Marketing Masters - The Art and Science of Modern Marketing with Host Zania Guy

$10k a month, and every dollar had to 5x. Hnry's Head of Marketing on brand vs performance, and how the Grim Reaper ad won on data.

Brandon Palmer joined Hnry in 2019 as the first marketing hire, in a business that hadn't yet decided marketing was a growth lever. Today he runs the same product across three markets at three stages of maturity: New Zealand (brand-led), Australia (a blend) and the UK (performance from day one).

Six years ago he thought brand marketing was "a lot of voodoo and witch doctoring." This episode is how he changed his mind.

In this episode:

• The simple dashboard that proved marketing's value inside the first few months
• Where your first $10k should go, and when to move to the next channel
• Why volume testing beats "taste making", and why agencies keep telling him to move on from the Grim Reaper
• The four-part customer story formula that keeps working for years
• What happened when Hnry turned performance spend off in New Zealand
• Holdout tests, and what a city split across two US states teaches you
• Why influencer reach is "worthless" to Hnry, and where the value sits instead
• How Hnry uses Claude and a documentation-first approach to AI
• AEO and GEO: why faking Reddit sentiment is a short game

Plus why ad critics "have no idea really what they're talking about", and why the UK loves a Kiwi Grim Reaper.

If you love marketing as much as I do, follow the show and share it with someone who does too.

CHAPTERS
0:00 $10k a month that had to 5x
1:08 How the Grim Reaper became Hnry's spokesperson
4:22 Being the first marketing hire at a startup
7:45 The dashboard that proved marketing drives revenue
10:46 Google vs Meta: splitting a startup ad budget
13:19 When performance channels hit the wall
16:37 Creative testing: data vs taste
18:35 How to test lots of creative on Meta
19:54 The customer testimonial formula that works
21:06 Why Hnry keeps ads and creative in-house
22:47 Launching in Australia and the UK
27:33 Brand vs performance: measuring incrementality
29:40 Holdout tests explained
32:50 Why every new market needs its own testing
34:12 The UK Making Tax Digital opportunity
35:38 Taking a Kiwi Grim Reaper to the UK
36:18 Why agencies want the Grim Reaper gone
39:06 The brand and performance mix across three markets
40:22 How to measure brand marketing success
41:16 Organic social as a trust signal
42:47 Influencer marketing: usage rights vs reach
45:10 How Hnry uses AI and Claude in marketing
48:38 What a startup marketing dashboard should track
50:38 Documentation is what makes AI work
53:12 AEO, GEO and gaming AI search
56:34 Authentic content vs AI slop
57:47 Brandon's advice: pace and reporting

#MarketingPodcast #BrandMarketing #PerformanceMarketing #Hnry

Ben Rose was employee number one. No team, no office, no product, just a brief to build Binance in New Zealand from nothing. He went to the regulators before he went to market and hired compliance before he hired marketing, and the team he built took it to 350,000 customers. Then Dubai rang and asked him to run Australia as well. He left just over two years later as CEO for both markets.

There is a pattern here. At 18 he had one summer to become conversational in Portuguese or lose his place at Oxford, so he moved to Porto and took a job as a porter in a meat market where nobody spoke a word of English. Years later, as a head of brand who had only ever done marketing, he was asked to help turn around a 180 person operations division. His words: I didn't even know what an underwriter was.

He is now Head of Financial Services at AA New Zealand, a 123 year old business where one in three New Zealanders is a member. He is board chair at Ronald McDonald House. And he is learning AI by building. Eleven web apps, evenings and weekends.

He runs at the hard stuff, and then he is methodical about it. That is the whole episode.

In this episode:

• The go to market plan that took Binance NZ from zero, and which channel actually drove conversion
• The three things every person, team and organisation needs: clarity, capability, motivation
• Why he thinks everyone in a company is really in marketing
• The advice from Jonathan Mildenhall, former CMO of Coca-Cola and Airbnb, that Ben has never forgotten
• The CEO conversation that made him see himself as a leader, not just a marketer
• Why KPIs drift apart between product, sales and marketing, and how well run businesses stop it
• What AI is doing to the graduate pipeline
• Why being based in New Zealand is not the barrier founders think it is
• His recommendation for anyone in marketing: swap Netflix for Claude

Chapters

00:00 From a standing start to 350,000 customers
02:01 Six weeks in a Porto meat market to save an Oxford place
04:49 How to actually influence stakeholders
06:38 Learning to speak finance, product and compliance
08:31 Soho, TBWA and the tail end of the golden age
09:59 Following the money and regretting it in two weeks
12:59 Never pretend to be anything other than who you are
15:56 How to spot a values mismatch before it costs you
17:50 The CEO who said you are not a marketer, you are a leader
19:43 Turning around a 180 person operations division
22:43 Clarity, capability, motivation
24:52 What actually motivates people, one by one
30:56 Building Binance New Zealand from scratch
34:50 The plan: PR, events, grassroots, life cycle
38:36 Why everyone in the business is in marketing
39:56 What most leaders get wrong about their people
41:42 Why departmental KPIs diverge
43:51 AA New Zealand: 123 years old, and the plan to grow financial services
45:42 Momentum versus agility inside a legacy brand
48:29 AI, the single customer view, and the next hundred years
51:05 Why he thinks New Zealand businesses do not aim high enough
53:51 AI and the disappearing graduate job
56:34 Swapping Netflix for Claude, and 11 web apps later
1:03:18 Ronald McDonald House and why it matters
1:08:24 Gamify your career: Ben's final advice

Marketing Masters is hosted by Zania Guy, digital marketing and social media consultant. New episode on the first Tuesday of every month.

zaniaguy.com

Ben's AI projects: roseventurelabs.com and archieflux.com

Marketing has lost its seat at the table, and Michael Durie says it's our own fault. After over four decades in marketing, he unpacks what founders, CMOs and small businesses keep getting wrong about brand, budgets and AI.

Some call Michael the godfather of marketing in the South Island. We get into why social media is killing cut-through, why direct mail is making a comeback in 2026, how much a small business should actually spend on marketing, the leaky bucket of customer attrition, and the campaign that took Mazda from 3% to 5% market share.

Full of things you can act on by Monday morning. Follow Marketing Masters so you never miss an episode.

Chapters
00:00 Direct marketing's comeback, Jaguar, and the top table
01:24 Meet Michael Durie, the godfather of marketing
03:56 The biggest misconception founders have about marketing
07:42 "Build it and they'll come" and the fail-fast trap
10:16 NZ success stories: Halter, Seequent, Hamilton Jet
13:20 Unpopular opinion: the marketing plan vs marketing planning
15:06 When to ignore your customers (the Steve Jobs rule)
18:02 The Jaguar rebrand: brave or brand suicide?
20:42 Why piling into social media kills your cut-through
24:03 The channel mix: out-of-home, print, radio and podcasts
27:12 Why direct mail and guerrilla marketing are back
30:28 Three questions to ask when a product won't sell
33:08 The leaky bucket: customer attrition explained
37:46 Why a phone call beats an NPS survey
41:46 The campaign that took Mazda from 3% to 5% market share
46:27 How much should a small business spend on marketing?
52:21 Breaking into marketing in the age of AI
57:36 How a David Ogilvy book changed his career
1:00:48 Is marketing treated as the "colouring-in department"?
1:03:50 Stop chasing vanity metrics, obsess over the bottom line
1:06:58 Five decades in, why curiosity still wins
1:09:09 The "secret sauce": Stickman, Specsavers, Whittaker's
1:13:30 Big ideas on small budgets (Australia Post x Sydney Swans)
1:16:22 The one thing to do on Monday morning

$3.5 million in her first 12 months of business at 21. Multiple brands built and sold across shapewear, supplements, haircare, gifting, fashion and now FMCG. Three seasons of Boss Babes. Four thousand founders coached through Make It Happen.

Iyia Liu has done it.

And she's still building.

Her newest brand, Brewe Iced Coffee and Matcha, is rolling into Woolworths supermarkets in June, five months after launch. Buyers told her that doesn't happen. It's happening.

What makes this conversation different is the timing. Iyia is launching a brand right now, in 2026, with every lesson from a decade of brand-building plus a stack of tools that didn't exist when she launched her first business. Claude in the workflow. Meta's new algorithm rewriting paid social. The mass micro-influencer affiliate model. FMCG as a whole new game. And it's working.

So we asked her to walk through the entire playbook. Not the highlight reel. The actual mechanics.

What you'll hear in this episode:

The principle behind every brand she's built ("people will literally just buy what other people buy")

Why she'd run zero paid ads on day one of a new business in 2026

How she's using Claude to set up Meta ad campaigns end to end without touching a button

The six-angle creative framework she uses to generate 85 ads for one campaign

The mass micro-influencer affiliate model behind one Shopify brand doing $500 million in three years

The outreach volume game most founders are losing (message 100, not 5)

Why $1 on email returns $36, and the founders still ignoring it

How community got Brewe into Woolworths five months after launch

The exact pricing formula she uses across every brand

Why this is the slowest business she's ever grown, and what she's learning from it

If you're building a brand, scaling a brand, or thinking about starting one, this is the most practical hour of marketing you'll listen to this year.

🎧 Chapters

00:00 The one principle behind every brand Iyia has built03:30 Why she'd run zero paid ads on day one of a new brand05:00 Mass micro-influencers and why founders are messaging too few people07:00 Macros, micros, nanos: when each one actually earns its fee08:30 Using Claude to build a full Meta ad campaign without touching a button10:00 Meta's algorithm change and what it means for creative11:00 The 50 to 100 creatives rule (Iyia is running 85)12:00 The six-angle framework with the playground client example14:30 The tools and tabs Iyia opens every morning17:00 How she decides what to test and what to bin18:00 The Comfrt case study: $500M in three years on mass micro-affiliates20:00 Two posts a day, every day, and who actually runs it21:00 How community got Brewe into Woolworths in five months23:00 Why FMCG broke every e-commerce assumption Iyia had28:00 The collab strategy: influencer marketing without the influencers30:00 The DM outreach volume game (message 50 to 100, not 5)32:00 The highest-paid influencer she's ever worked with33:00 Affiliate marketing in New Zealand and what to call it instead35:00 Sampling, manufacturing and vetting suppliers36:30 The retention mistake Iyia made across multiple brands37:30 Why $1 on email returns $3639:00 The three-channel mix Iyia gives every client in 202641:00 Pricing: buy at $20, mark up to $80, bundle the rest44:00 The why: from a dingy flat to a green oasis and two kids46:00 The juggle, hiring family, and what comes next

Hosted by Zania Guy

Marketing Masters is the podcast about the marketers building the brands we actually buy from.

zaniaguy.com

What does it take to push a 65-year-old brand in a bold new direction and actually get it over the line?

Frith Wilson-Hughes is the Content Marketing Manager at Southern Cross Health Society and part of the team behind the Feel Good Project, a campaign that ditched the tired health insurance playbook and put real members centre stage in a way that's joyful, unexpected, and moving.

Search "Southern Cross Feel Good Project" on YouTube to watch the ad - it's worth it.

Before Southern Cross, Frith spent eight years at Spark NZ in social, content and brand where she learned that the best creative work comes from being honest with your agency partners, not polished presentations and safe briefs.

In this episode we get into what brave brand work actually looks like from the inside, how to build trust at every touchpoint, and why the 60/40 brand vs performance rule matters more when your customer's buy journey takes months, not minutes.

We also cover the creator economy in New Zealand, why social has shifted from a two-way channel to a passive one, how Frith is using AI to keep her brand's tone of voice consistent, and the one piece of advice she'd give any marketer who wants to build a brand that actually lasts.

If you work in marketing, content, or brand strategy, this one's for you.

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating or comment and hit follow so you never miss a new episode. New conversations drop regularly.

Marketing Masters is the podcast that explores the art and science of modern marketing, unpacking lessons from the people shaping the industry.

Who wins, who loses, and how to stay relevant as AI reshapes marketing, creativity and business.

This episode is not about whether AI matters. It’s about what happens if you don’t adapt now.

In this episode of Marketing Masters – The Art and Science of Modern Marketing, Zania brings together three leading minds who are already operating at the cutting edge of AI, while much of the industry is still trying to catch up.

This is a practical, honest conversation about AI in marketing, AI in business, and the future of work, looking ahead to what 2026 really means for careers, teams, creativity, and growth.

Meet the guests shaping what comes next:

Dr Shahper Richter, Senior Lecturer at the University of Auckland Business School, researches how emerging technologies reshape human behaviour, workplaces, and the future of marketing itself. She is helping prepare the next generation of marketers for success in a workforce that no longer follows traditional career paths.

Adnan Khan, Co-Founder of Stitch and Stitch Predict, is transforming how brands in New Zealand and globally understand what actually drives growth. His work focuses on AI-powered marketing intelligence, agentic workflows, and measuring performance in a privacy-first world, collapsing weeks of insight into days.

Heath Waugh, Founder of Matter Studio, has made one of the boldest business pivots in the creative industry. He has stepped away from traditional photography to build one of the world’s first creative studios merging high-end visual craft with advanced AI image creation.

This is not theory. These are real decisions, real pivots, and real consequences.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

- What AI in Marketing 2026 actually means for marketers, creatives and business leaders

- Why AI will not replace marketers, but AI-fluent marketers will replace those who do not adapt

- The difference between generative AI and agentic AI, explained clearly and practically

- How AI is changing marketing performance, creativity, and decision-making

- Why “AI-powered” is about to become meaningless as a differentiator

- How to avoid low-quality AI output and protect human judgement, taste and trust

- What to start doing now to stay relevant as the gap between winners and laggards widensIf you are a marketer, founder, creative, or business leader feeling the ground shift beneath your role, this conversation will give you clarity, context, and a practical way forward.

Ryan Stokes has a gift for turning the ordinary into the unforgettable. You might remember him as the face of Skinny, or for the wild Trade Me stunt where he sold a “Covid-free bag of air” that became one of the ten most-viewed auctions of all time. Or maybe you watched him on The Kelly Clarkson Show, after teaching his family to play music together during lockdown.Now Ryan’s behind the scenes as Social Content Creator and Community Manager for ASB, helping the bank tell stories that connect to customers in fresh, authentic and unexpected ways. Organic views are soaring, the requests to be featured on their social channels are on the rise and the content is proving a bank really can be fun to follow.At the Marketing Association's OnSocial conference, I sat down with Ryan to talk about the shift from being in front of the camera to building the stories behind it, why he still loves creating, and how he keeps content entertaining, relatable, and share-worthy.Ryan has earned a reputation as one of the most creative content makers in the country. If he can make finance engaging, just imagine what ideas you’ll walk away with after listening to this episode of Marketing Masters.

Welcome to Marketing Masters - The Art and Science of Modern Marketing. In this episode we cover a very hot topic! The way people search is evolving. Google still dominates in volume - billions of daily searches - but it’s no longer the only game in town. AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude are quickly becoming alternative starting points for search.This shift isn’t about replacing Google, it’s about expanding how and where people discover brands and your business/brand being everywhere where potential customers are. From TikTok and Instagram to Amazon and AI chatbots, we’re entering the era of 'Everywhere Optimisation'.

So, how do businesses ensure they’re visible across all these channels? To help us unpack it all, today’s guest is Richard Conway - founder and Managing Director of Pure SEO, one of New Zealand’s top digital agencies and a 2024 Google Premier Partner. For over 15 years, Richard has helped Kiwi businesses master online visibility. He’s also a columnist, speaker, investor, and mentor.

What happens when a former journalist discovers the power of Google Ads? For Andrew Hughes, it sparked a 15-year career in digital marketing that took him from small-scale campaigns to leading global SEM at Xero. Along the way, he even won one of Google’s most prestigious global awards.

In this episode of Marketing Masters, Zania unpacks the thinking, strategy, and financial modelling behind Andrew’s high-performance marketing approach. From budget planning to full-funnel frameworks, and from AI automation to boardroom credibility, this episode is a practical guide to mastering SEM at scale.

What you'll learn:

• How a $10-a-day campaign kickstarted Andrew’s curiosity in paid media
• Why smart marketers “earn the right to spend” by starting with unit economics
• How Xero structures SEM inside a global SaaS business
• Full-funnel marketing strategies that link brand, performance, and acquisition
• How automation, AI, and Performance Max are reshaping paid search
• How to build trust with finance and executive teams using clear outcomes and a sharp strategy

If you’re working in paid search, performance marketing, or responsible for digital growth, this conversation is essential listening.

#MarketingMasters #DigitalMarketing #SEM #PerformanceMarketing #AndrewHughes #XeroMarketing #GoogleAds #FullFunnelMarketing #Marketing #MarketingLeadership

In this episode of Marketing Masters - The Art and Science of Modern Marketing, we sit down with Kelsi Boocock, aka Healthy Kelsi, to talk content, community, and NZ's first-ever plant-based canned protein shake!

What started as a lockdown side hustle sharing recipes on social has grown into a powerhouse wellness brand. Today, Kelsi has a following of over 500,000, her own supplement line (Second Nature Supplements), and Schnack – New Zealand’s first plant-based protein drink in a can.

We unpack:

• The content habits that built her brand

• How audience feedback led to new products

• Balancing creativity with business logistics

• The magic of showing up authentically (and how her dad became a brand character)

  
  

If you’ve ever wondered how creators become founders, this episode is packed with insights and inspiration.

🎧 Listen now and follow Marketing Masters for more conversations with the minds shaping modern marketing.

#MarketingMasters #HealthyKelsi #Schnack #SecondNature #ContentToCommerce #NZBusiness #KiwiFounders #SocialMediaMarketing