Marketing Room 101

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined by ⁠Phil Cookson⁠, co-founder of ⁠School of Thought ⁠- an intensive, competitive 12-week course that develops young creative talent in the north, with programmes each year in both Leeds and Manchester - and Director of ⁠Creative Resource,⁠ which has been recruiting for the marketing, digital, and creative sectors for over 35 years.

In this episode, Phil and Ben discuss:

● Creepy retargeting and whether brands are going too far to try and prevent waste.

● How AI is affecting the job market and whether original thinking could be the way to survive

● Why Phil gives up 26 weeks of his year to develop young creative talent

● The gender gap in creative leadership, and how School of Thought is booking the trend in producing female Creative Directors

● How to win School of Thought and some of the most memorable moments, from the Honey Monster to Pamela Anderson

● Why insurance sector marketers have turned their back on retention, and if the industry needs disrupting (like Monzo did to banking)

● Plus the power of direct mail, a special birthday card, great dogs walks, and cassoulet with Malbec.

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In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined by author (⁠How to Buy a Gorilla⁠, ⁠Tuning Up⁠), consultant, and trainer, ⁠David Meikle⁠, who specialises in improving client-agency relationships, and performance in marketing teams.

Across his 30 years in the marketing and advertising industries David has held top roles at Grey and Ogilvy & Mather, as well as heading up Ogilvy Russia for a four year period which saw revenue increase five fold.

Today David’s consultancy, ⁠The HTBAG Co (The How To Buy a Gorilla company)⁠, specialises in helping create better client and agency relationships and brings a unique model and strategic approach to pitch management.

In this episode, David and ben discuss:

• Why the modern, open plan workplace is the worst environment for creating great work.
• Whether fair value exchange is possible between brands and agencies.
• Why it has become unacceptable for agencies to make money, how to negotiate better, and why it’s in a brand's interest for their agency to make money
• Navigating the triangle of doom between marketing, procurement, and agency
• How Rory Sutherland helped coin ‘The Meikle Matrix’, and the secret to high performance and flow state

• How to tackle stress in marketing teams and agencies, without reducing output
• Why agency market oversaturation is a myth
• The workflows that are most at risk from AI and how to stay in business
• Why business shouldn’t be democratic, and why we shouldn’t try to please everyone
• Why there’s no place for best practice in marketing
• The problem with bad intermediaries
• Plus, why the marketing world needs bigger bollocks and why David wants a pet Wookiee

⁠⁠Connect with host Ben Norman⁠⁠ or subscribe to avoid missing new episodes of Marketing Room 101

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined by brand strategy consultant and author, Ulli Appelbaum.

Having worked in the world of brand and advertising for over 30 years, in countries as far and wide as Cameroon, Hungary and the U.S.A, and in agencies as creatively renowned as Fallon, BBDO and Leo Burnett, Ulli has gained a uniquely deep and varied understanding of how brands actually grow.

Today Ulli runs brand consultancy First the Trousers, and has, in recent years, written two of the most practical, science-backed, and evidence-based marketing books ever written – The Brand Positioning Workbook and The Science of Brand Association.

In this conversation, Ulli and Ben cover:

Creating a practical toolkit for brand positioning from 30 years in the industry

The science behind brand associations and the five sources of meaning for brands:

Social (and why we buy Rolex despite Casio telling the same time)

Cultural (and its overhype and overuse)

Functional (Why Duracell and WD40 work)

Emotional (and the power of nostalgia)

Symbolic (the one I forgot to ask about)

Why 95% of marketing books fail to meet scientific rigour and scrutiny

Why we should start with science, not why.

Ulli’s specific case to banish vagueness, and vague terms like ‘purpose’, ‘authentic’, ‘culture’ and ‘storytelling’.

The power of opposites: why flipping your strategy can sense check its strength

Why marketing has become more transactional and the need to bring simple creative problem solving back

The deflation of quality in marketing through a lack of proper training

Why smaller brands can’t win by copying the big brand playbooks

Plus Tuffi the elephant, finding a loop hole for Amstel beer and the decline of religion in the western world.

Connect with host Ben Norman or subscribe to avoid missing new episodes of Marketing Room 101

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined by ⁠Pete Markey⁠, Chief Communications & Marketing Officer at Nottingham University, a marketer with a track record for leading many of the UK’s best known brands including Boots, TSB, Post Office, Aviva and British Gas.

On top of the day job, Pete is a fellow of the Marketing Society and the Chartered Institute of Marketing, as well as a former ISBA President.

In this conversation, Pete and Ben cover:

Bad Russian pasties and why Wetherspoons should do corporate catering

Why a call centre job and radio DJing was foundational to Pete’s career

How Pete ended up drinking tea with Morgan freeman and why ⁠this campaign⁠ worked so well

The power and shared value in brand x celebrity partnerships in advertising

How a Post Office campaign was crushed by compromise and why it’s important to make choices

Pete’s secrets of longevity in leadership

The joy of rolling-up his sleeves and working with start-ups and smaller businesses like Fusion Unlimited

Why AI overhype is a threat to brilliant people and ideas (not necessarily AI itself)

Pete’s love of brand, the power of (the right kind of) purpose, and why it needs to extend beyond the marketing team

Plus, why Star Wars’ Galactic Empire could use Steps or S-Club 7 to win back the public.

⁠Connect with host Ben Norman⁠ or subscribe to avoid missing new episodes of Marketing Room 101

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined by Kate Waters, Director of Client Strategy & Planning at ITV and a leading voice on the effectiveness of TV advertising.

Kate has spent over 20 years at ITV and works with many of the UK’s biggest advertisers, helping them understand how to get the most out of TV in an increasingly complex media landscape.

She is widely recognised for her work championing the power of TV effectiveness, her contributions to industry thinking on attention, emotion, and profit, and for helping brands translate evidence from bodies like the IPA into practical marketing decisions.

Despite being one of the busiest people in advertising, Kate is also involved with both ⁠WACL⁠ and ⁠Purpose Disruptors⁠.

In this conversation, Kate and Ben cover:

• Why it’s difficult to leave a job when you’re a co-founder
• How a single day with ⁠Fiona Parashar⁠ changed Kate’s career
• The relationship between creative and media, and why ITV is a wonderful playgroundfor a strategist
• Why TV is both the same and completely different today as it was 20 years ago
• How Tesco doesn’t let its size stop it from being a great advertiser
• How McDonald’s hits the nail on the head every single time
• How Google and ITV’s partnership shows the benefit of brand values coming together
• Why TV is as good at activation as it is at brand building, and why we need to think about marketing performance… not performance marketing
• 5.5 reasons why smaller brands shouldn’t rule TV out
• Why ROI should be banished, and how it pushes brands towards efficiency over effectiveness
• Why John Bartle’s “imaginative repetition” is the greatest definition of great advertising
• Plus, how Kate almost killed the Milky Bar Kid, and why we need to bring back Morrison’s singing oven gloves.

⁠Connect with host Ben Norman⁠ or subscribe to avoid missing new episodes of Marketing Room 101

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined by ⁠Tom Roach⁠, VP of Brand Strategy at ⁠Jellyfish⁠ and one of the biggest names in creative effectiveness.

In his 25 years in the industry, Tom has held top positions in leading agencies like BBH, adam&eveDDB and Leo Burnett, leading strategy for brands including the BBC, McDonald’s, Sainsbury’s, Lloyds Bank, KFC and Weetabix, whilst picking up Gold and Silver IPA Effectiveness Awards along the way.

In this time, Tom has become well known for his contributions to the field of creative effectiveness in advertising, and in this conversation he and Ben cover…

• How Tom got a job from a blog post
• The danger of false dichotomies in advertising, including Long vs Short (and why Gusto gets it right), Brand vs Performance (and the case for ‘and’ over ‘or’), Creative vs Non-Creative (as if it’s a choice), and AI vs Human (and how humans have always needed to use tools)
• Twin-axis creative consistency (and why you need both)
• The snake oil salespeople saying everything is dead (like SEO and TV)
• Freud’s ‘narcissism of small differences’ (the one thing Tom managed to teach Les Binet)
• How most marketing best practice is sales collateral, not science (according to Paul Feldwick)
• How social media could be amplifying division in marketing
• Brighter futures for juniors in the creative industry
• How AI is creating new roles for the next generation
• The best brothers question yet

⁠Connect with host Ben Norman⁠ or subscribe to avoid missing new episodes of Marketing Room 101

In this episode, host ⁠Ben Norman⁠ is joined by ⁠Marketing Architects⁠ Chief Marketing Officer, host of ⁠The Marketing Architects Podcast⁠, Triathlete, former Junior Olympics competitor, and all-round marketing effectiveness fiend, ⁠Elena Jasper⁠.

Elena is best known for championing TV’s role in the modern media mix, whilst challenging outdated and inaccurate thinking that overlooks the potential power of TV for brands today.

Elena and Ben discuss advertising’s obsession with short term results, why TV can do both the long and the short, and why we need to stop putting channels in boxes.

Elena then busts some common marketing myths before deciding to banish the Performance vs Brand debate, whilst explaining why B2B and B2C aren’t really that different after all, why Brand might have a brand problem, and why we shouldn’t be so afraid of AI.

Before leaving, Elena makes the case to bring back the belief in reach and having a little more fun, then Ben remembers some bad boots on a Swiss mountain, and Elena recalls a big Olympic moment.

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined by Steve Harrison, the 18x Cannes Lions-winning copywriter, creative director, and author, described by Campaign as ‘the greatest direct marketing creative of his generation’.

In recent years, Steve has become known for more than just his award-winning creative work. He has also challenged the creative industry’s abandonment of its commercial responsibility to clients, arguing that “the industry has drifted from commercial selling to social activism, at the expense of economic relevance.”

Ben and Steve discuss his latest book, ⁠Adland’s Progressive Gaze: How UK Advertising Lost Sight of the People and Things That Matter Most⁠, and how the demise of purpose has led to the rise of the Progressive Gaze.

Steve then makes the case for banishing the politicisation of the advertising industry and explains why the obsession with diversity and inclusion might be making the industry less diverse and inclusive, as well as why so many people are afraid to challenge the Progressive Gaze.

Ben and Steve also discuss the challenges facing the working class in marketing, why Steve still feels impostor syndrome after five decades in the industry, and what he wouldn't do with £3,000.

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined by analyst and adviser to the media, technology and creative industries, Ian Whittaker, who, having gained over 20 years’ experience in the world of finance as an Equity Research analyst (including winning CityAM’s Analyst of the Year… twice), now brings a unique perspective to business in the marketing world through his consultancy Liberty Sky Advisors, and his subscription briefing for senior leaders, The Bigger Picture.

Ben and Ian discuss the importance of marketers stepping back from spreadsheets and dashboards to see the wood for the trees, how to speak the language of the boardroom, and why we need to be more concrete in quantifying results.

In a complicated landscape, Ben doesn’t ask Ian to predict what will change for marketers throughout 2025 and beyond, but instead asks what isn’t likely to change. Spoiler alert: He believes people, and agencies, still have a place in the world of AI.

Ian explains why agencies need to refocus on their core competencies and fight on their own battlefield, instead of trying to fight the tech giants on their turf, and then chooses to banish ‘overquantification in marketing’ before returning ‘understanding a client’s business’ to the industry.

Ian also explains what the Vietnam War can teach us about misguided metrics, what we can learn from Sun Tzu about the Tech vs Creative battle, and why future war historians might look back at the present day with interest.

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined by ‘that guy thatbuilt that Tony’s brand’ - Arjen Klinkenberg (or ‘Klink’ as he is known) - who created the first Tony’s Chocolonely wrapper design in just 10 minutes and gave up his day job to join the ‘impact-first’ chocolate business as Creative Director and Brand Guru for almost 20 years, before setting up his creative brand consultancy ‘Klink’ earlier this year.

Klink and Ben discuss creativity in unexpected places, why small disruptive start-up teams need a shared idea of where they want to go, if they want to be the ‘mosquito in the room’, and why having no idea what you’re doing, can be the biggest advantage of all.

Ben asks Klink about the balance between personality and purpose, before Klink makes the case for the execution of shelf wobblers in an unexpectedly impassioned rant, and the return of novelty and nonsense in your product and communications.

Finally, Ben’s brother admits to some undeclared corporate benefits, Klink swears a lot and Ben talks about penguins.