W. Chan Kim, author of Blue Ocean Strategy, said "The hardest battle is simply to make people aware of the need for a strategic shift"

I somehow feel that he was thinking of marketers with this phrase. We are changing the minds of our buyer so they'll choose our brand. To do that we are often changing our companies to produce the value our buyers expect. And changing the status quo in some companies means overcoming a lot of lethargy. This takes someone who's courageous, as today's author argues, it takes a renegade.

Drew Neisser is the founder of the marketing agency Renegade and Is the host of the podcast Renegade Thinkers Unite. Drew has been featured on network TV, many podcasts and writes a regular column for Ad Age. He talked to me from his Manhattan office about his 2nd book, Renegade Marketing: 12 Steps to Building Unbeatable B2B Brands which came out in 2021.

Key takeaways for unleashing your own inner Renegade

• Have the traits of cool marketing CATS: Courageous, Artful, Thoughtful, Scientific
• Reverse your targeting – start with employees, then customers, then prospects
• If your content isn't of legitimate value to your customers, then don't release it
• Work with your CFO to radically simplify your metrics (8 KPIs or less).
• Don't overspend on martech, watch how much headcount it takes to manage the automation technology you take on
• Leave 10-20% of your budget for experiments
• Get your value proposition down to 8 words or less.
• Sell through service:think of what your customers would consider valuable; give it without regard to charging them for it.

Links to all People/Products/Concepts mentioned in the show are on Episode 82's showpage on the Funnel Reboot site.