Sleeping Barber - A Marketing Podcast

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Marc and V compare notes from two marketing conferences, The Gathering in Banff and ANA Masters in Orlando, and reach the same verdict: almost every “breakthrough” on stage was a marketing fundamental wearing a 2026 outfit.

This week:

• The Gathering (Banff). Marc reports back from Canada’s biggest brand festival, where the Effies and the effectiveness crowd shared the main stage with cult brands. YETI’s 20-year playbook, mental availability and category entry points from the keynote, and the question running through the whole episode: when a client says “community” and you’d call it market orientation, does the word even matter?
• ANA Masters (Orlando). V’s four keynotes, decoded. Harley’s “RIDE,” Gatorade turning a $17B sports-drink category into a $60–100B hydration one, Clorox’s “continuous relevance,” and LEGO killing its own “we tried that before” beliefs. Underneath all four: mental availability, distinctiveness, market orientation. New names, same job.
• Comparison is the thief of brand growth. Jenni Romaniuk (Ehrenberg-Bass) on why benchmarking against the category leader makes you measure the wrong things. Set your brand assets and ad attribution to 100%, and judge buying-moment links against your own size, not whoever’s winning.
• Measurement vs judgment. Josh Stephenson line that we’ve democratised measurement but not judgment, proven by Instagram’s 90-minute video and Microsoft’s 60,000-person voluntary exit. When everyone can measure everything, the rarest skill left is knowing what to ignore.
• Plus Ad of the Week: YETI’s “Four Letters” (Wieden+Kennedy), the 20-year playbook running underneath a 60-second spot.

Coming up: a Sharp Cut on brand archetypes and Maslow’s hierarchy, then Rica Facundo (WARC) on the Pace Principle.

Stories & sources this week:

• Comparison is the thief of brand growth, Jenni Romaniuk (Marketing Week): https://www.marketingweek.com/comparison-thief-brand-growth
• This Week in Tech, Josh Stephenson (Marketing Week): https://www.marketingweek.com/week-in-tech-instagram-microsoft-redundancies/
• Ad of the Week, YETI “Four Letters”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PZ2ylr_IP8 (write-up: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/campaign-trail-yeti-spells-out-consumer-passions-with-four-letter-words/825390/)

Enjoy the show!

Chapters
00:00  Intro, and what's in this week's Brief
02:10  Story 1: The Gathering in Banff, effectiveness hits the main stage
04:30  "Community" or market orientation, does the word matter?
06:40  Cannes callback: Ritson, Sharp, and the same idea by five names
08:47  Story 2: ANA Masters, Harley's "RIDE"
09:59  Gatorade redefines its market; Clorox's continuous relevance
11:00  LEGO kills its own beliefs; the synthesis: new names, same job
13:27  Are we seeing it, or is it really changing?
14:10  Story 3: Comparison is the thief of brand growth (Romaniuk)
15:29  Set assets and attribution to 100%; the Adobe example
17:45  Judge against your own size, not the leader
18:00  Behind the category leader: how that room really sounds
21:32  Story 4: This week in tech, measurement vs judgment
22:59  Starving the scarce resource; are we hiring for judgment?
26:58  Ad of the Week: YETI "Four Letters" and the 20-year playbook
30:30  The logo-distinctiveness risk
33:47  Video now on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube
34:00  Coming up: brand archetypes Sharp Cut, and Rica Facundo

The Sleeping Barber is a marketing podcast hosted by Marc Binkley and Vassilis Douros, breaking down strategy, marketing effectiveness, and the evidence behind what actually grows a business.

Hosts
Marc Binkley
Quatical: https://quatical.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/
Vassilis Douros
Website: https://vassilisdouros.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisdouros/

Follow The Sleeping Barber
Website: https://sleepingbarber.ca
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sleepingbarberpodcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4v0kaM350zEY7X2VBuyfrF
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sleeping-barber-a-marketing-podcast/id1609811324
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sleeping-barber/
 
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and hit follow so you never miss a drop.

Send us Fan Mail

Marc and Vassilis debrief their foresight conversation with Jo Lepore: why foresight isn’t futurism, how backcasting reshapes brand planning, and why brand, like foresight, doesn’t get a free pass.

Marc and V went into the interview as skeptics (“what is this voodoo magic?”) and came out convinced foresight is one of the most practical disciplines they’ve covered all year. In the debrief they dig into why it keeps getting typecast as insights, risk, or crisis comms, and what makes it its own thing. V keeps circling back to WestJet during COVID, an industry stuck in pure short-termism, and where a foresight function might have shortened the runway to recovery.

From there: backcasting (plant your brand ten years out and work back to what would have to be true), why a forecast nobody believes is still worth running, and the line that stuck with both of them, foresight doesn’t get a free pass. V’s reframe: neither does brand. Stop defending it on the back foot, and start arguing where the business should invest to build the future demand that drives tomorrow’s cash flows.

Plus the Monday move for 2027 planning (write down your assumptions), Roger Martin’s “what would have to be true,” and why they’re already building a foresight co-pilot.

New here? Start with the full interview, SBP 247 with Jo Lepore, then come back for the debrief.

Enjoy the show!

Chapters
00:00 Cold open: creating the future, not cutting cost
01:00 PostPod: debriefing the Jo Lepore conversation
01:30 Futurist vs foresight, and where the confusion lives
02:37 Getting typecast: insights, risk, or crisis comms
03:00 WestJet, COVID, and the runway that might’ve been shorter
04:40 “We don’t get a free pass”
05:00 Why run a 10-year forecast nothing will hold to
05:50 Backcasting: work back from ten years out
06:40 Foresight practices without a foresight team
07:00 Going agentic: building a foresight co-pilot
07:30 Pockets of foresight, Rethink, and cultural relevance
08:00 What makes a scenario realistic
08:30 The Monday move for 2027 planning
09:24 Brand doesn’t get a free pass either
10:51 Measurement, shareholders, and the revenue question
11:40 Roger Martin and “what would have to be true?”
13:30 Start small: adjacencies and existing fires
15:40 Write down your assumptions
17:00 Antifragility, black swans, and the close

The Sleeping Barber is a marketing podcast hosted by Marc Binkley and Vassilis Douros, breaking down strategy, marketing effectiveness, and the evidence behind what actually grows a business.

The Sleeping Barber is a marketing podcast hosted by Marc Binkley and Vassilis Douros, breaking down strategy, marketing effectiveness, and the evidence behind what actually grows a business.

Hosts
Marc Binkley
Quatical: https://quatical.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/
Vassilis Douros
Website: https://vassilisdouros.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisdouros/

Follow The Sleeping Barber
Website: https://sleepingbarber.ca
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sleepingbarberpodcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4v0kaM350zEY7X2VBuyfrF
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sleeping-barber-a-marketing-podcast/id1609811324
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sleeping-barber/
 
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and hit follow so you never miss a drop.

Send us Fan Mail

Marketing science says buyer behaviour barely moves. Futurists sell the opposite: change, disruption, the thing nobody saw coming. Can both be true? Marc and Vassilis brought in someone who can referee it.

Jo Lepore built the foresight function inside Mars Wrigley and then McDonald’s, co-founded a network for people doing that work at some of the world’s biggest companies, and now leads foresight at Dig Insights. She also hosts the podcast Looking Outside. Her starting point is refreshingly blunt: foresight doesn’t get a free pass on proving its value, and neither does marketing.

In this one:

→ Foresight isn’t futurism. It’s not a crystal ball or a dart at the board. It’s throwing the dart toward where you want to go, then rehearsing multiple paths to get there. As Jo puts it, rehearse for every future rather than bank one.

→ “Isn’t this just market research with a longer horizon?” No. You can’t ask a future consumer anything, they don’t exist. Insights are past-based facts; foresight is weak signals and carefully weighed assumptions.

→ Nobody gets rewarded for preventing a fire. How foresight earns buy-in by helping put out the fire that’s already spreading, with the GLP-1 work Jo’s team ran at McDonald’s six months early as the proof.

→ The pandemic test. Jo’s Mars work found the big shifts were accelerated, not caused, by COVID, and those were the ones they were already tracking.

→ The bridge to marketing. Backcasting and innovation roadmaps (the three-horizons model), plus why foresight should sit as a capability across the business, not trapped in one team.

Plus three things any marketer can do Monday morning, and a Big Mac No Meat dare that becomes a real-world experiment.

Enjoy the show!

Our Guest: Jo Lepore

Global Foresight Strategist, Dig Insights | Host, Looking Outside

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joannalepore/

Chapters

00:00 Cold open: foresight should prove its value too

01:40 Meet Jo Lepore, and “double lucky”

02:30 What foresight is, and why it isn’t futurism

04:50 Is this just market research with a longer horizon?

09:00 Vitamin vs painkiller: earning buy-in

11:50 The GLP-1 call at McDonald’s, six months early

12:58 WestJet, COVID, and planning in crisis mode

15:30 The Mars pandemic work: accelerated, not caused

18:00 Horizon scanning: bringing the pockets together

19:30 Canada, OCAD, and where foresight lives today

20:30 Beyond chicken little: anticipatory leadership and antifragility

25:00 Does a business actually need a foresight function?

28:00 The bridge to marketing: backcasting and three horizons

34:00 “Foresight doesn’t get a free pass”

37:00 Creative vs effectiveness: let the teams battle it out

41:00 Cultural foresight, and layering in the whole business

45:30 Victim of your own success, and getting typecast

47:00 Building McDonald’s generative AI Center of Excellence

48:56 Three things to do Monday morning

53:40 Big Mac No Meat: the experiment

54:30 Thanks and close

Hosts

Marc Binkley

Quatical - https://quatical.com/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/

Vassilis Douros

Personal Website: https://vassilisdouros.com

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisdouros/

Follow The Sleeping Barber

Website: https://sleepingbarber.ca

YouTube: http:s//www.youtube.com/@sleepingbarberpodcast

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sleeping-barber/

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and hit follow so you never miss a show.

The Sleeping Barber is a marketing podcast hosted by Marc Binkley and Vassilis Douros, breaking down strategy, marketing effectiveness, and the evidence behind what actually grows a business.

Hosts
Marc Binkley
Quatical: https://quatical.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/
Vassilis Douros
Website: https://vassilisdouros.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisdouros/

Follow The Sleeping Barber
Website: https://sleepingbarber.ca
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sleepingbarberpodcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4v0kaM350zEY7X2VBuyfrF
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sleeping-barber-a-marketing-podcast/id1609811324
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sleeping-barber/
 
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and hit follow so you never miss a drop.

Send us Fan Mail

Marketing runs on comfort blankets. The Sharp Cut cuts them up to see what’s inside. This week, with Black Friday five weeks out and someone already writing the 40% off email: the idea that a discount wins you new business.

Here’s the spine. A discount rents you this week’s sales, mostly from your own customers. When the price goes back up, the rental’s over. So every promotion has to pay for itself while it’s running.

This week:

→ Who actually buys on the deal. Ehrenberg-Bass looked across 18 categories: 77% of promo buyers had already bought the brand in their last five trips, against 81% at full price. Basically the same people, paying less.

→ How long the bump lasts. Soup and yogurt promotions faded in about two weeks, and in only 1 of 29 cases did a deal change sales for good. Then the dip, and people learning to wait for your price.

→ The math nobody runs. At 20% off with a 50% margin you need two-thirds more sales just to stand still. A German retailer celebrated a 19%-off sale that needed triple the traffic to break even.

→ Three people, three kinds of math. The store, the supplier, and the salesperson are each optimizing something different, and the brand on sale is usually renting its own buyers back.

→ What actually works. You can’t quit cold (ask JC Penney). McCain pulled promotions back slowly and moved the money into brand, and nine years later sells more chips at a higher price.

Plus the one takeaway: a discount gives the people who already buy from you a cheaper week, and you often pay for it twice.

Enjoy the show!

Stories & evidence this episode:

• Which? Black Friday investigation: https://www.which.co.uk/policy-and-insight/article/dont-believe-the-hype-most-black-friday-deals-the-same-price-or-cheaper-at-other-times-of-the-year-which-finds-a3TbD5x5KADs
• Ehrenberg-Bass / John Dawes, price promotions and buyer mix (SSRN): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2199169
• McCain, “When the chips are down, margins matter” (IPA): https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/case-studies/when-the-chips-are-down-margins-matter-how-a-focus-on-long-term-emotional-brand-building-reduced-price-elasticity-and-increased-profits-for-mccain
• The Evidence Line (180+ models): https://quatical.com

Chapters

00:00 What the Sharp Cut is, and this week’s comfort blanket

00:50 Black Friday five weeks out, and the Which? study

02:18 How Black Friday became Black Friday month

03:50 Hermann Simon, BMW, and who really sets price (ep 18)

04:57 Who’s actually buying on the deal (Ehrenberg-Bass)

06:10 But explain P&G: the coupon cut and the share loss

06:50 How long the bump lasts, and the margin math

07:55 The 19%-off sale that needed triple the traffic

08:40 Soup, yogurt, Coke, and learning to wait

09:15 When the coupon becomes the price (Bed Bath & Beyond)

09:50 Loss leaders, pocket price, and a rebate that expired

11:58 B2B: value sellers vs price sellers, and commission math

14:49 Why not just stop? Walmart, good vs bad market share

15:40 JC Penney cold turkey vs McCain’s slow pullback

17:20 Honest pricing, anchoring, and the law

18:32 The one takeaway: you pay for it twice

19:00 Recap and what to change on Monday

Hosts

Marc Binkley

Quatical - https://quatical.com/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/

Vassilis Douros

Personal Website: https://vassilisdouros.com

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisdouros/

Follow The Sleeping Barber

Website: https://sleepingbarber.ca

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sleepingbarberpodcast

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sleeping-barber/

The Sleeping Barber is a marketing podcast hosted by Marc Binkley and Vassilis Douros, breaking down strategy, marketing effectiveness, and the evidence behind what actually grows a business.

Hosts
Marc Binkley
Quatical: https://quatical.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/
Vassilis Douros
Website: https://vassilisdouros.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisdouros/

Follow The Sleeping Barber
Website: https://sleepingbarber.ca
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sleepingbarberpodcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4v0kaM350zEY7X2VBuyfrF
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sleeping-barber-a-marketing-podcast/id1609811324
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sleeping-barber/
 
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and hit follow so you never miss a drop.

Send us Fan Mail

Marc and V are back with the Barber’s Brief: the good, the bad, and the overhyped from the last couple of weeks, with data, a few opinions, and Great Creative getting the last word.

This week:

→ Apple built itself a kill switch for ad tech. iOS 26’s Safari can quietly block hundreds of identity and data vendors, the list lives in a private repo, and only Apple knows the rules. Everyone’s calling it a privacy story. It’s a power story, and the real lesson is one we keep coming back to: stop renting your audience.

→ Phantom Reach. Ritson and Lumen clocked the same ad getting 16 seconds of attention on a living room TV and about 1.5 seconds in a web video player. Both count as one impression on your plan. So ask your agency for attentive seconds, not impressions.

→ Jaguar is finally coupled with a product. The rebrand tested with more 1s and 2s, and more 9s and 10s, than anything in its history. Polarizing is right for a six-figure niche. It’s a terrible lesson for a mass-market brand to copy.

→ Mbappé leaves Nike for On, part cash, part equity. The Jordan playbook, run against Nike, while On climbs and Nike slides.

Plus Ad of the Week: Robitussin hires a deadpan cough hitman named Robby Tussin, and turns the brand name into the character, the joke, and the mnemonic all at once.

Coming up: Joanna Lepore of Dig Insights on foresight and strategy.

Enjoy the show!

Chapters

00:00 Intro: welcome back to the Barber's Brief

00:51 Story 1: Apple's kill switch for ad tech

04:53 Why is so much of the industry built on rented land?

08:20 Story 2: Phantom Reach, attention vs impressions

10:48 Selling attentive seconds instead of impressions

13:18 How the platforms are moving (Meridian, Andromeda, MMM)

14:34 Story 3: Jaguar, finally coupled with a product

16:43 Polarization as a scalpel, not a strategy

17:48 Controversy with a product vs controversy for its own sake

20:47 Story 4: Mbappé leaves Nike for On

23:08 Do challenger-brand signings change how retailers buy?

25:35 Ad of the Week: Robitussin's cough hitman, Robby Tussin

28:03 Why the one-character platform beats weekly fresh creative

29:09 Coming up: Joanna Lepore, Dig Insights

Hosts

Marc Binkley

Quatical - https://quatical.com/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/

Vassilis Douros

Personal Website: https://vassilisdouros.com

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisdouros/

Stories this week

• Apple’s ad-tech kill switch (AdExchanger): https://www.adexchanger.com/privacy/apple-has-far-reaching-plans-to-block-hundreds-of-programmatic-data-companies-from-ios/
• Phantom Reach — Mark Ritson (The Drum): https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/why-the-reach-of-one-rule-is-built-on-ads-nobody-ever-actually-sees
• Jaguar’s rebrand meets its product (Marketing Week): https://www.marketingweek.com/jaguars-rebrand-product/
• Mbappé leaves Nike for On (Yahoo Sports): https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/kylian-mbappe-drops-nike-sponsorship-045914241.html

Ad of the Week

• Robitussin’s “Take Care of Your Cough” / Robby Tussin (MM+M): https://www.mmm-online.com/news/meet-robby-tussin-robitussins-jacket-clad-cough-hitman/

Follow The Sleeping Barber

Website: https://sleepingbarber.ca

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sleepingbarberpodcast

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sleeping-barber/

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and hit follow so you never miss a drop.

The Sleeping Barber is a marketing podcast hosted by Marc Binkley and Vassilis Douros, breaking down strategy, marketing effectiveness, and the evidence behind what actually grows a business.

Hosts
Marc Binkley
Quatical: https://quatical.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/
Vassilis Douros
Website: https://vassilisdouros.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisdouros/

Follow The Sleeping Barber
Website: https://sleepingbarber.ca
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sleepingbarberpodcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4v0kaM350zEY7X2VBuyfrF
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sleeping-barber-a-marketing-podcast/id1609811324
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sleeping-barber/
 
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and hit follow so you never miss a drop.

Send us Fan Mail

Everybody in this industry is arguing about what AI does to an agency. Almost all of it is agencies talking to themselves about their own cost structure. Clients are asking something else entirely.

So Marc and V put the real question to two of the people growing Canada’s agency business while the ground moves under it: if you are not selling hours, what are you selling?

Mélanie Dunn is President of Plus Company Canada and CEO of Cossette. Karine Courtemanche is EVP of Plus Company Canada and President of its media group, Strategy’s 2024 Media Leader of the Year, Chair of the Canadian Media Directors’ Council.

Inside the conversation: why clients now buy a connected system of tools rather than time, and why the shift off billable hours is being stalled by clients, not agencies. The biggest myth in the business, and the KPI guarantee they sold three times out of hundreds of clients. Why your agency’s tech stack is now a reason to hire them. In-housing done for the right and wrong reasons. Rethinking talent when the pyramid is gone and a junior can mentor a senior. And a genuine cry for help on supporting Canadian media, where the gap between an ethical placement and a cheaper one is often marginal.

The through line: agencies are being pushed to stop selling time and start selling judgment, and nobody has solved how you build judgment at scale.

Enjoy the episode!

Our Guests:

Mélanie Dunn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dunnmelanie/

Karine Courtemanche: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karine-courtemanche-64896330/

Chapters:

00:00 The best time to be in this business

00:46 Barbell or pyramid? Setting up the debate

02:43 What is the role of a modern agency?

06:51 What clients actually buy now: a system, not hours

09:25 If you're not selling time, what are you selling?

12:51 The biggest myth: agencies do want outcomes

15:15 Why outcome models stall: predictability and risk

17:45 Attribution as the missing accountability layer

19:16 Choosing an agency on its tools, not just its people

22:05 Three conditions for integration that actually works

23:57 In-housing, for the right reasons

27:08 Why there is no single agency model

29:22 Building operational platforms, not just media tools

31:36 AI, governance, and building the same tool twice

34:19 Rethinking talent when the pyramid is gone

36:44 Hiring now: references, soft skills, hard questions

45:30 Monday takeaways: governance as an enabler

49:13 A cry for help on Canadian media

57:02 Calgary, and the centre of the world

The Sleeping Barber is a marketing podcast hosted by Marc Binkley and Vassilis Douros, breaking down strategy, marketing effectiveness, and the evidence behind what actually grows a business.

Hosts
Marc Binkley
Quatical: https://quatical.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/
Vassilis Douros
Website: https://vassilisdouros.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisdouros/

Follow The Sleeping Barber
Website: https://sleepingbarber.ca
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sleepingbarberpodcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4v0kaM350zEY7X2VBuyfrF
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sleeping-barber-a-marketing-podcast/id1609811324
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sleeping-barber/
 
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and hit follow so you never miss a drop.

Send us Fan Mail

Marketing runs on comfort blankets. The Sharp Cut cuts them up to see what's inside. This week: brand love.

Start with motorcycles. In 2015, the happiest owners in the entire category rode Victory, ahead of Harley. Two years later, Polaris shut Victory down. The happiest customers in the category could not keep the brand alive. That should bother anyone who spent a career being told marketing's job is to make people love you.

So Marc and V take the believers at their word and run three tests on lovemarks, raving fans, and brand love. Are the most loved brands the biggest? Are they growing the fastest? Does the love come first, before the buying? The evidence, from the ACSI to double jeopardy to ten years of Ehrenberg-Bass data, keeps pointing the same way.

Then they own up to it. Marc's Heinz loyalty that is really just shelf placement. V's Golf Town thank-you notes, where every bit of love showed up after the money was already in the books.

The conclusion is not that love is worthless. It protects you, and losing it hurts. It just is not what grows a brand. Plus what to do with all of this on Monday.

Chapters

00:00 What the Sharp Cut is

00:45 Today's comfort blanket: brand love

00:50 Victory vs Harley: the happiest owners, gone in two years

02:36 Where the idea came from

05:43 The money angle, and the JC Penney lovemark

06:28 The case for love, taken seriously

08:33 Three tests for the believers

08:59 Test 1: are the most loved brands the biggest?

10:20 Double jeopardy, and why loyalty is everywhere

12:04 The Apple challenge

12:45 Test 2: do loved brands grow the fastest?

15:12 Test 3: does love come first?

18:17 Confessions: Heinz, Matouk's, and the Golf Town tees

22:04 So is love a moat? The Kroger debate

24:14 Do people even want a relationship with a brand?

26:31 What to do Monday

The Sleeping Barber is a marketing podcast hosted by Marc Binkley and Vassilis Douros, breaking down strategy, marketing effectiveness, and the evidence behind what actually grows a business.

Hosts
Marc Binkley
Quatical: https://quatical.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/
Vassilis Douros
Website: https://vassilisdouros.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisdouros/

Follow The Sleeping Barber
Website: https://sleepingbarber.ca
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sleepingbarberpodcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4v0kaM350zEY7X2VBuyfrF
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sleeping-barber-a-marketing-podcast/id1609811324
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sleeping-barber/
 
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and hit follow so you never miss a drop.

Send us Fan Mail

Marc and V are back with the Barber's Brief: the good, the bad, and the overhyped, with data, a few opinions, and Great Creative getting the last word.

This week:

• Your marketing team already got smaller. Nearly half of B2B teams have shrunk because of AI, almost none of it through layoffs (Wynter). Meanwhile most execs who cut roles for AI now regret it (Orgvue) and plenty are quietly rehiring (Robert Half, Klarna). If the cuts and the reversals are both invisible, how would anyone know it worked?
• Ads aimed at robots, not people. Brands are now buying ads to influence the AI agents that shop for us. V's take: feed the machine clean facts, sure, but "converts higher, further down the funnel" is the last click song all over again. The agent harvests demand, it doesn't create it.
• Tariffs, margins, and pricing power. Lose a market overnight and no ad fixes it. For everyone else it's margin pressure, and brand strength decides how much you can pass on.
• Meta is grading your creative on how different it looks, and reporting more clicks for it. The problem: memory is built on consistency.

Plus Ad of the Week: Sydney Sweeney made Novig famous overnight. But did anyone remember the brand?

Coming up: Brand Love and Lovemarks, and the agency model with Cossette.

Enjoy the show!

Chapters:

00:00 Intro: Welcome to the Barber's Brief

00:52 Story 1: AI is quietly shrinking marketing teams

03:17 If the cuts are invisible, how do we know it's working?

05:47 Story 2: ads aimed at AI agents, not people

08:02 The two-audience problem, and last click rebuilt for robots

10:31 Story 3: tariffs, margins, and brand pricing power

12:57 Why the reason for a price increase beats the size

15:25 Story 4: Meta's creative diversification best practices

17:47 More clicks, or Meta's win? Distinctive assets at risk

20:18 Ad of the Week: Novig x Sydney Sweeney, "Just Sports"

22:54 Famous, but not famous for you

24:15 The shortcut, and whether it pays off

27:31 Coming up: Brand Love, and the agency model with Cossette

Links:

AI Cut the Marketing Team. Then Came the Rehires.

https://martech.org/ai-is-powering-the-loss-of-marketing-jobs/

https://www.orgvue.com/news/55-of-businesses-admit-wrong-decisions-in-making-employees-redundant-when-bringing-ai-into-the-workforce/

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/01/employers-who-laid-off-workers-for-ai-are-reversing-their-decisions.html

https://www.cioandleader.com/why-replacing-employees-with-ai-backfired-for-enterprises/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-08/klarna-turns-from-ai-to-real-person-customer-service

Some companies are using ads to influence AI agents

https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/optimizing-for-ai-agents-time-magazine-wayfair-strategy

Tariffs Are Squeezing Margins. Your Brand Decides How Much You Can Pass On.

https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2026/08/list-of-products-from-the-united-states-subject-to-counter-tariffs-effective-september-8-2026.html

https://www.npr.org/2026/08/22/nx-s1-5941584/us-canada-tariffs

https://www.abfjournal.com/the-middle-market-manufacturing-squeeze-tariffs-supply-chains-the-dealmaker-ecosystem-in-2026/

https://www.kantar.com/inspiration/brands/how-to-make-pricing-work-for-your-brand

https://www.marketingweek.com/creativity-pays-les-binet/

https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/ipa-blog/new-evidence-shows-stronger-brands-really-can-charge-more

https://asknigelhollis.com/blog/evidence-that-advertising-increases-demand-at-any-given-price.html

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1177/0092070304269953

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10946705251341080 https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/tariffs/2026/09/29/import-ban-on-canadian-goods-in-effect-while-trump-expects-canadians-to-say-sir-we-are-sorry-follow-for-live-updates/

https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/R49349.html

How advertisers are adjusting to Meta’s ad creative diversification best practices

https://www.marketingbrew.com/stories/meta-ad-creative-diversification-best-practices-advertiser-approach

Ad of the Week

Sydney Sweeney Is Famous. Novig Isn't.

Link: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew-tindall_ive-tested-the-sydney-sweeney-ad-males-activity-7505989922999164929-_xcY

Full link list for the ad of the week, in order:

https://deadline.com/2026/09/sydney-sweeney-novig-ad-backlash-female-olympians-1237101507/

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/pei-sydney-sweeney-ad-reaction-9.7351851

https://frontofficesports.com/article/novig-ceo-sydney-sweeney-forces-us-into-national-discourse/

https://globalgamblingnews.com/sydney-sweeney-takes-equity-stake-in-novig/

https://contagious.com/io/article/jenni-romaniuk-on-distinctive-assets

https://www.marketingscience.info/brands-need-distinctive-assets

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andrew-tindall_ive-tested-the-sydney-sweeney-ad-males-activity-7505989922999164929-_xcY

https://system1group.com/creative-dividend

The Sleeping Barber is a marketing podcast hosted by Marc Binkley and Vassilis Douros, breaking down strategy, marketing effectiveness, and the evidence behind what actually grows a business.

Hosts
Marc Binkley
Quatical: https://quatical.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/
Vassilis Douros
Website: https://vassilisdouros.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisdouros/

Follow The Sleeping Barber
Website: https://sleepingbarber.ca
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sleepingbarberpodcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4v0kaM350zEY7X2VBuyfrF
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sleeping-barber-a-marketing-podcast/id1609811324
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sleeping-barber/
 
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and hit follow so you never miss a drop.

Send us Fan Mail

Fresh off the Omar Roubi interview, Marc and Vassilis sit down for the PostPod to work through what stuck.

The uncomfortable one: when the business is broken, whose job is it to stop advertising? Target Canada ran full advertising cycles, back to school, holiday, the works, while shelves sat empty and the experience fell apart. So the spend did not just fail to help. It amplified a promise the business could not keep. "Expect more, pay less" landed as "expecting more, paying more."

They get into the reflex every marketer knows: use it or lose it, and the maturity it takes to hand budget back and say the problem is upstream. Plus leading versus lagging indicators, why revenue tells you far too late, and how supply chain efficiency and customer sentiment map onto physical and mental availability.

They also sit with the thing that keeps pulling them back: it was not one P, it was the clock. A lease deal and government hiring timelines built a manufactured pressure that eroded the quality of every decision after it. Nordstrom entered around the same time with a slower playbook and lasted longer.

No clean verdict. A much better set of questions.

Enjoy the show!

Chapters

00:00 Doomed from day one

00:38 PostPod: debriefing Target Canada

00:52 A case study that keeps giving

02:40 Going all in, and Nordstrom's different path

04:05 Canada's geography vs three warehouses

05:41 Whose job was it to say "stop advertising"?

07:49 Use it or lose it: should marketing give budget back?

08:14 Shared accountability and deferred blame

10:56 Leading vs lagging indicators

12:08 The promise to the customer

13:49 Mapping mental and physical availability

14:13 The price problem: priced premium, wasn't

16:08 You can't isolate one P: the clock

17:00 Making quality decisions under pressure

19:28 Why extremes are the best teachers

The Sleeping Barber is a marketing podcast hosted by Marc Binkley and Vassilis Douros, breaking down strategy, marketing effectiveness, and the evidence behind what actually grows a business.

Hosts
Marc Binkley
Quatical: https://quatical.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/
Vassilis Douros
Website: https://vassilisdouros.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisdouros/

Follow The Sleeping Barber
Website: https://sleepingbarber.ca
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sleepingbarberpodcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4v0kaM350zEY7X2VBuyfrF
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sleeping-barber-a-marketing-podcast/id1609811324
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sleeping-barber/
 
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and hit follow so you never miss a drop.

Send us Fan Mail

Target is a company people love. More than 1,700 stores, a brand with real pull. Then it came to Canada, lost billions, and walked away inside four years.

This is a story about Big and Little marketing. Little is the advertising. Big is everything else: product, price, place, and how the whole business organizes around the customer. Roger Martin says a promise has to be memorable, valuable, and deliverable. Advertising makes it memorable. Price and place make it valuable. Product makes it deliverable. In Canada, Target's ads were excellent, and the business broke the promise anyway.

CPA Omar Roubi joins Marc and Vassilis to reverse engineer the collapse through the four Ps. Omar teaches this case at the University of Colorado Denver and built a definitive audio case study on it at LumiQ. He also lived it: his wife moved from Texas to help launch the Toronto-area stores.

Inside: the Zellers real estate deal that started the countdown, empty shelves sitting above full back rooms, the imperial vs metric mix-up, three distribution centres across a 6,000 km country, and why the famous $5.4B loss is mostly a writedown, not operating losses.

A case study in why great marketing can't save a broken business.

Our Guest:

Omar Roubi - https://www.linkedin.com/in/omar-roubi-cpa-texas/

Chapters:

00:00 Cold open: one bad decision begets more

00:26 Big marketing vs Little marketing

02:16 Omar Roubi returns

03:14 The personal connection: launching Target in Toronto

06:14 "Too big to fail"

06:36 The accountant's takeaway

09:22 Place: the Zellers real estate deal

12:08 Wrong locations, wrong customer

18:47 The 12-month countdown clock

22:25 Product: empty shelves, full back rooms

25:02 Physical availability and the metric mix-up

32:46 Price: "expect more, pay less" meets three warehouses

41:05 The currency headwind

45:07 The $5.4B loss vs the $200M operating loss

48:27 Little marketing: is ROI the wrong number?

53:01 The apology videos, and brand vs performance

57:04 The one number that signals trouble first

1:00:07 The human cost: 17,600 people

References:

References

CBC News. (2011, January 13). Target buys Zellers leases for $1.8B. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/target-buys-zellers-leases-for-1-8b-1.981132

CBC News. (2012, July 6). Target wins approval to come to Canada. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/target-wins-approval-to-come-to-canada-1.1160485

Castaldo, J. (2016, January 1). The last days of Target. Canadian Business. https://canadianbusiness.com/ideas/the-last-days-of-target-canada/

Kumar, N. (2025, September 2). The experience paradox: Why better satisfaction scores don't always mean growth. Kantar. https://www.kantar.com/north-america/inspiration/experience/the-experience-paradox

LinkedIn B2B Institute & WARC. (2024, August 13). Making a promise to the customer: How to give campaigns a competitive edge. https://business.linkedin.com/advertise/resources/b2b-institute/making-a-promise-to-the-business-customer

Roubi, O. (Host). (2021, August). The rise and fall of Target Canada [Audio podcast]. LumiQ.

Strauss, M. (2013, April 5). Target Canada prices 0.2 per cent higher than Wal-Mart's: Survey. The Globe and Mail.

Strauss, M. (2014, September 22). Target Canada winning price battle with Wal-Mart. The Globe and Mail.

Target Corporation. (2011, January 13). Target Corporation to acquire interest in Canadian real estate from Zellers Inc., a subsidiary of Hudson's Bay Company, for C$1.825 billion [Press release]. https://corporate.target.com/press/release/2011/01/

Target Corporation. (2015a, January 15). Target Corporation announces plans to discontinue Canadian operations [Press release]. https://corporate.target.com/press/release/2015/01/

Target Corporation. (2015b, January 15). Form 8-K. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000027419/000002741915000005/

Zellers Inc., Hudson's Bay Company, Target Corporation, & Target Canada Co. (2011, September 12). Amended and restated transaction agreement [Exhibit 2(a) to Form 10-Q]. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000027419/000110465911066091/

The Sleeping Barber is a marketing podcast hosted by Marc Binkley and Vassilis Douros, breaking down strategy, marketing effectiveness, and the evidence behind what actually grows a business.

Hosts
Marc Binkley
Quatical: https://quatical.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbinkley/
Vassilis Douros
Website: https://vassilisdouros.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vassilisdouros/

Follow The Sleeping Barber
Website: https://sleepingbarber.ca
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sleepingbarberpodcast
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4v0kaM350zEY7X2VBuyfrF
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sleeping-barber-a-marketing-podcast/id1609811324
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sleeping-barber/
 
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and hit follow so you never miss a drop.