Champagne Strategy

Brain-hurt scale = 9/10. Every day, we hear about new studies in the field of marketing and growth. Industry whitepapers. Academic theories. This law. That law. An industry group finds TV is better than Facebook. The next week, another group finds the exact opposite. Byron vs Binet. Galloway vs Gary V. This study vs that study. It's exhausting, now to sit here and even write about it. Unfortunately, for the rest of us. Everyone is so busy selling their angle, what gets lost in all this radio ga ga is the truth. Then again, does anyone really care underneath? Many famous commentators have built successful personal brands off the back of other people's work. They cherry-picking findings, write an article or two, publishing a blog, post on the socials, wrap it up into a few keynote speeches, and cash out by selling online courses on the side. And these are often very entertaining people. Talented writers and fantastic speakers. They know how to capture our attention, keep it and stay top of mind.  And we'll admit. Some of these findings can sound really good. They can feel right. They might even reinforce our beliefs or suspicions. They're easy to understand and communicate to others. They simplify complexity. But, if you're trying to get closer to the truth in order to make well-informed decisions, there's often just a lot of noise we have to wade through first to get to the answer. So, what works and what doesn't? What's valid and what's just paper-pushing academia or industry lobby hogwash. What's popular thought and what's true?  Well, we though we'd ask Koen Pauwels some of these questions.  His career is interesting to say the least. He started as econometrician. Then mixed this knowledge with marketing and became revered for creating accurate econometric models as an early pioneer of BI dashboards. This was almost a decade before digital dashboard systems hit the mass-market.  But perhaps best of all, he's got a lot of personal experience wrapping all of these academic concepts into actions which businesses can actually use to pre-test their ideas, measure effectiveness and make better decisions. What he found, and what we also know in practice is that context, really, really matters. And the variability of different contexts is often skipped in the broader marketing industry debate.  What works for one business in one territory in one geography, in one product category. Can be completely different to another company operating within the same parameters. Why is that? Especially if there are pretty concrete, broad-brush laws that should apply? Even if you read into EBI's work, you'll notice quite a lot of variation within laws that broadly hold true. Ignoring these edge cases, or variance is a critical mistake. It doesn't necessarily disprove laws, but it's really important to understand all the variables that are at play. This requires delving a bit deeper than all famous industry commentators do.  So strap yourself in and marketing-geek out with this episode.  Learn about beer and Champagne.  Learn how the tradition of spraying bottles of bubbly during car races first started.  Learn the political reality of marketing decision-making.  Sort the academic paper chaff from the wheat.  But most of all, tap into Koen's deep expertise bridging the gap between marketing theory and practice.  Ready?

Brain-hurt scale = 6/10. If you work in the world of advertising or media, especially in Australia or the UK, I'd be surprised if you haven't heard of Karen Nelson Field.  Fresh from an escapade sipping rose and snacking on caviar on the French Riviera, we’re actually not talking to her about attention & advertising measurement. Sorry to disappoint. But, that's been covered in depth already. Instead we're talking about categories and applied marketing/entrepreneurship. All about how she's put theory into practice and the gulf between the two.  As a former academic and researcher at the Ehrenberg Bass Institute, we were especially interested to hear her take on the latter.  What motivated her to strike out on her own and start Amplified Intelligence? How has she crafted her personal brand over the years?  Why focus on the area of attention measurement and where does she believe the firm is heading in the future? In this episode you'll learn how different an understanding Marketing theory and laws is, versus actually implementing this knowledge in a business. Crafting a product offering and creating a category from scratch. Some famous industry commentators like to commentate & criticize from the sidelines. Whereas Karen has put her money where her mouth is. A lot do not. We explore categories. Product categories, market categories. Category creation. Do categories even exist anyway? How bound are we by them? Can we stretch, distort, move outside or even create our own entirely? Along the way, you'll hear her entrepreneurial story which hasn’t been covered in detail before today.  So come behind the scenes.  Behind what you probably know about KNF and discover a different side.  A deep business intellect which many haven’t explored.  Until today. Until you press play.

Brain-hurt scale = 7/10. Patrick Campbell's story is fascinating. From rural Wisconsin to the NSA and then bootstrapping a tech company to a recent $200m sale. Sounds crazy until you learn how his mind works and the sharp business intellect that's feeding success.  In a world of social media influencers and industry commentator journalists, we can easily listen to conflicted advice. The truth isn't a dominant voice, so it gets lost. So today, you can hear first-hand from someone who has grown a business from scratch and all the ways they did it. What worked, what didn't. What is timeless, evergreen sage advice. And what wouldn't work as effectively today.  And the TL:DR version of this episode is - if you adopted Patrick's business mindset, you'd save a large degree of wasted effort.  One of the most important points we touch, is the dangers of buying into a playbook that's worked for another firm and trying to apply it without considering context.  And the whole conversation weaves throughout the history of his business, from the genesis of Price Intelligently > Profitwell > Paddle. And all the things the team did to grow it in the early days. Versus how it ticks along today.  Included is: - how he thinks - how he approaches growth strategy that works. His growth mindset approach to marketing - how he sits on $24bn/year of data from subscription businesses, and can tap into that accurate sample to base what he says in this talk with fact - not opinion  - churn - is it only bound by macro brand factors or is it more complex than that? - how to choose the right marketing freelancers or vendors - and how to assemble an effective team - the dangers of playbooks and 'copy/paste' marketing - the best ratio of planning to execution - how he approaches which channels to use for growth. How it's changed over time and his current advice - the difference between content marketing verses content creation - attribution - measuring the right things with your marketing spend - decision-making & hierarchies - competitive intelligence - first-principal thinking - quilting  Wait what?  Listen

Brain-hurt scale = 5/10. When was the last time you saw a startup's GTM strategy include sales prospecting cold calls? Pretty much never. Most early-stage startups and shy businesses skip this crucial step. Instead preferencing an introverted, passive, direct response style approach. Which includes ads on digital channels targeting in-market buyers. In this episode, you'll find out why this is often a big, big mistake.  Unless you've been living under a rock, we've all seen that scene at the end of The Wolf of Wall Street where Jordan Belfort uses the 'sell me this pen' routine to teach people about one particular sales fundamental. A very simple but key to great sales which nearly everyone gets wrong.  People who think they can sell, immediately start talking about the pen. Its color, the shape, the finish, the ink, it's cost. Basically verbalizing to the person they are selling to, all the reasons why the pen is awesome and why they need it.  Good salespeople know better than to do this.  Instead, they start asking questions and identifying problems the prospect has which the pen can solve. This requires, empathy, a brain and above all, a deeper understanding of why people buy. Isn’t it funny, in our lives, how often do we do the opposite.  This is why orthodox sales behavior is all wrong. We all start explaining things about our product and how good we think it is, instead of the customer and their situation. It seems so obvious, but this simple oversight causes billions upon billions of wasted sales and marketing resources every year.  It causes salespeople to believe they can sell (when they can't) and marketers to think they're doing effective marketing when they're not. And this can cause the sales and marketing function to quickly devolve into a volume-based shouting match where everyone is hoping the market will listen. Most of the time, the market doesn't care because you're sounding just like everyone else who wants to sell them something. They look at these companies and instantly form the opinion that they just don't get it. They don't understand them, and what they want.  So how do you make them care? How should you sell? Today, we’re talking with Benjamin Dennehy to clear up this mess. He helps train sales teams and consults to companies all around the world. Self-branded as the UK’s most hated sales trainer, part-time LinkedIn male model, Trump hat aficionado...He’s got personality, he’s got the right words, but above all he knows sales, because he actually does it. So if you’ve ever wanted to sell, you need to listen to this episode. Maybe you’re trying to convince a manager of your idea. Maybe you're trying to convince the kids to get in the car. Maybe you're trying to get a hotter partner on the dating circuit. Or selling yourself on the corner downtown…Whatever it is. You'll get a crash course in how to do it properly by listening to the next 59mins. I was literally laughing out loud while editing this yesterday. Ben's entertaining and this chat is an easy listen. It’s not technical. It’s wildly frank. Funnily enough, there’s no shortage of sales gurus out there, who are so good at selling, they have everyone fooled. But most can’t sell, personally. Ben can. And that’s why we’re talking What is sales? What’s the difference between sales and a transaction? What’s the difference between an AE, SDR, BDM? What’s the best sales software to use? What are the critical missteps people make in sales that you should avoid? And what’s his sales process? It's like this

Brain-hurt scale = 5/10. The microphone is reversed John sprawled on a green sofa, which burns your retinas.  They talk and Tim extracts Viral cat videos on TikTok. Cake decoration. Channel envy. Visual bias. The principal agent problem and agency relationships.  Marketing vs growth vs sales. Content strategies that work. Measurement and metrics. Strategy planning vs execution.  Tim Beanland interviews John James for his Experts Blueprint podcast - uploaded here for your convenience. If you want your marketing to affect bottom-line growth instead of pumping out endless 'creative' that's 'on-brand'. This is the episode for you.  Let them eat cake or generate cash The choice is yours

Brain-hurt scale = 9/10. SEO is dead. Email is dead. Facebook is dead. It's all about inbound not outbound now. If I had a dollar for everyone saying something is dead, I'd be a rich man. Unfortunately, many will follow this advice based on the assumed credibility of the brand saying it. Most of the time, they are just positioning themselves as an alternative to the 'dead' thing, and pushing their own agenda. Smart operators don't fall for this hubris.  Cold email isn't dead. It just needs to be done properly. It has to be done in a particular way so your emails bypass junk filters which are as sophisticated as ever. Do you want to learn how to do this? Jesse Ouellette will teach you the basics in this episode.  In the current atmosphere of marketing budget crunches - email remains the cheapest, most scalable, most automated and most effective ways to generate revenue - especially for B2B companies. But, you've got to do it right. Get your copywriting right. Get your infrastructure right. And then build a test-learn-optimize system which supports the effort with constant oversight.  Just a warning though - it's best if you have some kind of technical understanding of how email works (even at a basic level) otherwise, portions of this interview may go over your head. So make sure you know what a domain is. Know what a junk mail filter is. Know what a server and host is...etc.  When you listen to the whole thing, you'll quickly discover, there are far more people who pretend to know how this works, but very few who actually do underneath.  Jesse is one of the latter. Interested in his craft? Go here https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jesseoue_the-cold-e-mail-master-inbox-strategy-activity-6954125572365021184-RYIw?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web

Brain-hurt scale = 7/10. "Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two--and only two--basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business." Peter Drucker.  Innovation always seems to make the list of one of the top priorities for businesses. It's always something management talks about and employees want to attach themselves to, but more often than not, the brutal truth is that they completely suck at it.  Therefore, innovation typically remains an elusive buzzword at best, or at worst, a department that fumbles along like an awkward teenager on a first date trying to get some action. And after a failed attempt or two, they're forced to rely on M&A or side investments in startups (paying for action). It's a much surer bet.  How do you do it properly? How do you avoid failure? What skills do you need to do it well? Today we’re talking to an innovation consultant Adam Hamilton.  And while officially, this chat is about innovation and new product development, the takeaways are relevant and broad for nearly every senior thinker. Especially applicable to anyone in any role who is trying to make something new a success. And this is why having exposure to great innovation has such wide application to so many different roles.  Maybe you're thinking of starting a business. Or you're an early stage startup trying to get product traction. Or a later stage tech company trying to extend your product line. Maybe you work in product management or growth. Maybe you are launching a new campaign or Go to Market strategy. Maybe you are slowly realizing that real marketing is much, much more than just advertising promotions.  Innovation at its core, when done well, is about, as Adam puts it, 'product problem fit'. And in a larger sense, 'product-market fit'.  This is really, really hard.  But as you'll soon find out, learning this skill set is very multidisciplinary but quite essential if you want to understand how business really works at it's most fundamental level. And you won't get this knowledge from anyone in finance. Your CFO, finance director or accountant. You won't get it from your marketing agency who are more concerned with scalable, billable ad spend. You won't get it from executives who have never started a business or owned something right through to the outcome. You won't get it from management consultants who are so detached from the realities of true market forces. You will get it from speaking to real entrepreneurs and business owners. You will get it from really experienced, strategic marketing professionals who have been around the block. Adam is the latter.  He has worked for massive FMCG companies, small startups and government. He does brand strategy as well as general marketing and product strategy. He was an early adopter of the Ehrenberg Bass Institute's work. And he combines a lot of these principles, mixes it with his own direct experience, work in marketing comms, marketing, innovation, product, B2B, B2C, B2G and everything else in between. And he applies these for businesses of all size as a consultant. Underneath, most companies will admit that their innovation isn’t working very well and there's a couple of main reasons for that. So If you want to avoid innovation mistakes and learn how to do it properly. You need to listen to this episode. I think no matter sort of what skill level you're in, whether you want to start a business, whether you just want to do better work within your department - it doesn't matter. If you have any sort of exposure with the market and want to learn how to extract value from it - this episode is for you.

Brain-hurt scale = 5/10. Great products sell themselves and advertising is just the price you pay for a bad product right? Word of Mouth Marketing or WOM. Is it even a channel? Can you really grow without spending money on advertising? Can you enhance the natural rate of WOM? The TL:DR answer is Yes. Yes and Yes.  Right now, budgets are getting crimped and the heat is on for high-cash burn marketing channels. And there’s nothing higher cash-burn than advertising. So how do you grow a brand and sell your product without advertising?  Everyone knows the most powerful growth-driver is word-of-mouth. It’s especially critical for higher-involvement, more complex, higher priced products/services which require a lot of trust. There are lots of products and services which we don’t exactly purchase after seeing a few ads. Especially if your brand is less known.  For finance, invasive medical, real estate, estate planning, and accounting...this is especially the case.  WOM hits at the core of great marketing. In fact, it’s a great barometer of organic growth as well as the degree of product-market fit you have. But is it fixed? Is it just a the result of upstream activity? Can we use it as a growth channel? Is there even a playbook to make it work? Ted Wright, former Booze Allen consultant, ex-Delta Airlines global brand manager, Lecturer at Wharton, Founder and CEO of WOM marketing agency Fizz spills the beans.  In this episode, you’ll learn how important it is to go back to basics. Understand your core offering. Identify those who are most likely to recommend your product to others and then, put in place a program to enhance this natural process. But there’s 3 factors necessary before this holy grail of marketing will work. And there’s 3 product categories where it’s almost impossible. We also delve into a bit of attribution and channel strategy. Especially the problems with spending money on channels which claim to contribute to sales, but don’t. Something which can be easily overlooked when presented with a good-looking MMM report or a fancy digital attribution dashboard. In this episode, you'll find out: - how New Zealand sauvignon blanc became something from nothing. - which two simple Viagra ads originally catapulted the drug into popular culture - what the difference is between WOM and referrals, advocates, super fans and influencers - why getting your story right so critical - the difference between truth vs authenticity in your brand story - why brands who pay Kim Kardashian for social exposure almost never use her again - the parallels between WOM and Einstein's comments on dark matter - what rasterization is - why you should follow Steakumms on social media And finally, Find out why, word of mouth is this podcast’s most powerful growth channel. All these questions and more will be answered in this interview. Just remember to tell at least one other person about this episode or Ted is going to mark me down!

Brain-hurt scale = 8/10. We've all heard of the data breach scandals. Cambridge Analytica. Hackers holding customer databases to ransom, demanding Bitcoin payments. Platforms sharing your data with other companies who you weren't even aware of. GDPR privacy crackdowns in Europe. Senate enquiries in the US. Customer lists being stolen by employees and used to start new businesses. Data was once described as 'the new oil. But, in a world awash with data, what data is valuable and what isn't.  So today, we're lifting the lid on the entire industry. Especially what all of this means for people who want to use data to acquire new customers and grow companies.  If you've ever worked in B2B you know, getting your data right is often make or break - especially in the early days. Sales needs high quality, enriched prospect lists. And marketing or growth want accurate audience data to warm these people up/ They want to preserve precious funds and not be forced to rely on the default, broad (and sometimes intentionally inaccurate) targeting parameters that all the ad platforms want you to use.  And the smaller your target market is, the more accurate these data need to be. Albeit, this is less of an issue for larger B2B brands and most B2C companies. But, regardless of whether you are B2B or B2C, large or small brand, it always pays to have high quality data instead of poor quality data.  So how do you go about doing this? Where do you get it from? What tools can you use? How can you be sure, in a rapidly shifting employee market, that these data are even accurate?  Today we talk with MIT grad data scientist and startup founder, Edan Krolewicz who has been working in this field his entire career. He's compiled data, sold it, architected and build systems for collection, verification, filtering and usage. And he's also used it for growth - personally. So he was the perfect person to find out all the basics we need to know.  But we also needed to go a bit deeper. What a lot of other discussions miss, is how to use these data for the customer acquisition process. And if you know me, I'm not afraid to get a bit tactical. So this episode extends really nicely from the Willem Paling episode (s3 ep2) where we talk more generally about data for mostly business level strategy purposes (segmentation/targeting). So if you listen to this episode, it will follow on very nicely from that one. Today, we start at targeting and then follow through to execution for sales and marketing.  And stay tuned because we're working on another upcoming episode where we will continue on from this level of execution and go deeper into cold email outreach. So what is customer data? How do you build lists ensuring quality (accuracy and recency)? How do you enrich your existing data?  How does the dark, shady side of the data industry operate? What's legal. What isn't and what's grey? What are ABM platforms and how much can be automated? What are the tradeoffs? How do we get the basics of email outreach right and how does everyone get it wrong? What are typical email deliverability, response and conversion stats for these campaigns? What should we look out for when choosing the good data providers from the bad? In this area, you need to choose wisely.  To make informed, world-class decisions.  You need to first consult with an expert. And that's just one click away! 

Brain-hurt scale = 6/10. "I very frequently get the question: 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' And that is a very interesting question; it's a very common one. I almost never get the question: 'What's not going to change in the next 10 years?' And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two -- because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time." Jess Bezos.  In a rapidly changing marketing landscape it's very easy to get distracted by everything new. It's exciting. It's buzzworthy. It has political capital (to an extent).  This has led to an explosion in different digital media, and tech tools. All claiming they have the secret sauce to effective marketing. So why do so many of these investments fail to translate reliably into commercially valuable outcomes?  Therefore, what's more interesting to me, are the fundamental parts of marketing which don't change. Because, if you understand those, you can apply them to everything you do. Any channel. Any execution, any context - and be confident that it will be somewhat successful.   So, today we're talking with Malcolm Auld. "Omg John why are you talking to a 'boomer'?"  Shock horror ladies and gentlemen - people with lots of experience, often know what they are talking about.  So who better to talk about the first principles of great marketing and direct mail, than the person who published the first book in the world outside of North America on email marketing. He's been there for the first dot com, and now here for the second. He’s worked in some of the largest agencies in the world and the smallest. Started his own agencies. Lectures at University. Worked in senior marketing and board positions for both large and small businesses. B2B, B2C, B2G. Product and services. Online SaaS and traditional. Digital media and traditional. You name it, he’s done it. And yes, he's not a millennial, futurist, Web3.0, cryto-bro, cyber hustler. Thank god.  In this episode, you'll find out interesting things like: What is direct marketing? What is direct mail? Why DTC is a concept that is over 150 years old and which company pioneered the format. Why A/B testing is also a decades old concept used in the advertising industry by another 'boomer' exec.  Find how the historical tussle between the direct marketing and brand advertising agencies started, and why it continues to blindside marketers to this day - to the detriment of everyone. Find out why digital marketers would benefit from studying direct marketing inorder to prevent making mistakes and spending time discovering things which have already been discovered.  Why should retailers cease offering free delivery? Why you should still send printed bills and invoices to your customers instead of electronically? Why do some of the biggest, fastest growing tech companies use direct mail to acquire and sell to customers, including Amazon, Google, PayPal, Ubereats, Dinnerly, Doordash, Sonos, and Hellofresh, - Which form of direct mail is the fastest growing marketing channel in North America, second only to TikTok? What led to the bomb squad blowing up one of Malcolm’s direct mail pieces on prime-time TV? Which channel did David Ogilvy use the most to acquire new clients for his agency? Do people still read long form copy or are they too time poor? Why is understanding the Hemingway and Flesch reading scores critical to your success in selling anything, to anyone? And sure the topic is Direct Mail or Direct Marketing, but there’s so much more gold in here for new marketers, junior marketers, senior marketers and everyone else in between. Ignore the wisdom espoused in this episode to your own detriment.