Embracing Marketing Mistakes

We revisit Andy Lambert back in episode 93 to unpack the influencer marketing moment that changed how he thinks about influence in B2B. Andy explains how his team approached creators like a media buy, treating the partnership as a quick transaction and expecting one post to shift perception and drive signups.

He shares the campaign that made the lesson unavoidable. They spent £30,000 on a Facebook Live with a North American influencer, stayed late to watch the registrations roll in, and saw almost nothing. The mistake was not the talent. It was confusing awareness with intent, and expecting demand capture from activity that was really demand creation.

Andy then breaks down what he changed next. He focused on niche operators like agency owners, insisted partners genuinely use the product, and invested in relationships that build trust over time. If you are planning influencer spend in B2B, this episode will sharpen how you judge impact and choose the right value exchange.

Click here for the full episode 93.

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A VP of Marketing running two brands at once shares what's working in AI search visibility right now, and admits to one of the messiest direct mail campaigns a B2B marketer has confessed to on this show. 

Val Riley, VP of Marketing and Strategy at Unbounce and Insightly CRM, joins Embracing Marketing Mistakes to explain why she pays a dedicated contractor to represent her brand on Reddit, how a 2.5-billion-conversion research report drives both PR pickup and AI citations, and why removing one line from a signup form quadrupled trial signups overnight.

Then Val takes us back to the "growth at all costs" era of SaaS marketing, when her team shipped root beer float kits that leaked in the office lobby, a money tree that dumped potting soil across a prospect's desk, and agency logos printed on glass that arrived in pieces. Despite the chaos, the company sold for many millions of dollars, and Val explains what she'd keep from that era of marketing and what she wouldn't touch again.

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Kevin Chesters reveals the painful truth behind what he calls the worst advert ever made in British history. This is a forensic breakdown of ego, bad process and the lessons every marketer needs to hear.

Back in episode 102 of Embracing Marketing Mistakes, Kevin walks us through the infamous Big Cheese Dipper campaign. From ignoring clear strategic signals to forcing a flawed creative idea onto TV, this is a masterclass in how good teams end up making terrible work.

If you’ve ever wondered how to stop bad advertising before it happens, this conversation is essential listening.

Listen to the full episode 102 here.

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Influencer spend hit $32.55 billion in 2025, and most brands still can't prove it works. In this Prohibition PR webinar, Chris Norton and Will Ockenden break down why influencer marketing keeps losing boardroom arguments, the mistake that turned a Brit Awards influencer activation into a creator revolt, and the six-part framework that turns influencer spend into a revenue channel instead of an awareness line item.

Chris covers the boardroom case for influencer marketing, the Mastercard Brit Awards story, and how HelloFresh beat its own paid acquisition costs on TikTok using creators like Mindy Kaling. Will then walks through a practical framework: choosing influencers for persuasion rather than reach, building long-term partnerships (including Burgess pet food's ongoing deal with Ronnie the Mini Lop), mapping creators to the full buyer journey, feeding top-performing organic content into paid media, using influencers to win AI and social search discovery, and measuring outcomes instead of vanity metrics.

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Back in episode 99 with Sarah Waddington, we dive into the story of a well-intentioned tweet about a Biff and Chip book image, posted during the height of the Me-Too era. What was meant to be a harmless comment, shared in the midst of the chaos of parenting, quickly spiraled into misreporting by UK tabloids, global backlash, online abuse, and even death threats. As her career and personal life were thrust into the public eye, the turning point came when credible voices stepped in to offer support.

Through it all, the lesson emerged: consistency, values, and resilience matter far more than any momentary outrage. We explore how professionals who have experienced public shame are uniquely positioned to guide others through similar challenges, reminding us that clarity of purpose and standing by your principles can help weather the storm.

Tune in for an insightful conversation about the power of maintaining your values in a world quick to judge, and the strength that comes from embracing the lessons learned in adversity.

Click here to listen to the full episode 99.

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A professor who built his entire career on communication measurement almost couldn't answer the question that started it all. Professor Jim Macnamara joins Embracing Marketing Mistakes to explain why so much of PR and marketing still confuses outputs with outcomes, and what changed after a client rejected his activity report and demanded results instead.

Jim walks through the framework behind AMEC and the Barcelona Principles, a real Volkswagen case study that shifted marketing budget from 5% to 15%, his global evaluation work for the World Health Organization during COVID-19 (including a video series that hit 400 million views), and his skeptical read on whether AI and large language models are handing PR a golden age or a new set of unproven metrics to hide behind.

Listen to the full conversation now and learn what measurement stands out in the marketing world.

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If you have ever watched a brilliant marketing strategy die in a sign‑off meeting, this episode is for you. We unpack the real reasons ideas fail in the boardroom and what senior marketers can do to read the room, create emotional buy in and keep stakeholders focused on what matters. 

Faris Aranki, founder of Shear Ghetto Consulting and former top‑tier strategy advisor, explains his IQ x EQ x FQ model for success back in episode 96. IQ is the quality of your idea, EQ is your emotional intelligence and stakeholder awareness, and FQ is your focus quotient, the ability to prioritise and resist shiny‑object distractions. Miss any one pillar and your strategy stays on the hard drive.

Click here to listen to the full episode.

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Most B2B brands are interchangeable, and Talia Wolf built a career proving it.

In this episode, Talia Wolf, founder of GetUplift and creator of the emotional targeting framework, explains why most products test identical on every measurable feature, and the two emotional clusters, self-image and social image, that drive buying decisions. She tells the story of the book cover mistake she caught before print, when beta readers including Rand Fishkin and Wil Reynolds told her the professional, generic design was missing her own voice, and how the comic-book redesign became a number one Amazon bestseller in its category. She also explains why she won't let AI write client copy or synthesize research, and why conversion optimization now has to happen everywhere a buyer forms an opinion, not only on a company's own website.

You will learn the real reason people buy from you, why hypothesis-free A-B testing wastes budget, and why authenticity beats polish once your market looks the same.

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A CIPR fellow with nearly six decades in PR says the industry still protects itself from its own scandals.

In this episode, Robert Minton-Taylor, a CIPR fellow recognised at the institute's 70th anniversary and a 24-year PR lecturer at Leeds Beckett University, argues that no PR professional has ever been sanctioned for their industry's complicity in Grenfell, the Post Office Horizon scandal, the infected blood scandal, or the NHS maternity scandal. He tells the story of the former intern who says he failed her over the Hillsborough police statements, then shares four named mistakes from his own agency career: a grunge band that cleared a client event with a power drill, a hotel bar that served the wrong soft drink to a client, a spelling mistake that nearly cost him his job at one of the world's biggest PR agencies, and a pitch document typo he still gets asked about.

You will learn why the PR industry still has an accountability problem, and the specific checks he says every account handler needs before anything goes out the door.

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A toxic hire nearly cost him his agency. Then he made a similar mistake again, this time trying to build his own AI instead of renting one.

In this episode, Roger Hurni, founder and Chief Brand Strategist of Off Madison Ave, whose client roster includes Nike, Wells Fargo, PetSmart, and P.F. Chang's, breaks down the culture-first hiring lesson he learned the hard way, why his team abandoned an in-house AI build for an off-the-shelf tool, and the AI philosophy he wrote for his own staff: expand your options, never let AI replace your judgment. Trained in behavior design under Stanford's BJ Fogg and the author of Outthink, Outperform, he also explains why he believes 90% of LinkedIn is now AI-generated content, and the test he runs on every new hire to separate real thinkers from people who copy and paste AI output.

You will learn why culture fit can matter more than raw talent, when renting beats building with a new technology, and how to use AI without letting it think for you.

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 Your competitors are being named by AI. Are you? One of our clients went from being named in 4 of 50 buyer prompts to 19 in 90 days. Book your free AI visibility check with Chris here. 👉 [Book free AI Visibility Check] 👈 

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