Uncensored CMO

Susan Coghill is the Marketing Director at Tourism Australia and they've got one of the best performing ads on the System1 database, with their new campaign "G'Day". But this wasn't without taking some risks, such as introducing a new brand mascot, getting high profile stars to feature and producing a 9 minute film.

Watch the ad here.

What we covered in this episode:

• Why Susan has the best job in the World
• How to set KPI’s for a tourism brand
• Why Tourism Australia kept advertising through the pandemic
• What System1 learnt about advertising during covid
• Winning the only Effie for a travel company during lockdown
• Planning ‘Come and say G’day’ a new global campaign to announce Australia is open again
• Which distinctive assets are the most Australian
• Creating Ruby Roo the new brand mascot
• What we can learn from the Entertainment industry
• Putting on a show rather than selling
• Why it’s important to remember you are not the audience
• Making a new version of Men At Work’s ‘Down Under’
• The role of celebrities in making the ad more distinctive
• Justifying spending $125m on the new campaign
• How System1 testing gave confidence to make creative decisions
• Getting a 4 Star in the animatic testing
• How to reassure your stakeholder the creative will work
• Inspiration from the best Christmas adverts
• Adapting creative for different markets
• The long term plan for Ruby
• The decline of fluent devices and why you should use them
• Whether Ruby will appear as a character in real life
• Why we should all be more like Churchill the dog
• Revealing the official countdown of the UK’s best advertisers

Sophie is the CEO of The Marketing Society and the author of Superfast: Lead at Speed, in which she offers insight into energy management, purposeful leadership, and keeping pace with breakneck innovation. She is also a passionate advocate of flex work as the future of effective companies, and regularly speaks about innovative approaches to balance business and family life. Her career began at Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola Great Britain, Interbrand, and then Leo Burnett Dubai. She went on to become CEO of The Caffeine Partnership, an innovative consultancy helping leaders with purpose and pace. Most recently, in July 2020, Sophie became CEO of The Marketing Society, a global community of progressive senior marketers whose purpose is to empower brave leaders.

What we covered in this episode:

• Why Sophie chose a career in marketing
• The loneliness of the marketing leader
• How the Marketing Society is creating a community
• The importance of celebrating marketing's role in creating change
• What inspired Superfast
• The exhaustion that comes from the speed of information
• How the best leaders manage to set the right pace
• How to write a book and manage the day job
• Which books inspired Sophie the most
• The importance of managing your energy
• The SHED technique to energy management
• Understanding what energises your team
• The times when you shouldn't go fast
• The power of strategic laziness
• How a clear business purpose can drive pace
• How Lucozade Sport created a clear purpose around Made to Move
• How the world's most successful business people make decisions
• Why being too fast and too slow can be dangerous
• Why being closer to your customer makes decision making easier
• The importance of timing
• How Jon failed to kill the QR code
• Sophie's guide to whether the Metaverse will become a success or not
• Why it's what you do with good luck of bad luck that really matters
• What's next for the Marketing Society

Professor Karen Nelson-Field is Founder and CEO of Amplified Intelligence, and Professor of Media Innovation at The University of Adelaide. Karen is a globally acclaimed researcher in media science, is a regular speaker on the major circuits, including Cannes and SXSW, and has secured research funding from some of the world’s largest advertisers. Her first book, Viral Marketing: the science of sharing, set the record straight on hunting for ‘viral success’. Her most recent book The Attention Economy and How Media Works explains the stark reality of human attention processing in advertising. Karen’s commercial work combines tech and innovative methodological design to look closely at attention metrics in a disrupting digital economy.

Listen to my first episode with Karen from Cannes.

What we covered in this conversation:

• Reaction to Cannes Lion Triple Jeopardy talk
• Karen’s career journey to now
• Making the jump from Academia to Business owner
• Why not all reach is created equal
• How few people actually pay attention to your advert
• The variability of time in view vs actual attention based on platform
• The technology that allows attention to be measured
• How the ESOV and reach based model are broken
• The 2.5second rule and how memory is created
• How repetition of advertising helps in low attention platforms
• How attention has an elasticity based on the platform
• The role of creative in attention rich platforms
• The importance of adapting your creative based on the attention of the platform
• How to approach media planning with attention in mind
• Will wearable technology help improve attention measurement
• Karen’s response to Byron’s recent comments on attention
• What level of push back the focus on attention is getting
• What’s coming next for Amplified Intelligence

Now, a topic in this episode very close to my heart. Why are car ads all so bad? I spoke with Kirsten Stagg from Skoda, who's the UK Marketing Director and has made some pretty good ads herself. In fact, Skoda are responsible for the best ad on the System1 database. We also talk a lot about the move to electric vehicles, the biggest revolution since the combustion engine. How do we get more people into electric vehicles over from petrol? And what are the car industry doing to save the planet? So, no shortage of big questions in this episode.

What we covered in this episode:

• Jon explains his failure to get a job in automotive marketing
• How Kirsten got a job in the automotive industry despite not owning a car
• How you actually pronounce Skoda and why they changed the use of it
• Why VW changed their approach to brand building based on how people choose cars
• Kirsten’s favourite VW advert of all time
• Jon puts Kirsten on the spot about why all car ads look the same
• Local insights vs global execution
• The thinking behind ‘it’s a Skoda. Honest’
• Why the Skoda cake advert is the best in the category
• A ‘driver’s best friend’ and how Skoda inverted the relationship between car and dog
• The biggest disruption in the automotive industry since the combustion engine was invented
• Jon explains how he ended up meeting the director of HR at Daimler Benz who turned him down
• How Mercedes have already made their last V8 engine
• The role of concept cars in gauging potential customer interest
• The barriers to EV adoption and how to overcome them
• Kirsten gives the pitch for making the switch to an EV
• How the EV is changing people’s brand perception and encouraging switching
• Why very long-standing agency relationships have helped ensure strong creative work
• Top tips for getting the best creative work from your agency
• Why you should work with Directors who have low egos
• The best ads Jon ever made were with up-and-coming Directors

Leo is the founder of Eden Lab, a new kind of consultancy and venture studio, they don't just advise on how to win in the Net Zero future, they build it with you. He's the former CEO and Chief Strategy Officer of ad agency Grey London, founder of Grey Consulting, speaker, writer and start-up mentor.

He believes businesses can help shape the planet for the better. To do that he says we need to invent - and reinvent - companies for a post-carbon world. He scouts, designs and assembles new business models, products and services that actively create a better future for all of us.

What we covered in this episode:

• The state of the industry
• Why CMO spend so little time on comms
• How to ask better questions
• Solving every problem with a poster
• Post Covid hybrid leaving do’s
• The biggest challenges the world faces
• Good intentions vs real action
• The one mission to end all missions
• What is stopping marketers making a difference
• Climate change ignorance
• Not all growth is green growth
• Bridging the gap between sustainability and the consumer
• Why fear and ignorance is holding us back
• The £12trillion cost of saving the planet
• How do we create the change we need to see
• Why it’s time to commercialise sustainability
• Moving from shame to seduction
• The gap between consumer experience and sustainability
• Why Backmarket models a customer centric approach
• The importance of the green business model
• The tension between costs of living crisis and doing the right thing
• The power of an impossible brief
• Why brands will be punished in the future for lack of green credentials
• The future value of your customer book
• What is your clean share of market
• Putting creativity into the heart of the problem
• Commercialising ESG to create change
• Buying trainers for life
• What every brand needs to do now

Meghan Farren spent 10 years at KFC UK, spending the last 5 as CMO. What does it take to run a marketing department of one of the biggest consumer brands? What do you do when you run out of chicken as a fast food chicken joint? How do you change your strapline when it involves licking fingers during a global pandemic? And how a strong culture is pivotal for all this creativity to happen.

What we covered in this episode

• Going back to KFC after a year - back to school vibe
• The realness of working in a KFC restaurant
• Research vs real world experience
• How Meg got into marketing in the first place
• From finance to marketing
• How to transition industry
• Experience vs action and impostor syndrome
• How to nail a new job
• Importance of culture
• Hiring the best talent
• Being close to the customer
• Marketing week brand of the year
• Power of consistency
• The FCK campaign
• How taking a big risk can pay off
• How humour in a crisis can help
• KFC’s many distinctive assets
• How to do brand innovation well
• Advice for aspiring CMOs

Now it's the summer holidays, and that means everybody's taking a well earned break from all their hard work. And that includes the Uncensored CMO, but producer James never wants to let me off an episode, And he said, why before you go away, why don't you just do a quick episode. So, I thought, why not do a little bonus episode?

It got me thinking, what subject do I know a little bit about that might be useful to my listeners? And, this is where I have to put my System1 hat back on, because what we do better than anybody else is advise people on how to make advertising that works. We like to frame that as how to make a five star ad. So in this special edition episode, I talk about why emotion and advertising matters and how I can prove it. And some of the tips that we give all our customers on how to make advertising that actually works.

What I covered in this episode:

• The crazy amount of money spent on adverts
• Why 50% are still a waste of money
• The data for why your creative matters
• Why Creative is your most important tool
• Why emotional beats rational advertising
• Why System1 was created
• Orlando Wood and his masterpieces
  • Lemon
  • Look Out
• Why we make decisions
• ESOV and how creativity is an amplifier
• The reason to pre test your advertising
• Right brain vs Left brain advertising
• The decline in creative effectiveness
• The importance of Fluent devices
• The 5 things that make a 5 Star ad
• Why you should take no notice of awards
• A shameless plug for System1

Do you think the advertising industry has a problem with age now? In my experience, the majority of marketing departments are run by people under 40. Sometimes the majority, even under 30, and that's reflected in creative agencies as well. I think that's a real problem because if you look at the statistics, people over the age of 55 represent the majority of people in the UK, they have enormous buying power, lost disposable income, and often a bit more time on their hands to spend it as well.

So it's such a shame that we as an industry are neglecting a very significant part of the population. Recently that MullenLowe have released a new report called "The Invisible Powerhouse", looking at the lives of over 50s and how we can market to them better. In this episode, I speak to MullenLowe UK CEO, Jeremy Hine, about the report and what we can do to address this problem.

What we covered in this episode:

• 52 year old Jeremy introduces himself
• What inspired ‘The Invisible Powerhouse’ report on age diversity
• Why age represents the greatest disparity in Advertising representation
• How do older people feel about the way in which they are portrayed
• The business case for people ‘Feeling Seen’ in advertising
• Almost half the population are over 50 and own 70% of all assets
• Why not all over 50’s are the same
• The age people feel rather than the age they are
• What segmentation by attitude reveals
• Inspiration from the gear lever design in a Jaguar
• The dominance of youth in the ad industry
• How to brief to ensure older representation
• The importance of seeing and understanding the older generation
• Why Entertainment matters to an older audience
• Inspiration from the Magnum campaign featuring older people
• The value of spending time with older people
• What we can learn from TikTok
• The stereotypes of older people in advertising
• Taking inspiration from Top Gun
• Why women experience an even greater invisibility in advertising
• How Mullen Lowe led the Governments covid response
• How a crisis super charged creative work & collaboration
• Where to get more help on marketing to an older audience

A double header episode as I speak with JP Castlin and James Hankins on the back of their Cannes 2022 talk, in partnership with WARC, "The Gravity of e-commerce".

JP Castlin is an independent consultant who coined the term naturalized strategy-making and created the ABCDE framework. JP has been featured in Marketing Week, The Drum, WARC and more, and he also wrote "Strategy in Polemy". James Hankins is the founder of Vizer Consulting & Global VP Marketing Strategy and Planning at SAGE.

View JP & James' WARC report here.

What we covered in this episode:

• How the pandemic inspired the Cannes collaboration
• The one question everyone was asking at Cannes
• What is driving the sudden adjustment in e-commerce valuations
• Presenting straight after Gary V’s Cannes talk and our obsession with new things
• The threat of Stagflation and how it will impact the economy
• Returning to the 4 P’s for the solution to the problem
• The gravity effect of e-commerce and the challenging cost efficiency
• Defining the model as a shift from one-to-many from many-to-one
• Why marketers are needed to solve this problem
• The real cost of returning e-commerce products
• The long and short effect of guaranteed returns
• How Amazon mitigated the cost of product returns
• Why marketers needs to see the whole picture to solve the puzzle
• The Nike business model and how even they struggle to do e-commerce
• Why growth-first companies like Uber Eats fail to make a profit
• The Vegan Sausage roll principle and the challenge of second-hand car buying platforms
• Why fulfilment capability is so critical for e-commerce businesses
• Why Cinch are set up to beat Cazoo in the car e-commerce war
• The importance of understanding your business model first
• Using creativity to solve the most fundamental commercial challenges
• What we can all learn from the Next annual report and their emergent strategy
• The pivotal role of the CMO in a commercial crisis

Today we're joined by David Hieatt, founder of Hiut Denim Co., and The Do Lectures.

What we covered in this episode:

• How to pronounce Hiut and its origins
• What inspired David to start a jeans company
• Pitching a business aged 14
• Raised by wolves at Saatchi and Saatchi
• Setting up their first business Howies
• Surviving without pay for 6 years
• How it feels to sell your business
• The impact of having a dad in the merchant navy
• The importance of making people feel something
• Having a purpose and bringing your values to work
• How to find your purpose
• Why saving Britains biggest jeans factory inspired David to create Hiut
• Coping with 6 months orders in one month
• Why a newsletter is your most important communiction tool
• Getting geeky about newsletter stats
• Trying to beat your best newsletter
• Writing a book in 30mins a day
• Learning from Paul Arden
• The importance of choosing your boss carefully
• Focussing on being the most influential 30 person jeans company
• Being better today than yesterday
• Saving the planet with the No Wash Club
• Coping with 3 years of repairs in 3 months after offering free repairs for life
• The 88 hours it takes to win business
• The inspiration behind the DO lectures and the irony of 'doing one thing well'
• Don't just stand there, do something. Making change happen.
• Selling tickets to Do lectures out in an hour
• Talks from a cowshed in west wales