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