Champagne Strategy

A recent article, some skeptical Twitterati and a belated Champagne film scene prompted the two Johns to join forces once again. In this episode, we put some of the doubters at bay. So if Jon Evan's recent Marketing Week article took your fancy, or you don't believe it, then you can hear the extended story of exactly how it all went down right here, right now. Listen and you might be able to pick up some tips on how to extend your budget's runway too. A lesson in the power of constraints, creativity and Champagne. The Uncensored CMO, uncensored again. Listen before someone else does!

Have you ever found it difficult to brief and agency, a copywriter or a designer and get back the words you were expecting? This is really hard when you don't have a messaging strategy which sits at the top of your workflow. Working alongside your brand voice and tone, your positioning, brand story and strategic narrative. It's the missing piece that nearly every company fails to invest in and without it, you'll experience a lot of frustration, back and forth communication, and rejected copy. Failure to work on your messaging strategy especially affects complex, B2B or technical products and services the most. This is because the product offering is often multi-dimensional, highly intangible and technical. Saying what you and your product does can be infinitely more challenging than selling a toothbrush. But, have no fear. You can fix most of that problem right now by listening to 61 minutes of pure messaging strategy bliss. Today we're getting Eden Bidani, a writer turned copywriter and messaging strategist to spill all her secret sauce just for you. To quote one of my favorite lines in Scary Movie, 'What are you waiting for.....what are you waiting for....what are you waiting for?' Press play

Brain Hurt Scale = 2/10 There's a famous quote by Kleiner Perkins' OG John Doer, "Ideas are easy. Execution is everything. It takes a team to win". If you've ever been responsible for bottom line results, you'll agree and nod because you know this quote to be true. Unfortunately, mastering the craft of execution is not politically advantageous. Instead, most companies reward those who are seen as a big picture thinkers not those fussing with details in the weeds. So we talk about higher-level constructs like brand, strategy, mindset, buzzwords, general approaches etc. And then outsource as much of the grunt work as possible to further this image, and as a political hedge. But, it's only when you've done the task yourself and architected operational systems, that you truly appreciate how critical the smallest details are to success. Hundreds of layered details which cascade with compounding effects that have a massive impact on the final result. And this is something that can't be solved with more tech, more planning, new frameworks, more consultants or more close-the-gap meetings. This phenomenon is especially pernicious in the field of sales/marketing/growth. A reliance on third-party vendors (agencies) to execute the work became necessary for political survival. But over time, it's led to an underappreciation of the value and importance of operations. If you work for a large brand, halo effects also hide this importance. It's only when we move to smaller organizations do we fully understand how critical it is to success. If we just took some time to at least know the basics, we would save a lot of miscommunication, misinterpretation, and failure downstream. Which brings us to today's episode with Mike Rizzo, founder of the MarketingOps community since 2017. Whether you want to call it marketing ops, growth ops, sales ops or revops it doesn't matter. Chances are the name will change again in a year or two anyway. This chat with Mike will allow us all to get a crash course in the discipline and hopefully use this knowledge to do better work. Strangely enough, most firms, don't even have a marketing ops hire. And if they do, it's more of a technician without a broader understanding of how everything else fits together into a system guided by strategy. Then there's other marketers who are doing marketing ops without even realizing it. So lets step down a few tiers from the business strategy or functional strategy layers and explore the operational strategy layer. With someone who lives and breathes marketing ops.

What is a brand? How do they work? How do you separate the marketing fluff from fact? If you want to build commercial value from marketing investments this is a mandatory listen. Listen to Dr Ethan Decker. A former ecologist who is now an applied brand science professional based in Boulder, Colorado. Nothing more needs to be said. Skip to the 5-minute mark if you want to skip the intros and Champagne sipping.

Brain Hurt Scale = 9/10. Seen that survivorship bias image floating around on LinkedIn or Twitter? You know, the one with the plane schematic with red dots showing the points where planes in world war 2 got shot. Followed by some sage remark by someone who goes on to say something about not falling victim to survivorship bias? Well, blindly believing this is something Mike says to be wary of. In this debate, I'm on one side of the argument and Mike is on the other. What comes out is not just an intellectual wank. But a conversation that teases out some key learnings which I guarantee will make you think better and make better decisions. Whether that's choosing the best marketing agency, or financial fund or even finding advice you can trust. As Mike says early on, "my views are maybe a little bit radical for the average". So if you enjoy the comfort of simple thinking and heeding LinkedIn-styled platitude wisdom, this is definitely not something you should listen to. But for everyone else, with an open mind and more brain cells than a packet of chips, get on it - and tell me what you think. Now!

In practice, Brent says over 95% of all partnerships fail. But why? And what can we do to increase the odds of success? Brent Annells is a wealth of deep knowledge in the practicalities of partnerships but also much more, courtesy of his storied career.  Starting his career in PR, grounding in core messaging and positioning strategy, it wasn't long before he was testing his chops at a startup in the early web 1.0 days just before the dot-com crash. Then he moved into the advertising agency world with roles at Cummins&Partners and DDB before reveling in Facebook's high-growth phase where he eventually became the 'Head of Brand'. Up next was a Head of Partnerships role for Uber's operations before his career continued to bloom, landing in the web 3.0 world where he is now CMO of Smart Token Labs.  It's this multi-discipline experience across small, medium and large brands that makes him the perfect guest to slice through the heart of what works and what doesn't. And in this episode, he doesn't disappoint.  Even if you're not specifically interested in partnerships or distribution, I highly recommend any entrepreneur, founder, marketer, or growth professional listen to this episode, because there's loads of timeless core wisdom to absorb.  Invaluable wisdom that you can't gain by not listening. So...

Republished with permission from Juan Mendoza, host of the Making Sense of Martech podcast. "In this episode I’m joined by John James. John is the host of the Champagne Strategy podcast, marketing, and technology consultant, and startup entrepreneur. John started working for global ad agencies then went client side, to government (B2G), B2B, B2C. Worked at digital agencies in Melbourne for half a decade in account manager roles and sales, he then started his own agency and ran that for 7 years. Then moved to live in San Francisco working as a growth manager for a startup before returning to AU to channel his energy into architecting a growth marketing platform. John also sits on a number of advisory boards and helps a modest list of privately owned businesses with their growth, sales and marketing strategy. We talk about why you don't always need MarTech and explore John's very unique perspective on why strategy is absolutely critical when it comes to buying tech. We delve deeper into how in most cases, and from what he's seen in his experience, you don't actually need a lot of technology to get the job done. Go here for show notes, links, and resources. Subscribe to The Martech Weekly here. Follow Juan Mendoza on LinkedIn and Twitter. Listen on Apple, Spotify, Google, and everywhere else. You can find John James on LinkedIn."

Brain hurt scale = 3/10. Andres Glusman was experimenting and validating products before the lean startup term was coined. It started in college selling peanuts at baseball games. Progressed to testing ads for the world's first digital agency. He was split testing Winnie the Pooh banner ads manually before ad software existed. Which led to his former agency boss getting him to solve an early traction problem for a startup called Meetup. Lashings of sales hustle and his revolutionary test-and-learn approach helped land Meetup their first round of funding and as they say, the rest is history. But Andres' success was no accident. Raised by a family of scientists and years before behavioral economics even had a name, he combined an early interest in science with psychology and economics. Now, Andres is revered the world over as one of the OG's of the lean startup and experimentation-based product growth method. However, in this episode we challenge the lean startup method as well as the data-driven culture favored by startups the world over. We talk about the importance of context. Using the right approach for the right stage of the business' maturity. Something full of tradeoffs and unavoidable error. But as he says, you need to, '...live with a tonne of error, because the alternative to that error is just more error'. "You want to change behavior. Everyone is trying to get people to behave in a certain way, so understanding behavior first means you're most likely able to, but it [experimentation] can be done wrong and done too much - and I've done both. People got hooked on the sauce." Also, find out which new product Andres is launching this week which will be a potential game-changer for the advertising world So strap yourself in for a ride as we explore the whole dynamic between decision making and political or opinion based decision making. While weaving loads of stories from his career into the mix. There's something in here for everyone no matter how advanced your knowledge. Peanuts....get your peanuts here

Brain-hurt Scale = 5/10. Some marketers believe Apple’s success stems from a series of emotional brand ads. Yet they ignore product strategy, distribution and ecosystems - which I would argue, is the true source of their market power. Some marketers might know what distribution and the power of physical availability is. They may drop the term in conversations, but rarely are they exposed to it or know how to go about affecting it.  Most of us in business will be aware of distribution networks in the physical goods world. Manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers. But in the service industry, it's often far more complex and subtle. And almost no one talks about it because it's hidden from sight. It's a growth-driver that firms are cagey about disclosing in public. But, probably the most powerful lever a business can pull, and very defensible once established.  This episode is the last in what is now a three-part mini-series on building distribution networks via partnerships. And there are many forms of partnerships. This is one of the first things we discuss. But, if you're just getting into the partnership side of things, I'd suggest listening to the first in this series, season 2, episode 3 with Ayaan and Peter from Impact on the topic of affiliates, digital partnerships and content. We go through lots of examples including large tech companies like Canva and smaller retailers. We start drawing lines to the natural connection partnerships have with communities, superfans, and advocates. Then listen to season 3, episode 26 where we speak with Brent Annells mostly about strategic partnerships. This is all the big deals you'll make which have the potential to create step-change growth.  In this one, we’re going to cover some of the same territory from both former episodes, but take it a step further to the upper rung of the partnership world. Where we look at scaling partnerships into systems. Specifically partnership ecosystems and communities. With examples that are most relevant to larger enterprise and SaaS tech. But even if your company is small, there's an important genesis story and lots of takeaways if you're have a less mature partnership function. This is because Bryan has created these programs from scratch. So important learnings apply to people working in a less mature partnerships function. There’s a running joke about content marketing which says content marketing works best when marketing isn’t involved. And the core lesson here for anyone that cares, is source message credibility. I.e. a source is more trusted when the brand itself isn’t the direct source of the message. And on that vein, partnerships, communities and ecosystems tend to work best when we create networks where other people becomes advocates and sell our product instead. But setting up these systems requires a lot more skill and strategic thought than simply booking a few meetings and trying to sell them a deal. Which brings us to Bryan and Xero. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you should have heard about Intuit QuickBooks and Xero. Today’s guest, Bryan was one of the original employees who kickstarted the creation of Xero’s partnership ecosystem and community. Which he started pretty much from scratch. Xero is a large multi-billion dollar public company which dominants the category of accounting software in APAC. He has since left but now advises other firms on all the dos and don’ts so they can create their own distributed partner networks. So we go through his process in a reasonable amount of detail. By the end of the episode, you should be easily able to prevent yourself from making rookie mistakes if you’re going to pursue these growth levers yourself. And you'll learn what a Champagne beer is Sound good? Click play to partner

Brain-hurt scale = 4/10. "Don't worry about profit. Just get me more growth. We can always worry about monetization and margins later." This type of statement is quite dominant within Silicon Valley culture and within modern entrepreneurship. But just how valid is this advice? Luckily, Per Davidsson, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Queensland University of Technology can answer that in detail.  But first, what is entrepreneurship and what is growth for that matter? How do we define and measure them? Why does the best business advice come from the people farthest away from you? Why is buying customers almost always a bad idea? If you want to predict the future success of a business or know your odds before you set out on an entrepreneurial journey, or even help decide whether to accept that new job at a 'high-growth' firm...this is an unmissable episode which has something for everyone.  An easy listen which can help you understand some of the macro-laws behind business growth and profit.  I'm now thinking I should be charging for these episodes. Got to increase dem margins...