Champagne Strategy

In between the strategy and channel episodes, we feature some interviews with active practitioners. After the Robin Daniels (ex WeWork CMO) episode and two other entrepreneur interviews, it was time for another.  So today we’re talking with Matthew Hammon, Australian ex-pat who now lives in New York. He’s earned his stripes over the years, leaning on an early entrepreneurial journey which started at the ripe old age of 12 in Melbourne, Australia. Having founded and run his own businesses over the years, completing numerous degrees from Marketing, to a Masters in Intellectual Property law to a soon to be completed MBA in America, he’s not only street-wise but has the book smarts to match. In fact he’s just been poached to work at one of the largest tech companies in the world which is harder to get into than Harvard. There's a reason why multiple tech companies have hired him, including Labelbox, Cognizant/Evolv, Appian, Yelp, Google and even a private equity investment company He's a practicing B2B growth marketer who's deeply embedded within the growth scene in North America and was available for a very rare two day window while between jobs.  So if you are realizing the limitations of listening to generalist fortune-cookie advice sprouted by populist industry commentators and instead want to know the truth, listen to this episode. We discuss everything from top-level strategic approaches, through to tactics and how to successfully navigate the practical political environments within which we all have to operate daily. This includes, channel strategies, attribution, product-led growth and more.  So how do you market and sell B2B products successfully? How do you ensure your strategy and tactics are ratified by the executives you report to? How do you best measure and attribute marketing expenditure to core business objectives like sales revenue? How do you bridge the gap between sales and marketing departments? How do you climb the ladder of success in one of the most competitive countries in the world? Like this…

This is our second episode on the topic of pricing strategy - the first of which was Jon Manning in Season 1 which we also recommend you to listen to first.  We could only cover so much in the last episode so in this episode we cover some of the other areas to round-out our understanding of how to use pricing strategy as a growth-driver. Any growth strategist worth their salt knows that pricing strategy can’t really be isolated from the larger business machine - product, packaging, sales, marketing etc. In particular, pricing and the product offering are inextricably interlinked. So this is where we start the discussion, and as you’ll soon hear, Kimberley Haley delves a lot into behavioral economics and packaging strategy. Throughout her career, she’s been a pioneer of executing value-based pricing as well as moving the industry past theory and into applied practice. Today she shares with you what she has learned from being on the front lines - including failures and successes along the way. Her experience as a SaaS pricing expert has extended past 15-years and included many different industries, products and services. This makes her a goldmine of information. She knows exactly how to explain how pricing works in practical contexts. While she specializes in mostly software pricing these days, what you'll hear can be applied equally across all sectors - especially services.  She isn't a talker - she's a doer. In fact this is her first podcast interview! And Kimberley doesn’t disappoint. She explains how each one of her pricing projects is unique, and details how she’s both built and implemented profitable pricing models to hundreds of specific use cases in order to maximize returns. This is all commercially sensitive and highly confidential work of course - so none of the famous companies she does this work for can be mentioned, but I do convince her to disclose a bit of her secret sauce. This includes an interesting story about leading a pricing strategy and deal desk team for a $1.7B B2B data & analytics organization that featured over 40 different product lines. Kimberley is someone who has designed pricing strategies to optimize returns for many different sales distribution channels and product lines. This includes, how to redesign discount policies to minimize value erosion, implement renewal programs to improve retention, and how to use quote-to-cash automation to accelerate the sales cycle. What is value - how do you break it down and optimize it? So what is a value-engineer - and why do all the highest growth tech companies in the world hire these roles? How do the companies whose products you use weekly - manipulate your purchase behavior through intentional pricing mechanisms and their superior understanding of behavioral economics? Why are subscription pricing models so hot right now and why are traditional companies experimenting with them? What's the story behind AT&T’s packaging which customer’s hate, forms the basis of a Southpark episode, but is a roaring commercial success? What are the best pricing books to read? You’ll learn all the dirty little secrets of the business world which cause us to buy - more often, and at higher prices than we probably might like to.

Some of the first forms of recorded advertising was the SPQR insignia that Roman soldiers displayed on the Standards they carried into battle - Similar inscriptions are, to this day, still visible on the tops of manholes around Rome. Signage and other forms of outdoor advertising are perhaps THE original form of advertising. This topic is Charmaine's area of expertise and we start this discussion talking about the history of outdoor advertising which goes back millennia. Currently, she's the CEO of two organizations: The Outdoor Media Association, and Move (an audience measurement tech company). Charmaine has just had to endure perhaps the most challenging period of her professional career. As you can imagine, it was a hard sell, convincing people to advertise outdoor when everyone was locked inside, all the while advocating for a local industry that accounts for $1bn in annual revenue. So we needed to get a crash course into the world of outdoor advertising. When to use it, how it's different to other mediums, it's strengths, it's weaknesses, how to do it well and how it can go wrong.  So what is outdoor advertising? Which outdoor medium is particularly good at targeting time-poor, c-suite executives. What are ghost signs and why did a Scotsman crowdfund an outdoor campaign targeting a visiting head of state? We find out what she thinks of Minority Report and Bladerunner 2020 as well as discuss neuroscience, measurement methodologies and even erectile disfunction! What is LTS in the world of outdoor? What is the critical difference between outdoor and other ad mediums which was recently revealed by neuroscience research. How did Spotify manage to crush Pandora in Australia using outdoor? Gain a better understanding about the world of Outdoor in all of it’s largess.

If you think positioning strategy is a bunch of fluffy brand-purpose-laden statements mixed with a few dual-axis, positioning maps, you’re in for a  rude awakening. Because as you'll soon discover, that's not what professional positioning strategists do. Kimberly A. Whitler is perhaps most famous for her book on this topic, and positioning strategy is what we initially aim to talk about, but what comes out in the wash during this discussion are lashings of strategic wisdom any senior leader, serious about growth would be interested in. She has a wealth of experience spent working with brands like Coca Cola, P&G, Gartner, Forbes and even the US Department of Defense before more recently, becoming an academic. It's this combination of empirical research discipline and practical experience that forms such a killer combination. This episode is jam-packed with plenty of detailed explanations and stories from her career. Kimberly is currently an Associate Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and her approach is exactly in the hitting zone of this podcast. She’s staunchly focused on work that helps boards, CEOs, and CMOs leverage marketing for strategic advantage. Unlike career academics however, she’s not someone who drafts research papers for papers sake. Her work is meant to be implemented, measured and critiqued in the real world. It’s for this reason her research wins award after award. Her book about Positioning is a must-read and I'd argue, probably more robust than the seminal book by Al Reis’. There’s also nuggets of gold to be mined in her various online Forbes articles too which have collectively garnered over 4 million views. What mistake did Nike make with their brand position on a very divisive topic in North America?  Is brand purpose valuable or is it just a bunch of a virtue-signaling PC corporate hogwash? Why is it critical to understand the difference between supply-side orientation, demand-side orientation, output orientation and through-put orientation? Why should you view positioning like a battlefield or the game Battleship? How you can use positioning strategy to attract employees in the hyper-competitive labor market? How do brands get brand purpose wrong? Which critical skill do CMOs need before they can progress into senior roles? Why shouldn’t you source your positioning strategy from an ad agency? What’s her take on the fad of ‘category creation’ within the tech sector? What questions should you ask when hiring a CMO to avoid hiring a dud? Lots of questions.  Lots of answers.  Press play

Sean Ellis, the OG who coined the term 'growth hacking' explains the key determinants to growth for both SaaS and traditional businesses. In under one hour, you'll find out the macro version of why this approach to growing any business is so effective. I really don't need to write any more here. If you are a founder, a business owner, a growth professional, product manager or marketer and you're interested in the non-BS side of the growth discipline - you need to press play.  Over and out. 

Why does Rich Mironov disagree with Elon Musk regarding his statements about product? Is PLG a real thing or just another cult-buzzword? What are the secrets behind creating successful products which sell themselves?  Rich Mironov is one of the OG's of the product strategy and management world. He started working for tech companies before tech was cool. Before Product Management was even a term. And his experience over the years has spanned decades. He worked on AI in the 70s. He was arguably the first to sell web.sql software and has one of the original blogs of the internet.  So do great products sell themselves? How do you craft products to give them the best chance of commercial success.   Essential listing if you are a founder, you work in product, work in marketing, work in growth or part of agile software teams. 

What is creative strategy? What is the secret behind award-winning agency, Thinkerbell and their ability to consistently push out creative that works. How do you keep a creative machine humming throughout the ups and downs of business? We speak with the two most senior MD's from Thinkerbell, Katie Dally and Paul Swann to find out.  Katie has over 18 years of international experience across Sydney, London and Cape Town. Currently she's the GM of Thinkerbell, Sydney which has seen 67% headcount growth in under 12 months, and just recently landed the lucrative Lion account. Past gigs have included a senior role at CHE Proximity which retained IAG, Velocity, Virgin and the Prospa account. She also formerly ran VMLY&R Sydney as Managing Partner, where her client list included Netflix, Colgate Palmolive and McDonald’s to name a few Paul left university in 1999 and started a consultancy advising businesses on how to tackle the ‘millennium bug’ before he pivoted into web design. A boutique media agency role Soho in London followed where his love affair with advertising began and multinational exposure naturally followed. He moved to Australia landing a lead role with Naked Communications which quickly became a highly awarded and sought-after agency. In 2012 he became a Creative Partner at The Works, an agency which had success with accounts such as Optus and Rexona - quickly solidifying its role as one of the country's largest independent agencies. Paul joined Thinkerbell as Executive Creative 'Tinker' of the recently launched Sydney office.  This episode delves into the determinants of effective creative, but on the flipside, explores the reasons why so many brands push out bland content - overlooking the effectiveness multiplier that could be leveraged with better creative.   What comes out in the wash is a glimpse into the new dynamic that traditional advertising agencies are faced with. Do clients need separate agencies for creative, media and publicity? Or can this all be handled by one agency? Do clients need an agency at all? What are the determinants of successful creative work? If you work at an agency or work client-side with them, this is a must-listen episode.  If you are wondering how Vegemite started a war with Marmite during The Ashes series, or the story behind how the 'You're not you when you're hungry' Snickers campaign came about, then this is a must-listen.   If you want to know how modern cross-functional team structures can work in a modern marketing context, then this is an unmissable episode.  If you want to know how to leverage creativity to your advantage in your job role...listen to this episode.  Did we mention this is an unmissable episode?

Is the best path to growth dependent on retaining the customers you already have, or by acquiring new ones? This is a major bane of contention depending on who you talk to, but today we're exploring Anita's side of the argument which is all about churn reduction strategy (a.k.a retention). But in doing so, we talk about so much more, including the pivotal role the sales process plays into this whole debate, as well as customer success, support, brand and marketing.  If you are bleeding customers, this is a must-listen.  If your sales team are hitting quota, and your figures look strong, but customer's don't renew, and CLV is poor, this is a must-listen.  What macro factors play into your figures and how much can you bend those mathematical ratios? There's not much more to say.  Start listening and improve your knowledge of how growth actually works.  Oh and Earl Grey tea is tasty.  But I can't help but think how many people have churned from this podcast now...food for thought

One of the main reasons companies don't grow and stagnate is because they fail to execute on their planning phase.  There's many reasons why. This is an area we'll cover exclusively in this episode.  It’s always nice when you stumble across people in strategy who have interesting backgrounds. The more diverse and strange the background, the better the strategist in my book. These people tend to be a wealth of wisdom and have a certain perspective that only comes off the back of diversity of thought which in turn stems from a diversity of life experience. Karim’s career so far is strong and broad with a solid foundation of both book and street smarts. It started with a double masters in computer science and energy engineering, before he moved into product strategy and management and consulting roles. His CV is impressive to say the least. But then there’s the global context. To say he’s multicultural is an understatement. He’s lived and worked in 7 different countries which beats my measly 4. And this global curiosity must have helped land a role at the business travel division of Expedia group. Here he led global projects to help create a customer obsession culture in order to drive business growth. Managing a 15m budget and bringing together over 7 different departments to make them more customer centric was no easy feat. He’s just finished a product role at Safety Culture at the start of 2021, which is an Australian unicorn startup. Currently, he’s in a senior leadership role at Cascade - a strategy software platform that’s focused on bridging the gap between planning and execution for multi-business unit companies. And this is why we had to talk Connecting these two phases is one of the most challenging things a company will ever do. This whole episode is on just this topic. But by listening you will pick up so much more value. You’ll learn why companies don’t follow through and what are the 3 main things that prevents them. You’ll find out which things need to be present for strategy to work really well. You'll find out why we’re both dismissive of bridging in external consultants into a grey-haired boardroom to do annual strategy days. You'll learn which question you should ask yourself before starting any task which will instantly make you more strategic. Find out the main things which prevent innovation and all the true hallmarks of innovative companies. Learn why company culture is so pivotal and underestimated as a successful strategy driver Karim isn't a boring person. So even if strategy isn't your thing, have a listen and I'm sure you'll pick up quite a few handy tips no matter what job you do.  Ciao for now. 

Part 2 of 2. A continuation of the interview with Jennifer Harrison. Listen to Part 1 first.