power of the wonderful everyday inspiration from Ikea
• Why it will be good when we no longer have to reference a person’s race
• The importance of doing your cultural research
• Telling fresh stories can be a brilliant ways to stand out
• How the Boots ad makes you feel like real life holidays enjoying yourself
• Advice to Advertisers to be authentically diverse

Here's my mini conversation with Orlando Wood, author of Lemon and Look Out where I ask him about 5 key insights from the new book:

1. why it’s rude to stare and how the fixed gaze took over art and advertising 
2. whether you can actually build a brand online 
3. the serious case for humour 
4. how emotions capture our attention 
5. the surprising power of the finer details 

Listen to my longer conversation with Orlando: https://share.transistor.fm/s/9496c9dd
Buy the book: https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/publications-reports/look-out/

Orlando Wood is Chief Innovation Officer of System1 Group and Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. He is also a member of the IPA’s Effectiveness Leadership Group. Author of Lemon (IPA, 2019), co-author of System1, Unlocking Profitable Growth (2017), his research on advertising effectiveness draws on psychology and a study of the creative arts.

Orlando’s work has influenced thinking and practice in the research, marketing, and advertising, winning him awards from the ARF (Great Minds Distinction Award), the AMA (4 under 40), Jay Chiat (Gold Award for Research Innovation), ISBA (Ad Effectiveness Award), MRS (Best Paper and Research Effectiveness Awards) and ESOMAR (Best Methodology).

Orlando led the IPA’s Creativity and Effectiveness research for Effectiveness Week in 2018, 2019 and 2020. He has repeatedly worked with Peter Field and the IPA’s DataBank to demonstrate the long and broad effects achieved by emotional advertising, including the performance of fluent devices, a term he coined.

Orlando is a frequent conference speaker and has been published in The Journal of Advertising Research, Admap, and Market Leader.

What we covered in this episode:

• Why digital disruption means we need to start ‘looking out’
• His last book was a Lemon but it did rather well
• How Prof Iain McGilchrist inspired Orlando
• What history can tell us about what is happening today
• How understanding the brain helps us capture & sustain attention
• The left brain argument for right brain creativity
• How our culture lost its vitality
• The separation of writing a book during lockdown
• Orlando reads his own introduction to the book
• Its rude to stare. How the stare has been used throughout history
• How advertising is starting to reflect art from periods of disruption & conflict
• Fake news isn’t new. How the printing press created a publishing revolution
• How the industrial revolution created a loss of community
• The rapid rise of anxiety and the loss of humour
• The different modes of attention and why they matter
• Why we can’t see the wood for the trees
• We watch what interests us and sometimes that’s advertising
• How emotion orientates our attention, encodes in memory & aids decision making
• The role of digital to support brand building ‘broad beam’ advertising
• Why brand building becomes more important for online businesses
• How emotion drives more viewing of advertising in digital environments
• The trap of using digital style ‘narrow beam’ advertising on TV
• What features in advertising holds attention and drives business effects
• The swordfish strangler called Wilford. Why uniqueness creates believability.
• Yorkshire Tea and creating connections
• Poking fun at rigidity and the serious case for humour 
• What’s too silly to be said can be sung
• How colour grading can change our mood and how effective an Ad will be
• The pandemic and why we need a right-brained reaction
• The story of a dog and cone and the inspiration for this book
• Look Out for the book o Amazon and via the IPA’s website

Nicole is an advertising and media researcher with a particular interest in how to design effective advertising content.

Her expertise spans advertising measurement, management and decision making, distinctive brand assets, brand performance metrics and consumer behaviour. She has published in international journals including the Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, and the European Journal of Marketing. Nicole also has extensive experience conducting research projects for the Institute’s sponsors across industries and markets, and regularly presents seminars and workshops on various marketing topics.

What we covered in this episode:

• Why Marketers are not good judges of advertising
• Marketing departments are not better than a coin toss
• Intermediate campaign variables don’t often correlate to sales
• Why experience doesn’t make you any better at spotting winners
• The importance of distinctive assets
• Why characters are a dying art form
• Why we all need to be a little more Churchill
• The case for not changing the creative
• What happens when brands stop advertising
• Alcohol, babies, pet food & Pandemics
• Why scale matters when you go dark
• How your trajectory determines how bad going dark will be
• What to do when you manage a portfolio and have to cut spend
• The long term consequence of going dark
• Why you need a range of distinctive assets to aid memory
• The power of blackcurrants as a Ribena distinctive asset
• Why the high turnover of brand managers is bad for effectiveness
• Why How Brands Grow is the one book every marketer should have
• Quiet behind the scenes discipline is what matters when everything changes
• The comfort of familiarity when it comes to memory
• Building your business around what doesn’t change
• Are you measuring what really matters
• Organisations suffer from short term memory and short datasets
• Learning from success and failures over a long time series
• Why the insight department need to start letting go
• Winning the Boardroom battle with data

Peter Field has spent 15 years as a strategic planner in advertising and has been a marketing consultant for the last 20 years. His pioneering work on the link between creativity and effectiveness – such as Media in Focus with Les Binet - has earned Peter a global reputation as one of the Godfathers of Effectiveness.

What we covered in this episode:

• How he become ‘Godfather of effectiveness’
• Getting fired from two agencies 
• The evidence based approach to marketing
• Creating the IPA database 
• Origin of The Long and Short of It 
• The curse of short term thinking 
• Why brands take time to build 
• The power of emotion to create connections 
• The window in which you measure effectiveness is vital 
• Long term is broad reach emotional creative 
• Why the 60/40 ratio works 
• Why brand building matters even more for DTC
• The conflation of physical and mental availability on line 
• The myth of digital replacing brand 
• Convincing the CFO of the role of brand building 
• Why investors really get it 
• Why the ESOV model matters and what it tells us 
• The impact of brand size on ESOV
• The challenge facing new entrants and why challenger brand thinking matters 
• How economies of scale benefit market leaders 
• The amplification power of creativity 
• The tidal wave of disposable creativity 
• How award judges are celebrating short term activation 
• Even effectiveness awards lack long term results 
• The dangers of going dark in a recession 
• Why we should be more P&G than Coke
• Why it’s time to celebrate consistency 
• The power of strong fluent devices
• What happens when brands stop advertising
• The one thing we should be talking about which we aren’t 
• The breakdown in the correlation between media spend and share of voice 
• Why we should be measuring share of attention rather than share of voice  
• It’s time to start paying for attention

Peter Field

• The Long and the Short of It

Here's the articles before you listen:

• Read the Campaign article
• Read James' article

Part 1 – The Case for Creativity in Business

• Growing up in a world that didn’t recognise the potential of creativity
• How Apple ‘Crazy Ones’ Ad inspired James to pursue Advertising
• James’ mission to prove the value of Creativity
• Why Jon was supposed to have a career as an Actuary
• What the research tells us about the role of Creativity on your success
• Why we should define effectiveness in hard commercial terms
• Establishing a universal definition with the Creative Effectiveness Ladder
• Why understanding your commercial contribution will get you promoted
• Why the CMO needs to match the certainty and measurability of their Exec colleagues
• How to sell a Gorilla playing drums to your business
• We overestimate what we can achieve in 1 year and underestimate what we can achieve in 10
• The surprising impact on light buyers even on large brands
• Very few people are buying right now so you must focus on creating future demand
• The seduction of short term performance metrics
• How the failure rate of start-ups warn us about the danger of rely on short term metrics only
• Why it takes an average of 7 years to have an ‘over-night success’
• The importance of using familiarity when launching a new innovation
• Why you shouldn’t ditch the old creative if its good

Part 2 – The Controversy over Cannes

• How little time CMO’s actually spend on Advertising
• Jon shares the story before his Effie and Cannes Lion wins
• How Jon created the name for Uncensored CMO on the beach at Cannes
• System1 puts Cannes Lion winners to the test
• Why James reacted so strongly to my Campaign article
• The importance of recognising the power of Creativity in Advertising
• How the emotion being created by Cannes winners has changed
• The case for picking a side and standing up for your values
• Effectiveness awards look back whilst Creative awards look forward
• What the Nike winners tell us about Juries decision making
• Aldi Kevin the Carrot and the power of consistency
• Whether we can judge creative on a first impression only
• The importance of authenticity when it comes to purpose
• Wisdom of Crowds and how a Nat Rep samples can be a good guide to effectiveness
• The power of Excess Creative Share of Voice in addition to standard ESOV
• How the opinion of others impacts on our opinion of a brand
• The history of Essity’s Bodyform campaign and how agency & client worked together
• Peter Field’s Crisis in Creativity and how we have seen a significant shift to short termism
• What the role of Creative Awards should be
• Why we all need to work towards a longer term view and apply creativity to the health of our business

Andy Nairn is one of the 3 founders of Lucky Generals, a creative company for people on a mission. It's been shortlisted for Campaign's Agency of the Year for 5 years in a row. In 2021, Campaign named him the top brand strategist in the UK, for the 3rd time in a row. Business Insider has also named him one of the top 5 creative people in world advertising. He's won 24 IPA Effectiveness Awards (including the 2005, 2007 and 2010 Grands Prix) as well as the top 2 planning prizes in the USA (Gold Effie and Gold APGUS). And he's just launched his first book GO LUCK YOURSELF, with all the royalties going to help working class kids get a lucky break into the creative industry. 

What we covered in this episode:

• How lockdown led to Andy writing a book
• Why he went from law to advertising
• Jon’s ‘lucky’ break creating a new business
• Why successful companies use their luck better
• Good luck is more how you handle bad luck
• How being clear on your purpose helps prepare for bad luck
• How Napolean inspired Lucky Generals
• The importance of a popular idea rather than PowerPoint slides
• Why strategists should make things simple rather than being super intellectuals
• Lucky Lockdown and a socially distanced Teapot from Yorkshire
• How Lucky General took Yorkshire Tea from No.3 to No.1
• Lucky timing and how the Coop strategy would have been much cooler in Swedish
• Trolling Tesco with the Coop’s recycling message
• Premier league footballers lacing up in support of the LGBTQ community
• Lucky dog story and the role of jeopardy in creating a good ad
• Making the best Super Bowl ad for Amazon
• Why the more boring the category the more interesting you become
• How we lost our history and forgot the power of nostalgia
• Why lucky mascots are unloved marketing gold
• How Lucky Generals got everyone to complete their tax returns
• How the navy beat enemy u-boats by using a new paint scheme
• What took Taylors so long to put coffee in bags and how they turned this into an advantage
• Going commando for a good cause and the power of a beautiful constraint
• Lucky legacy and the battle of the bread brands
• How they updated the legendary Hovis boy on a bike campaign a won ad of the decade

Nils Leonard has spent over 20 years in the advertising and design industries working at a number of the most recognised agencies in London. In 2017, he founded the Uncommon Creative Studio alongside Lucy Jameson and Natalie Graeme, which aims to be “a creative studio building brands the real world is happy exists”.

This episode is split into 3 parts, including a bonus segment from my recording with Nils over a year ago. Here's what we covered:

Part 1 - Creating brands you wish existed 

• How Nils turned art into a career
• How he found the 1 ad land job at the Job centre
• The importance of culture & trust in the turnaround of Grey
• Why it’s always the people and not the name above the door you should care about
• The importance of being so clear on your mission that people choose to be in the room
• How Volvo Life Paint was the inspiration for Uncommon
• Why you should invest in your own idea rather than begging others to do it
• Mystery project names, secret hotels and being followed by private investigators
• How Halo coffee came into the world
• Why the stories we tell ourselves manifest who we are
• How panic drove the early success for the agency
• The power of a website with nothing on it
• Walking away from a major new client because it didn’t lead to Uncommon work
• Giving young men confidence via the one second suit

Part 2 - The Uncommon work

• Why Uncommon’s B&Q campaign brought tears to my eyes
• Uncovering a real truth that led to those funny bright orange posters for B&Q
• Blowing things up with Reality TV stars for ITV
• Why we need to make the Ad break as entertaining as the programme
• Backing start ups with an Uncommon accelerator
• Moving from advertising to design, experience and new product launches
• Why the Olympics needs to hold up a mirror to the world right now
• An Uncommon year to win Campaign Agency of the Year
• How the Pandemic crisis put creativity into overdrive
• The emotion of seeing people in the office again
• Nils gives his best advice to CMO’s on how to get to the best work
• Painting a picture of cultural success as much as commercial success
• Don’t be ashamed of talking about your personal ambition to make an impact in the world
• Jim Carey “if you can fail at what you don’t love why wouldn’t you risk trying at something you do”
• How fear gives us loopholes to get out of what we should be doing
• Why you can’t brief someone else on your dream. Only you can make it happen.

Part 3 - a pre-pandemic view on the world

• An early mistake by Nils when he did ‘release copy’ too early how Jon shut down the underground
• Why your personal purpose matters and how we are seeing a return to creativity
• The Gigabyte landfill of social content that no-body is asking for
• How people used to look forward to the Ads as much as the programs themselves
• Is the fire in your belly stronger than the fear in your head?
• Breaking the internet with BrewDog’s first ever TV Ad
• How we entered the age of outrage and sharing what we are offended by
• Why you should treat outdoor like Instagram
• The woods are burning so make a choice because everything we do is something we don’t do
• How making good work is actually a magnet for talent
• What the Uncensored CMO’s mission should be to galvanise people to start their own venture
• Make a difference in the world because our time is short

Pick up a copy of Steve's book "Can't Sell, Wont Sell" here.

Steve was European Creative Director (OgilvyOne) and Global Creative Director (Wunderman) either side of starting his own agency, HTW, where, in the seven years the agency operated, he won more Cannes Lions (18) in his discipline than any creative director in the world. His work has subsequently featured in the D&AD Copy Book. He has also authored Changing the world is the only fit work for a grown man; How to write better copy; and How to do better creative work - the latter becoming the most expensive advertising book ever when it traded on amazon for £3,854 a copy.

What we covered in this episode:

• Why a propose driven entry will increase your chances of winning a Cannes
• Why creative should come up with an idea to dramatise the benefit of the brand and then sell it to the client
• How Turkeys beat Lions and what that says about our priorities are
• Creative awarded campaigns are less effective than in the entire 24 year history of the IPA database
• Do people still believe in advertising’s role in creating demand? We need to see our purpose as commercial again
• The drug of fast data. Why we prioritise what is easy to measure rather than what works
• Lack of accountability to track and evaluate the impact over the long term
• Why you should judge a CMO on year 2
• The importance of winning the board room battle
• Clients no longer appreciates the time and talent to create great work. The public now to anything they can to avoid advertising. A once powerful business tool is now debased and devalued. Chairman of D&AD.
• Dropped commercial purpose for social purpose
• Great examples of social and commercial purpose combining
• Why social purpose shouldn’t be marketing strategy
• First purpose is shareholders and employees
• Lazy solution to a complex marketing problem
• The insanity of Gillette’s toxic masculinity and how it performed badly against men
• How did we disconnect from the audience we serve? 84% are 18-40, 80% AB etc we live in a London centric metropolitan bubble
• How regional agencies reacted differently to London ones
• Steve’s surprise at the reaction for his book and why he believes social purpose is being pushed by a small clique
• Why the boycott of GB News should worry us whatever political side we at
• Why Twitter pressure groups shouldn’t dictate your media strategy
• Why fear is driving the politicisation of business
• How pampers got social and commercial purpose right
• Steve’s manifestos for change
• Every speech should end with the commercial value of Advertising
• A new initiative to make creative effectiveness
• Awards panels needs cognitive diversity
• What a CMO thinks of Cannes
• How people fear speaking up
• Steve’s vision for the future of awards

Dolvett Quince is a real inspiration to his millions of followers but it’s not his Fitness that captured my attention, although you cant argue with the chiselled good looks and winning smile, but his mindset that really impresses. Having overcome a very troubled childhood Dolvett has not let any excuse stop him from pursuing what he loves and being successful. In this episode he shares the mindset that shaped him and the habits that helped him become successful. Consider this a workout for your mind.

What we covered in this episode:

• Dolvett shares his troubled family background and how it was both a gift and a curse
• The impact of being told he would never amount to anything
• How facing adversity shaped his outlook on life.
• The power of forgiveness and how it sets you free.
• Dolvett’s plan to become the next 007
• Why giving away everything he knows to other trainers led to his success
• Why Jeff Bezos no longer packs his own boxes
• How do you scale yourself when you hit maximum capacity
• Why he added cheats into his diet – leaning to clean and earning the cheat
• Overcoming your perception of yourself and why it’s all in your mind
• How he could predict who would succeed on The Biggest Loser
• The impact of the Pandemic on his Fitness business and how ‘stopping helps you see’
• The power of persistence and joining the 1% club of podcasts
• What Dolvett is doing next
• Can you stay humble and also be successful?
• The power of Self Love to help you succeed
• What Dolvett would tell to his 21 year old self
• The 3 kinds of people in the WWW, those that Wait, Wish & Will
• Changing lives ‘one rep at a time’ and other great quotes
• The reason for Dolvett’s next book ‘work out the doubt’
• The importance of learning from failure and getting back up and going again
• Why the most successful people are those that teach others

What we covered in this episode:

• What is Econometrics and why you do it?
• The critical role of people in any econometric project
• Cristiano, Coke and the complete misattribution of data
• Importance of senior buy-in to an Econometrics project
• Making econometrics like art on a Friday not maths on a Monday
• Marketing as an investment not a cost
• How the data captures the behaviour of people
• What Grace learnt when rebranding her business
• Why Grace has been turning business down
• How Jon created the Uncensored CMO brand in 45mins
• Why every tech company has a blue logo
• Traditional vs Modern marketing and who is right
• Is creative effectiveness really in decline?
• How life stage influences media choice more than anything
• The Wrong and the Right of it and what the data really says
• Why ‘it depends’ is usually the right answer
• The importance of evidence over opinion on social media
• Does paid search actually lead to sales?
• The role of search as a window into consumer demand
• Does Share of Search actually predict demand for your brand
• The one thing Marketers are not talking about but should be

About Dr Grace Kite

With more than 20 years’ experience, Dr Grace Kite is a business economist who’s worked on more than 120 econometrics projects across all the main advertising buying categories. In each of these categories, she has developed deep knowledge on market trends and the true nature of competition.

Grace is a columnist at marketing week and WARC and a regular speaker on marketing effectiveness. With over 4,000 social media followers, she now appears alongside the likes of Mark Ritson and Les Binet. She believes that knowledge that arises from effectiveness analysis doesn’t get fed back to the people that plan campaigns often enough. Her writing and talks set out to ‘lift the lid’ in a way that normal people can understand.

After earning a PhD in Economics, Grace took on increasingly senior roles at Mindshare, Millward Brown, Holmes & Cook, Mediacom, PHD and OMD. In 2010 she founded the business now known as magic numbers.

Her work has led to twelve IPA Effectiveness award winners plus a Cannes Grand Prix. She was a technical judge for the 2020 IPA awards, and will judge for WARC in 2021.

Rory Sutherland is the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, an attractively vague job title which has allowed him to co-found a behavioral science practice within the agency. ​Before founding Ogilvy Change, Rory was a copywriter and creative director at Ogilvy for over 20 years, having joined as a graduate trainee in 1988. He has variously been President of the IPA, Chair of the Judges for the Direct Jury at Cannes, and has spoken at TED Global. He writes regular columns for the Spectator, Market Leader and Impact, and also occasional pieces for Wired. He is the author of two books: The Wiki Man, available on Amazon at prices between £1.96 and £2,345.54, depending on whether the algorithm is having a bad day, and Alchemy, The surprising Power of Ideas which don't make Sense, to be published in the UK and US in March 2019.  ​

What we covered in this episode:

• Why economics doesn’t explain why people buy things
• How the channel can be more important than the message
• Why dropping your price should be the most controversial decision you ever make
• The book that gave Rory a nudge towards behavioural science
• Why 1 x 10 is not the same thing as 10 x 1 from a marketing perspective
• Ergodicity. The word every Marketer needs to learn.
• Why the better your creative is the less you should target it
• Why Effectiveness is not the same as Efficiency
• The role uncertainty and risk avoidance plays in choosing a brand
• Why Usain Bolt eats McDonalds chicken nuggets
• How to charge for creative work
• Alchemy. How marketing can add as much value as the product itself.
• Why it’s time we appreciated Country music and Worthers originals
• How David Ogilvy described people who don’t respect the consumer
• Why being over 40 in Marketing means you must be brilliant
• The case for moving out of London
• Why students should be allowed to spend their student loan on anything
• Find out something Rory has never told anyone, it might surprise you!

Rupert Howell is one of the founders of the advertising agency HHCL & Partners famous for campaigns for Tango, The AA, Ronseal, First Direct and Go amongst to name just a few. They were awarded ‘Agency of the Decade’ by Campaign in the 1990’s and experienced phenomenal growth for over a decade before being sold to Chime.

We covered so much ground in this bumper 2 hour episode, so here's the list of what we touched upon:

• How Rupert made HHCL the best agency of the 90’s
• Ruperts New Business Mantra – Honesty. Respect. Trust.
• Why saying ‘I don’t know’ and ‘we got it wrong’ is so important
• How the agency’s sole focus is Advertising but the Clients sole focus is the business
• Why new business should always be separate to the day to day account management
• How Rupert became ‘the finest new business director of all time’
• How to win a pitch even after you have lost it
• Why the pitch process begins with the phone call and only ends when its announced in Campaign
• The sole purpose of the pitch is to win and not to solve the clients business problem
• Why HHCL had a strike rate of 65% for new business
• What the company annual report can tell you for the pitch process
• Why you should try and get your customer promoted
• How Carling Black Label inspired the most successful Tango Advertising of all time
• How Tango destroyed Fanta and forced Coke to withdraw it from the market
• How a call from a Surgeon led to the Tango Slap commercial being withdraw from market
• Why the ‘4th Emergency Service’ transformed The AA and how the bold idea was sold in
• How spending time with an AA team out on a call led to the idea
• The importance of winning your internal teams and why they matter as much as your customers
• Interrogating the product until ‘it confesses its strength’ 
• Why the harder you practice the luckier you get is just as true for an agency
• The real hard yards of the start-up phase that meant not taking a day off in 3 years
• How tabloids create controversy and how to respond to it
• Why relationships are the secret to really succeeding in business
• Turning down offers to sell the agency including a £1million bribe
• Why HHCL accepted an offer from Chime with the support from Sir Martin Sorrell
• Why so few agencies ever succeed after being acquired by a network
• Why HHCL was never the same after Rupert left and why he would never go back
• The importance of timing for Founders handing over to the next generation
• Dealing with bullies, bribary and negotiating an exit from McCann with a boat & DB9 as consolation
• Which celebrities are still speaking to Rupert after he left ITV
• Why social media is driven by click bait and negative headlines
• Why you should give up the news, except perhaps local news
• The Pros and Cons of a British free press
• How to get a non-exec role

Follow me

• Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
• LinkedIn

Contact me

• Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
• Email – [email protected]

“the buying of time or space is not the taking out of a hunting license on someone’s private preserve, but it is the renting of a stage on which we may perform” - Howard Gossage

This is just one of the tremendous quotes contained in Paul Feldwick’s intriguingly titled new book ‘Why Does the Pedlar Sing?’ about what creatives really means in Advertising.

Here's what we covered in this episode:

• How a Shakespear play inspired the title of the book
• A short history of Advertising and the different models used
• The importance of Daniel Kahnemans availability and affect heuristic
• The Adland myth that entertainment doesn’t sell
• Showmanship and why we should all be more like PT Barnum
• Why bad research forces you to do one thing whilst actually doing another
• Barclaycard and the most honest case history of making an Ad ever written
• How Rowan Atchison inspired one of the greatest Ads ever made
• Why any process of discovery will involve a lot of trial and error 
• How PT Barnum created Fame for his Jenny Lind Tour
• Why celebrity fame and brand building are far more similar than people care to admit
• Why we should be talking about Fame rather than Mental Availability
• What we can learn from Strictly Come Dancing
• “I had more energy & ingenuity” The importance of energy in creating & sustaining success
• The 4 different facets of Fame that are critical for success
• Paul’s manifesto for reclaiming Creativity

Damian Symons is the CEO of Clear M&C Saatchi and author of 'From Choas to Clarity', which we reference a bunch in this conversation. He shares some of the excellent insight gained from this study of over 700 CEO’s and CMO’s into the changing role of the CMO over the past year and more.

What we covered in this episode

• How aligned is the CEO and CMO when it comes to business priorities?
• Why is the CMO a lot more influential now than a year ago?
• How a crisis makes you a lot more connected to your customers and colleagues
• How business strategy and the actions required to deliver it get easily disconnected
• Why Marketing needs to be much more than just ‘colouring in’
• Why CMO’s need to be more accountable for both short and long term investments
• How CEO’s become more focussed on the long terms whilst demanding short term action from their CMO
• The importance of a clear narrative, clear evidence and a clear short, medium and long term goals
• Why successful CMO’s aren’t always the best marketers
• How you can make this crisis the best thing that ever happened to you
• The failure of CMO’s to nurture talent and why no-one wants the job
• The 4 point plan to create clarity from chaos

Confession time. As a Saints fan, this is certainly a case of mixing business with pleasure. But bear with me for a moment. A year ago Saints suffered the worst defeat in premier league history going down 9-0 at home to Leicester. For most clubs this would have meant firing the manager and sparking an inevitable tumble into relegation and financial uncertainty. But not Southampton. They stuck by their man and a year later are challenging at the top of the Premier League briefly going top on the same day as this interview was recorded (obviously my motivational skills were critical ….). So what does this have to do with Marketing? Well, it turns out quite a lot! Most of us will have faced a giant setback at some point (if you haven’t then maybe you not trying hard enough!) and how you respond is one of the most important things you’ll ever do in your career. Understanding the importance of your belief and values, the role consistency plays, communicating much more than usual, learning to play as a team etc. In this episode, I meet David Thomas, Commercial Director to find out what has transformed Southampton as a Football Club and what you can learn from it.

Here's what we discussed:

• How the greatest defeat in Premier League history led to Saints challenging the best
• What Premier League managers and CMO’s have in common and the importance of consistency
• The secret to why playing behind closed doors might be playing into Saints hands
• The Southampton Way – the role of walking the talk in the transformation of the club
• How a good strategy means you can handle a few knocks without losing your way
• Why Saints chefs made over 1000 meals a week during lockdown 
• How the sport sponsorship model had to be turned on its head and why it shouldn’t be called sponsorship
• The need for accountability and ROI for any partnership to succeed
• Why Saints have the ‘John Lewis’ of kit launches and the most engaged social media of any club
• How values and belief are at the heart of any great Challenger brand
• Why the club going into Administration led the foundations of success today
• Turning potential into excellence and the importance of not punishing failure
• Why one of the most capped England women chose to coach the Saints women in the 6th tier!
• How Saints are tackling racism in football.
• A top 6 finish versus an FA Cup appearance