Uncensored CMO: Recent Episodes

Jon Evans

The Uncensorced CMO was created to explore the good, the bad and quite frankly downright ugly truth about marketing theory & practice.

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

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.

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

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

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

Follow Jon:

LinkedIn
Twitter

The Squiggly Career

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.

As Christmas ad season is in full swing, I speak to the dynamic duo behind Aldi's Kevin the Carrot, Jamie Peate and Darren Hawkins of McCann to find out the secret behind creating the UK's most loved 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: jon@uncensoredcmo.com

Digital Darwinism: Survival of the Fittest in the Age of Business Disruption (Kogan Page Inspire)

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
My website: www.uncensoredcmo.com
Email me: jon@uncensoredcmo.com

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

How Brands Grow: Part 2: Emerging Markets, Services, Durables, New and Luxury Brands

Marketing: Theory, Evidence, Practice

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

The Creative Nudge: Simple Steps to Help You Think Differently

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

Follow me:

Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
LinkedIn

Contact me:

Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
Email – jon@uncensoredcmo.com

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

Transport for Humans (Perspectives)

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:

why it’s rude to stare and how the fixed gaze took over art and advertising
whether you can actually build a brand online
the serious case for humour
how emotions capture our attention
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

Can't Sell Won't Sell: Advertising, politics and culture wars. Why adland has stopped selling and started saving the world

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

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Contact me

Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
Email – jon@uncensoredcmo.com

“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

Here's what we covered in this episode:

Who is Orlando and what is Lemon all about?
Have the insights in Lemon changed on the back of the Coronavirus crisis?
How emotion plays out in online video
Why emotion is imperative online when you only have 6 seconds to capture people's attention
Why you don't just need to be rational because your ads are targeted
Brands should be using online advertising not only for activation, but also for brand building
Examples of brands and ads doing this well
How advertising is similar to writing a novel and art
Why we've lost some humility in our advertising
What the vital ingredients are to make online advertising work effectively

Follow me:

Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
LinkedIn

Here's what we covered in this episode:

Find out what inspired Mark to switch the actual classroom for the virtual one
How he ended up being the old, rich guy with a wine collection he used to laugh at
What he thinks of the 50% of Marketers that have no professional training
Why it's now time we all just all ditch the ‘D’ word and get back to Marketing
Find out what every normal person knows about Advertising that Marketers pay good money to figure out
Discover the most important factors in marketing effectiveness and why its time to think about the s**t we put through the pipe
Why a recession is exactly the time you want to be increasing your spend
Why you should never confuse a change in consumer context for a change in consumer behaviour
“Tell me what hasn’t changed and I will build a business around that” & other great quotes to counter the constant stream of ‘everything's changed. Buy this book’ hype
Discover why Mark believes the smartest people are not the ones sat around the boardroom table
Find out why most CMO’s are more C than M and are not always the best marketers in their team
The secret to CMO success is 80-90% politics over marketing
The dangers of Canadian morning TV after a big night out
We round off the episode finding out why Jon got fired after a 6-month ‘walk of shame’

Follow me:

Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
LinkedIn

Contact me:

Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
Email – jon@uncensoredcmo.com

Mark Ritson:

Twitter
LinkedIn

Mark Borkowski is PR written large. He represents international celebrities and corporate heavyweights and is a sought-after commentator on the world of celebrity, the Media and spin.

I recorded another episode with Mark not too long ago but it didn't feel right releasing it amidst the pandemic, so I caught up with him again.

In this episode we covered:

Why business is booming for Borkowski
How they've handled the shift to fully remote
The role of celebrities during the crisis
Why Boris' message and tone was poor
What key advice would Mark give everyone

What we covered in this episode:

Why some brands have accelerated their growth with 3 years of market progression in 3 months, while others hit hard
How those brands that have gone dark and said nothing will be worst affected
Why Brewgooder’s work during the crisis has been impressive
How brands can do things without looking like they’re just jumping on the COVID bandwagon
Are there any signs of things getting better for clients?
How has Manifest changed in the past 3 months and what is going to stay permanent
Why they love the office
Advice - write your brief. There is an opportunity for you to recast your brand in the ‘new normal’. We won’t ever get a chance to hit the reset button again!

In this episode we discuss:

Brewdog's hand sanitiser
ITV's Clap From Our Carers campaign
Why Uncommon are making candles
How Boris could have handled his messaging better
What advice Lucy would give people in advertising
Why this recession presents an opportunity

Follow me:

Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
LinkedIn

Contact me:

Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
Email – jon@uncensoredcmo.com

Kate joined ITV in 2019 in the newly created role of Director of Client Strategy and Planning, with a remit to help ITV Commercial build broader and deeper relationships with advertisers. A creative strategist by background and a highly respected and well known strategic leader with twenty years’ experience across a range of communications disciplines from advertising, to PR to digital, Kate has worked across sectors as diverse as automotive, retail, government and public sector, FMCG and financial services. Kate has written / contributed to award winning IPA Effectiveness entries for Co-op Food Retail, Public Health England Tobacco Control and Stoptober.

In this episode we covered:

What is the impact on the team with remote working?
How has TV and ITV in particular changed (programs/advertising/production etc)
I see viewing figures up so isn’t this a good thing?
Clap for Carers – well done! What was the idea behind that
People’s Ad break – tell me more …
Are you seeing Advertising changing?
Any sign of Advertisers coming back?
What advice would you give brands now?

Ian Millner is global CEO and co-founder of Iris - one of the most successful independent agencies in the UK. He set the agency up 20 years ago as a partnership with his co-founders and it now boasts some of the world’s most famous brands such as Samsung and Adidas. A genuine multi-disciplinary agency with offices around the World iris have successfully moved with the times.

In this episode we cover

Introduction – how Ian is doing!
Impact – how the virus affected business
Challenges – what have been the biggest challenges this crisis has created for the agency, given the budget cuts
Opportunities – have there been any opportunities arise from the pandemic?
Team – what has been the impact on the team? How should you lead others remotely?
Future – how do we look to the future and stay positive?

Follow me:

Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
LinkedIn

Contact me:

Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
Email – jon@uncensoredcmo.com

Orlando Wood is the chief innovation officer at System1, and author of the IPA's best-selling book, Lemon. He also happens to be my colleague.

What we cover:

What is Lemon all about?
How right-brained attributes in advertising can help long term brand building
What impact will the Coronavirus have on the left-right brained way we think of the world?
Should you continue doing the 'Covid-Ads' or should you stick to what you know?
Can old Ads really be effective? Should brands go into the archives?

Follow me:

Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
LinkedIn

Contact me:

Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
Email – jon@uncensoredcmo.com

About the guests:

Simon DentSimon Dent is a former sports lawyer and founder of Dark Horses, a sports marketing agency. Simon had experience of mental health problems in his 20s and after launching a couple of failed businesses he finally got it right with Dark Horses. Dark Horses, the sports creative agency, is the fifth fastest-growing creative agency in the world.

Ben BidwellBen, otherwise known as The Naked Professor, is a mindset coach, writer & public speaker who is pioneering a revolution to change the stigma about mental health. He invites his audience to connect more with their emotions whilst empowering the men in the room to retain their authentic masculinity.

What we discussed

Introduction – who are our guests and how did they get to where they are
Impact – how has COVID impacted on a fast-growing agency?
Challenges – what have been the biggest challenges this crisis has created for the agency?
Opportunities – have there been any opportunities arise from the pandemic?
Team – what has been the impact on the team? How should you lead others remotely?
Future – how do we look to the future and stay positive?

Follow me:

Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
LinkedIn

Contact me:

Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
Email – jon@uncensoredcmo.com

Mark Evans is the Managing Director, Marketing & Digital at Direct Line and has been at the company for over 8 years. He's seen some ups and downs but has never seen a challenge such as the Coronavirus. How has the company been impacted, what challenges have they faced and what opportunities can come from this?

What do we cover in this episode?

Introduction – who is Mark Evans and how did he end up in this position
Impact – how has COVID impacted on DLG? It happened on the tail end of a major relaunch of the Direct Line brand
Challenges – what have been the biggest challenges this crisis has created for Direct Line? How are they responding to these?
Opportunities – what opportunities have emerged through this? Are people taking insurance more seriously?
Media – will Direct Line continue to Advertise? Wil the message change?
Team – what has been the impact on the team? How should you lead others remotely?
Future – what's the outlook for the economy and their sector? Short v Long term

Follow me:

Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
LinkedIn

Contact me:

Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
Email – jon@uncensoredcmo.com

Welcome back everybody to the Uncensored CMO in rather different circumstances this time. So we were nicely underway with recording season 2 and we had interviews with Rory Sutherland, we had Mark Borkowski on there, Nils Leonard from Uncommon.

But you know what? It just didn't seem right to go out there with season 2 as planned when we're all in the middle of a crisis and our minds quite frankly or are elsewhere.

So what I thought I'd do instead was bring you some Covid-related catch-ups with industry leaders from different sectors. PR experts, CMOs running businesses with big P+Ls and thought leaders in the industry people like Orlando Wood, author of Lemon. I really want to hear their perspective on how should we be responding to this crisis?

What advice can they give us about how they are managing through what is unprecedented times with high level of uncertainty about what the future is going to hold?

So rather than give you the whole hour as I did in season 1 these are going to be tight 20-30 minute interviews with people that can offer their perspective advice.

Another thing you'll probably notice is a slightly different sound because we're recording from home, so bear with us this season. It might not be quite the rich experience that you're used to if you listened to season 1, but we'll be doing our very best and producer James will be working his considerable magic from his home office. And on the other side will bring you season 2.

Jessica Butcher MBE is a tech entrepreneur, angel investor, speaker and mentor. She is perhaps most famous as one of the co-founders of Blippar, a pioneer in Augmented Reality which was once valued at over $1billion and described as one of the 20 most disruptive brands in the world. She is the recipient of numerous awards including BBC’s Top 100 women.

In this episode:

How falling in love led to her big break as an entrepreneur
How Blippar created Augmented Reality and what it was like on board a rocket ship that went from 4 to 350 employees and a valuation of $1billion.
Why someone with a degree in history wanted to be a tech entrepreneur
Which client inspired them to create Blippar enabled business cards
Having 3 children in 4 years and how that changed her priorities
The challenge of scaling a business and knowing your limits
How social media is promoting polarisation, narcissism and infinite scroll time-wasting and how tech needs to become more humane
We need to identify between healthy and junk technology and treat it as such
Preparing the child for the road not the road for the child
The inspiration behind Tick.Done and how it will help people learn how to do things without getting sucked into infinite scroll
This is part 1 of the interview with Jess and we’ll be returning in Season2 to discuss what it's like being a woman in tech.

Follow me:

Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
LinkedIn

Contact me:

Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
Email – jon@uncensoredcmo.com

Jess Butcher:

Twitter
Tick Done
Blippar
The Coddling of the American Mind

The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure

Alex Myers is founder of Manifest who were recently awarded Agency of the Decade for their work making BrewDog famous. Having worked on BrewDog for most of the past 10 years they helped establish the brand as the UK’s most valuable Beer brand (source BrandZ top 75 UK brands) with virtually no paid for media. Manifest have a clear purpose of creating brands that change the world and put their money where their mouth is.

In this episode:

How Alex started a PR agency with no experience at all
Never mind the bollocks here’s Brewdog was Alex’s opening pitch to work for them
Its not what you stand for its what you stand up for that counts
There is no such thing as a boring brief only boring creative
Finding inspiration from roof tiles and why Alex believes his job is to find out why people get up in the morning
Hello my name is Vladimir. Creating a protest beer to promote what BrewDog believe in.
How to make brave the new safe
How Twitter went from a platform for collaboration to a platform for outrage
Having a public spat with James Watt over Punk AF and not getting credit
Why pitching doesn’t work for brands and why CMO’s need to do their research
Strategy should come from your belief and not a rationale
Manifests vision to create brands that change the world
Why Awards are easy to game but do provide a Sat Nav for CMO’s on who is doing good work
Find out who Alex has a professional crush on
Why doing good and having a positive impact should be synonymous with success
Why the best work comes from making every channel amplify the other
What Alex has never told anyone

Follow me:

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LinkedIn

Contact me:

Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
Email – jon@uncensoredcmo.com

Follow Alex:

Alex on Twitter
Manifest Twitter
Manifest

Ian Millner is global CEO and co-founder of iris one of the most successful independent agencies in the UK. He set the agency up 20 years ago as a partnership with his co-founders and it now boasts some of the world’s most famous brands such as Samsung and Adidas. A genuine multi-disciplinary agency with offices around the World iris have successfully moved with the times.

In this episode

Why agencies get the clients they deserve
The importance of genuine diversity and how it contributes to innovation
Why a good pitcher does not always make a good partner
Finding sources of unfair advantage
When clients make things they wouldn’t buy from an agency
Why Ian can’t stand Ad industry awards
When it makes sense to in-house your agency and out-source your agency
Why Campaign should apologise for backing down on the Nigel Farage front cover
The importance of creating cultural assets in today's social media driven age
Ian reveals his plans to write a book about unspoken social behaviour

Follow me:

Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
LinkedIn

Contact me:

Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
Email – jon@uncensoredcmo.com

Ian Millner

Ian's Twitter
Iris' Twitter
Iris Worldwide

Arron is co-founder of The Goat Agency which is the fastest-growing agency in Europe and one of the most successful influencer agencies in the World. He and his co-founders set up the agency 4 years ago with their own money and now employ 130 people around the world and manage around 90 social media campaigns at any one time. Arron has a wonderful personal story and a very compelling pitch for his agency.

In this episode

Arron’s entrepreneurial roots and creating something out of nothing
The fear of not trying is much greater than the fear of failure
Why more people should realise how hard being an entrepreneur is
How they generated 2,000 responses from a £10 investment in their first influencer
What you do when 80% of influencer campaigns don’t work
Why Arron loves the procurement department and he proves the return on investment of an influencer campaign
The benefit of having no experience in your sector
The importance of recruiting talent without experience
How an influencer campaign can make your TV campaign more impactful
How Content & Collaboration are the key to any campaign including B2B
Arron’s vision to build the world’s largest creative agency
Arron reveals his secret new diet

Follow me:

Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
LinkedIn

Contact me:

Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
Email – jon@uncensoredcmo.com

Arron Shepherd

Arron's Twitter
The Goat Agency Twitter
The Goat Agency

Adam is the founder of the eatbigfish consultancy and author of Eating The Big Fish which reached the Top100 books in the Amazon charts inspiring a whole generation of challenger brands in the process. Adam is a popular speaker and consults with brands all over the world on how to be a challenger. He has also written The Pirate Inside about building a challenger culture within your organisation and A Beautiful Constraint how to turn your limitations into advantages.

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
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Contact me:

Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
Email – jon@uncensoredcmo.com

Adam Morgan:

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

Eating the Big Fish: How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders

A Beautiful Constraint: How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It's Everyone's Business

The Pirate Inside: Building a Challenger Brand Culture Within Yourself and Your Organization

Richard is author of the No.1 Marketing Book The Choice Factory which was the winner of BBH’s World Cup of Advertising books in 2018 beating some industry heavy-weights. Richard has 20 years of experience in Advertising planning, market research and behavioural science and last year made the big leap to set up a consultancy following the success of his book.

In this episode

How he ended up writing the best-selling marketing book of 2019
Why behavioural science should matter to every marketer
Why rhyming phrases are not just more memorably but also more believable too
How the decline in CMO & agency tenure is impacting on long term effectiveness
How our own experience impacts on our perceptions (the false consensus effect)
The impact of social proof on sales and how to use it
Why you’ll spend less on a night out when paying cash
How making something easy is a huge competitive advantage
Why branded glasses make beer taste better and worth more
Why a 4.5 review beats a 5 review (the pratfall effect)
How many of the best ideas happened by accident but were

Follow me:

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LinkedIn

Get in touch:
Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com

Email | jon@uncensoredcmo.com

Follow Richard:

Twitter | @rshotton

The Choice Factory

The Choice Factory: 25 behavioural biases that influence what we buy

When I say CMO what do you think of? I know, for me, I think boardroom politics. I think carefully managed messages. I think slick presentations. But what I don't get is, I don't get an honest answer. I don't get to know what they really think. I don't get to know how have they got where they are today, and what has shaped and influenced their career. And that got me thinking, wouldn't it be great if we had a podcast that asked some of the tough questions that get to the heart of what's going on. One that takes you behind the scenes to see how it really works. That's where the idea of Uncensored CMO came from.

I want to connect you to the best marketers on the planet. The people that have founded and run ad agencies, the people that do the most amazing research and the people that influence people through PR. I want to get to those people and find out how it actually works. Tell me the things that have gone well. Tell me the things that have failed.

Let me give you a little flavour to season one. I'm gonna be meeting people like Adam Morgan who founded the whole idea of challenger brands. I asked him, "How do you make a great challenger brand?"

The whole world of influencers, to me, was quite mysterious, but I went and met Arron Shepherd, he co-founded The Goat Agency, and I asked him about what a successful influencer campaign looks like.

Or, someone like Ian Millner, global CEO and founder of Iris. What's it like running a big ad agency? How do you get great work and how do you measure great advertising? What does a modern brand today have to do to stand out and be successful?

These are just some of the conversations I've been having, and there are loads more to come.

So I really hope you'll listen and subscribe to The Uncensored CMO. I'm gonna be launching this podcast on 16th December so set a notification, remind yourself to subscribe.

You can also follow me on Twitter, @UncensoredCMO. I look forward to having a great conversation with you.