Future Proof

You don't get much more traditional than Oxford University Press: over 500 years old, its roots dating back to 1478 when the first book was published in Oxford and home to the renowned Oxford English Dictionary.  Today the Press has 6000 employees, operates in 190 countries and 40 languages, and offers a huge range of products and services, from pre-school educational materials to scholarly works.   Sarah Ultsch, Director of Marketing at OUP, tells Andrew and Julie how the organisation is transforming, and how marketing operations in particular are evolving, in a radically changing market. How do they ensure they are still relevant and serving their community of educators and learners for the next 500 years? Sarah suggests that people and processes – the right skills, frameworks and culture – are the most important asset, but that applying the right technology, tools and data is key to servicing their changing customer. As people read less, are time poor, have higher expectations and consume more multimedia content, how can OUP serve up the right content (whether pedagogy, definition, article or chapter) at the right time on the user's preferred channel? And how can they organise themselves to ensure employees are engaged and coming up with great, scalable ideas? Like the University to which it belongs, OUP believes in the transformative power of education. So what are they learning as they bring marketing into the modern day? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Too many marketers still believe that sustainability in marketing comes at the expense of cost-effectiveness – when, increasingly, adopting sustainable marketing can improve commercial performance. So says David Radford, former CMO of Allianz in the UK and Associate Fellow of Said Business School. David's contention is that marketing needs to get its house in order when it comes to sustainability. As our marketing output is one of the most visible aspects of a business, he says, and as consumer opinion shifts dramatically, it simply makes good business sense for marketers to prioritise a more sustainable approach – even if the wider organisation has yet to adopt a sustainable business strategy. So what does "sustainable marketing" look like? And what are the wider business and societal implications?   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are more and more times when we find ourselves talking to what might seem like a person, but it’s actually a bot, often powered by AI. But what does the research say about the best way to use them? What can businesses do differently to improve their reputation, and get deeper customer insights? Professor Andrew Stephen, L’Oréal Professor of Marketing at Saïd Business School, takes us through some recent research his team has conducted around the impact of anthropomorphised (human-like) chatbots in customer service. Their assessment of thousands of real interactions, as well as some experimentation, has revealed that the more human a chatbot seems (even if the correspondent knows it is not human), the more we expect it to be effective. As he reveals, there are serious implications for brands in terms of how they deal with angry customers – not just in terms of resolving issues, but also related to longer-term brand preference and purchase intent. Julie Kollman, Chief Research Officer at Kantar, talks about some of the work we’ve been doing with chatbots in actually gathering insights. Replacing existing survey tools in the right occasions, chatbots have proven to be highly effective at getting us to deeper, richer insights – and probably more truthful responses. She explains some of the use cases, the cultural differences when it comes to willingness to engage with a research bot, and the way the technology is constantly advancing to provide ever better insights. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Michael Fanuele has written about the Six Skills of Inspiration in his new book, Stop Making Sense. In this episode, we speak to Michael in New York about why inspiration matters, what it can achieve, and how an individual – particularly a leader – can become more inspiring. As it turns out, it might mean turning our backs on rationality… We also touch on the role of planners, the role of agencies, his creative director role at General Mills and the balance big brands need to strike between outsourcing and in-housing, emotion and reason, and short-term and long-term goals. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Daianna Karaian has always worked at the intersection of sustainability and business, helping brands make money while also making a difference in the world. Now she has set up Thought Starter & Thoughtful Works, to help businesses and individuals actually walk the talk. We speak to Daianna about the Thought Starter kit and its basis in Martin Luther King’s 'six steps of non-violent social change', and how people and organisations are using it to make a real difference. We discuss the best examples of companies who have used their core competency to turn a negative impact on the world into a positive one. And we talk about how brands can enable their employees to put the brand’s purpose into their everyday activities at work, so that lofty goals can actually be met.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What’s involved in producing news? And what’s new about news in a more digital-focussed world? Inga Thordar, Executive Editor of International, CNN Digital Worldwide, tells Jane Ostler and Felipe Thomaz what an ‘average’ day looks like, how to find the right news stories for the right audiences, and how you can make news go viral… while still remaining trusted, non-partisan and distinctive. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What makes a bank successful? How do you attract and retain customers in the Indian banking market? And what role does technology play? S. Ramakrishnan, Head of Retail Banking & Wealth Management for HSBC in India, speaks to Andrew Stephen and Amy Cashman about creating a winning customer experience, the benefits of being a multinational business, the future growth opportunities and how they are partnering with fintechs to make improvements to their service in an agile way. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Racing Post was set up in 1986 to provide expert insights to fans of racing. But how does it approach marketing today? What does the future look like for the publisher? And how is this digital transformation linked to the internal culture of the business? Louise Agran, CMO at the Racing Post, gives Andrew Stephen and Amy Cashman the lowdown on the business model at this heritage brand, the pros and cons of a very engaged audience, and the work she’s done to embed new values – ‘postmarks’ – in the business. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Can we use machine learning algorithms to better understand consumers? How they truly feel, simply by looking at their face or reading their Tweets? If not, why not? Dr Natalia Efremova of the University of Oxford talks about the current research, the potential of AI and machine learning, and the power it might have not only in marketing but in achieving social goods. She also touches on why it’s so difficult to get sophisticated information from algorithms, how to avoid bias, and the importance of education in order to get this right.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How can we measure creativity? It's a big question, and a big challenge - but one that WPP's Perry Nightingale is keen to answer (with a little help from Oxford University and the Future of Marketing Initiative). In the second part of Andrew and Jane's conversation with Perry, we hear about Perry's creativity school, infusing creativity into an organisation, what has changed in the last 10 years (and what might happen next), along with Perry's views on how advertising agencies can find, encourage, retain and empower creative people. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.