Uncensored CMO

Rory Sutherland is the Vice Chairman of Ogilvy, an attractively vague job title which has allowed him to co-found a behavioral science practice within the agency. ​Before founding Ogilvy Change, Rory was a copywriter and creative director at Ogilvy for over 20 years, having joined as a graduate trainee in 1988. He has variously been President of the IPA, Chair of the Judges for the Direct Jury at Cannes, and has spoken at TED Global. He writes regular columns for the Spectator, Market Leader and Impact, and also occasional pieces for Wired. He is the author of two books: The Wiki Man, available on Amazon at prices between £1.96 and £2,345.54, depending on whether the algorithm is having a bad day, and Alchemy, The surprising Power of Ideas which don't make Sense, to be published in the UK and US in March 2019.  ​

What we covered in this episode:

• Why economics doesn’t explain why people buy things
• How the channel can be more important than the message
• Why dropping your price should be the most controversial decision you ever make
• The book that gave Rory a nudge towards behavioural science
• Why 1 x 10 is not the same thing as 10 x 1 from a marketing perspective
• Ergodicity. The word every Marketer needs to learn.
• Why the better your creative is the less you should target it
• Why Effectiveness is not the same as Efficiency
• The role uncertainty and risk avoidance plays in choosing a brand
• Why Usain Bolt eats McDonalds chicken nuggets
• How to charge for creative work
• Alchemy. How marketing can add as much value as the product itself.
• Why it’s time we appreciated Country music and Worthers originals
• How David Ogilvy described people who don’t respect the consumer
• Why being over 40 in Marketing means you must be brilliant
• The case for moving out of London
• Why students should be allowed to spend their student loan on anything
• Find out something Rory has never told anyone, it might surprise you!

Rupert Howell is one of the founders of the advertising agency HHCL & Partners famous for campaigns for Tango, The AA, Ronseal, First Direct and Go amongst to name just a few. They were awarded ‘Agency of the Decade’ by Campaign in the 1990’s and experienced phenomenal growth for over a decade before being sold to Chime.

We covered so much ground in this bumper 2 hour episode, so here's the list of what we touched upon:

• How Rupert made HHCL the best agency of the 90’s
• Ruperts New Business Mantra – Honesty. Respect. Trust.
• Why saying ‘I don’t know’ and ‘we got it wrong’ is so important
• How the agency’s sole focus is Advertising but the Clients sole focus is the business
• Why new business should always be separate to the day to day account management
• How Rupert became ‘the finest new business director of all time’
• How to win a pitch even after you have lost it
• Why the pitch process begins with the phone call and only ends when its announced in Campaign
• The sole purpose of the pitch is to win and not to solve the clients business problem
• Why HHCL had a strike rate of 65% for new business
• What the company annual report can tell you for the pitch process
• Why you should try and get your customer promoted
• How Carling Black Label inspired the most successful Tango Advertising of all time
• How Tango destroyed Fanta and forced Coke to withdraw it from the market
• How a call from a Surgeon led to the Tango Slap commercial being withdraw from market
• Why the ‘4th Emergency Service’ transformed The AA and how the bold idea was sold in
• How spending time with an AA team out on a call led to the idea
• The importance of winning your internal teams and why they matter as much as your customers
• Interrogating the product until ‘it confesses its strength’ 
• Why the harder you practice the luckier you get is just as true for an agency
• The real hard yards of the start-up phase that meant not taking a day off in 3 years
• How tabloids create controversy and how to respond to it
• Why relationships are the secret to really succeeding in business
• Turning down offers to sell the agency including a £1million bribe
• Why HHCL accepted an offer from Chime with the support from Sir Martin Sorrell
• Why so few agencies ever succeed after being acquired by a network
• Why HHCL was never the same after Rupert left and why he would never go back
• The importance of timing for Founders handing over to the next generation
• Dealing with bullies, bribary and negotiating an exit from McCann with a boat & DB9 as consolation
• Which celebrities are still speaking to Rupert after he left ITV
• Why social media is driven by click bait and negative headlines
• Why you should give up the news, except perhaps local news
• The Pros and Cons of a British free press
• How to get a non-exec role

Follow me

• Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
• LinkedIn

Contact me

• Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
• Email – [email protected]

“the buying of time or space is not the taking out of a hunting license on someone’s private preserve, but it is the renting of a stage on which we may perform” - Howard Gossage

This is just one of the tremendous quotes contained in Paul Feldwick’s intriguingly titled new book ‘Why Does the Pedlar Sing?’ about what creatives really means in Advertising.

Here's what we covered in this episode:

• How a Shakespear play inspired the title of the book
• A short history of Advertising and the different models used
• The importance of Daniel Kahnemans availability and affect heuristic
• The Adland myth that entertainment doesn’t sell
• Showmanship and why we should all be more like PT Barnum
• Why bad research forces you to do one thing whilst actually doing another
• Barclaycard and the most honest case history of making an Ad ever written
• How Rowan Atchison inspired one of the greatest Ads ever made
• Why any process of discovery will involve a lot of trial and error 
• How PT Barnum created Fame for his Jenny Lind Tour
• Why celebrity fame and brand building are far more similar than people care to admit
• Why we should be talking about Fame rather than Mental Availability
• What we can learn from Strictly Come Dancing
• “I had more energy & ingenuity” The importance of energy in creating & sustaining success
• The 4 different facets of Fame that are critical for success
• Paul’s manifesto for reclaiming Creativity

Damian Symons is the CEO of Clear M&C Saatchi and author of 'From Choas to Clarity', which we reference a bunch in this conversation. He shares some of the excellent insight gained from this study of over 700 CEO’s and CMO’s into the changing role of the CMO over the past year and more.

What we covered in this episode

• How aligned is the CEO and CMO when it comes to business priorities?
• Why is the CMO a lot more influential now than a year ago?
• How a crisis makes you a lot more connected to your customers and colleagues
• How business strategy and the actions required to deliver it get easily disconnected
• Why Marketing needs to be much more than just ‘colouring in’
• Why CMO’s need to be more accountable for both short and long term investments
• How CEO’s become more focussed on the long terms whilst demanding short term action from their CMO
• The importance of a clear narrative, clear evidence and a clear short, medium and long term goals
• Why successful CMO’s aren’t always the best marketers
• How you can make this crisis the best thing that ever happened to you
• The failure of CMO’s to nurture talent and why no-one wants the job
• The 4 point plan to create clarity from chaos

Confession time. As a Saints fan, this is certainly a case of mixing business with pleasure. But bear with me for a moment. A year ago Saints suffered the worst defeat in premier league history going down 9-0 at home to Leicester. For most clubs this would have meant firing the manager and sparking an inevitable tumble into relegation and financial uncertainty. But not Southampton. They stuck by their man and a year later are challenging at the top of the Premier League briefly going top on the same day as this interview was recorded (obviously my motivational skills were critical ….). So what does this have to do with Marketing? Well, it turns out quite a lot! Most of us will have faced a giant setback at some point (if you haven’t then maybe you not trying hard enough!) and how you respond is one of the most important things you’ll ever do in your career. Understanding the importance of your belief and values, the role consistency plays, communicating much more than usual, learning to play as a team etc. In this episode, I meet David Thomas, Commercial Director to find out what has transformed Southampton as a Football Club and what you can learn from it.

Here's what we discussed:

• How the greatest defeat in Premier League history led to Saints challenging the best
• What Premier League managers and CMO’s have in common and the importance of consistency
• The secret to why playing behind closed doors might be playing into Saints hands
• The Southampton Way – the role of walking the talk in the transformation of the club
• How a good strategy means you can handle a few knocks without losing your way
• Why Saints chefs made over 1000 meals a week during lockdown 
• How the sport sponsorship model had to be turned on its head and why it shouldn’t be called sponsorship
• The need for accountability and ROI for any partnership to succeed
• Why Saints have the ‘John Lewis’ of kit launches and the most engaged social media of any club
• How values and belief are at the heart of any great Challenger brand
• Why the club going into Administration led the foundations of success today
• Turning potential into excellence and the importance of not punishing failure
• Why one of the most capped England women chose to coach the Saints women in the 6th tier!
• How Saints are tackling racism in football.
• A top 6 finish versus an FA Cup appearance

Here's what we covered in this episode:

• Who is Orlando and what is Lemon all about?
• Have the insights in Lemon changed on the back of the Coronavirus crisis?
• How emotion plays out in online video
• Why emotion is imperative online when you only have 6 seconds to capture people's attention
• Why you don't just need to be rational because your ads are targeted
• Brands should be using online advertising not only for activation, but also for brand building
• Examples of brands and ads doing this well
• How advertising is similar to writing a novel and art
• Why we've lost some humility in our advertising
• What the vital ingredients are to make online advertising work effectively

Follow me:

• Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
• LinkedIn

Here's what we covered in this episode:

• Find out what inspired Mark to switch the actual classroom for the virtual one
• How he ended up being the old, rich guy with a wine collection he used to laugh at
• What he thinks of the 50% of Marketers that have no professional training
• Why it's now time we all just all ditch the ‘D’ word and get back to Marketing
• Find out what every normal person knows about Advertising that Marketers pay good money to figure out
• Discover the most important factors in marketing effectiveness and why its time to think about the s**t we put through the pipe
• Why a recession is exactly the time you want to be increasing your spend
• Why you should never confuse a change in consumer context for a change in consumer behaviour
• “Tell me what hasn’t changed and I will build a business around that” & other great quotes to counter the constant stream of ‘everything's changed. Buy this book’ hype
• Discover why Mark believes the smartest people are not the ones sat around the boardroom table
• Find out why most CMO’s are more C than M and are not always the best marketers in their team
• The secret to CMO success is 80-90% politics over marketing
• The dangers of Canadian morning TV after a big night out
• We round off the episode finding out why Jon got fired after a 6-month ‘walk of shame’

Follow me:

• Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
• LinkedIn

Contact me:

• Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
• Email – [email protected]

Mark Ritson:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Mark Borkowski is PR written large. He represents international celebrities and corporate heavyweights and is a sought-after commentator on the world of celebrity, the Media and spin.

I recorded another episode with Mark not too long ago but it didn't feel right releasing it amidst the pandemic, so I caught up with him again.

In this episode we covered:

• Why business is booming for Borkowski
• How they've handled the shift to fully remote
• The role of celebrities during the crisis
• Why Boris' message and tone was poor
• What key advice would Mark give everyone

What we covered in this episode:

• Why some brands have accelerated their growth with 3 years of market progression in 3 months, while others hit hard
• How those brands that have gone dark and said nothing will be worst affected
• Why Brewgooder’s work during the crisis has been impressive
• How brands can do things without looking like they’re just jumping on the COVID bandwagon
• Are there any signs of things getting better for clients?
• How has Manifest changed in the past 3 months and what is going to stay permanent
• Why they love the office
• Advice - write your brief. There is an opportunity for you to recast your brand in the ‘new normal’. We won’t ever get a chance to hit the reset button again!

In this episode we discuss:

• Brewdog's hand sanitiser
• ITV's Clap From Our Carers campaign
• Why Uncommon are making candles
• How Boris could have handled his messaging better
• What advice Lucy would give people in advertising
• Why this recession presents an opportunity

Follow me:

• Twitter | @uncensoredCMO
• LinkedIn

Contact me:

• Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
• Email – [email protected]