Uncensored CMO

Latest Episodes:

When The World Zigs, Zag - Sir John Hegarty, BBH Apr 25, 2022

Show notes

It's 40 years since the founding of one of the most famous and iconic advertising agencies; BBH or Bartle, Bogle, Hegarty. Today I speak with founder, Sir John Hegarty to find out what it's been like to be at the helm of one of the world's most successful ad agencies for 4 decades.

We take a look back over a long history of advertising to see what's changed, what we can learn and maybe what new techniques today are worth investing in. We touch on many of the great campaigns that come out to BBH, two of my favourites in particular being Levi's from the early eighties and more recently, Audi, which was in fact, one of their founding clients and spanned the entire 40 year history of the agency. As you would expect an amazing storyteller full of wit and wisdom and lots of great advice.

Here's what we covered:

How Sir John got into advertising
What advice he would give after 5 decades in Advertising
Why you should entertain rather than inform
How advertising followed cultural trends
Why advertising appears to be making worse creative but expect better results
The lack of evidence for brand building via social media
How BBH turned Levi’s around and inspired their own agency positioning
The making of Levi’s iconic Laundrette advert
Why the model ended up wearing Boxer shorts
How Levi’s ad revitalised famous music tracks
The longest running BBH client
How the ‘factory visit’ inspired one of the most famous taglines
Why being illogical can be the right thing to do
Being defined by your work
The importance of creative people at the top of the company
How creativity helps solve business problems
Advice to clients for how to get the best out of their agency
How the audience ended up coming last in our priorities
Why we are all making creative decisions and how to be more creative
The importance of being Fearless and not being afraid to fail
Advice for selling in creative ideas to clients
The one piece of creative work John is most proud of
Why purpose gets you on the pitch but doesn’t win you the game
Advice to a 20 year old John

Links

Follow me on Twitter: @uncensoredCMO
Follow me on LI: LinkedIn
My website: www.uncensoredcmo.com
Email me: jon@uncensoredcmo.com

How Pip & Nut went from kitchen table to multi-million pound business - Pip Murray, Pip & Nut Apr 11, 2022

Show notes

Pip Murray is the founder of Pip & Nut, which she launched in 2015 and it's now stocked in over 3,000 stores around the UK. It's the fastest growing nut butter brand around, and it's clear to see why. Pip is full of stories and insights in journey building the company, from humble beginnings in her kitchen and at craft fairs to becoming a staple brand on the shelves of all major supermarkets.

What we covered in this episode:

Why Pip started a nut butter business
From kitchen table to full scale production
The constant trial and error to find the perfect recipe
The confidence that comes from being close to your customer
The importance of the right manufacturing partner and selling them the dream
The challenge of minimum production run when you get started
Pip&Nut’s first customer and the importance of focussing on it
What to do when you have no marketing budget
Bootstrapping and crowdfunding to cover the first couple of years
The pro’s and con’s of starting a business when you are young
How easy it is to convince yourself our of an idea and the power of intelligent naivety
How the biggest doubts come in as you scale and stakes get bigger
The opportunity cost of doing too much
Betting big on brand identity from the start
Inspiration from the B&B studios portfolio and finding the right chemistry
The 3 things every Private Equity company does when they acquire a brand
Finding the right design and why Pip used her name in the brand identity
The challenge and opportunity of a national retailer listing
The trade off between focussed distribution and full scale distribution
Why keeping it tight is so important
What we can learn from the best soft drink launches
The advantage of playing in the niche to begin with
Cash flow challenges of a scale up
Sources of funding for growth and finding the right people to invest
The messy nature of startups and the power of empathy from an experienced investor
What the hardest moment of Pip’s journey taught her
Divesting yourself and learning to delegate to the team
The nerve wracking moment of going on TV for the first time
The importance of B-Corp status and making a sustainable brand
How Pip would define success
The energy you gain from a crisis
Why the best way to learn is doing
Pip’s advice for her 24 year old self

Why we should all give a s**t about B2B - Jon Lombardo and Peter Weinberg, LinkedIn B2B Institute Mar 23, 2022

Show notes

Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo are the heads of research and development at the B2B Institute, a think tank at LinkedIn that studies the laws of growth in B2B. You can follow Peter and Jon on LinkedIn.

What we covered in this episode:

Introducing the youngest B2B marketers on the planet
Jon & Peters favourite Super Bowl ads
The very low hurdle of writing a B2B article
How half the economy is in fact B2B
Is B2B really different to B2C
Sales vs Product led B2B companies
The Product Delusion and why it damages marketing
How B2B ads compare to B2C on long term brand building
What everyone can learn from Salesforce
How brand advertising is good for sales and talent
The power of cuddly furry animals
Publicity vs Persuasion in Advertising
Plug for ‘Why does the Pedlar Sing’ by Paul Feldwick
Introducing the 95:5 rule
The best search engine is the one in your head
The importance of aligning marketing with finance
Sponsoring the first ever B2B Cannes Lion
Advertising is the tax for having a bad product
Their least successful Marketing Week article
Liberty Mutual and the power of sound
What we can learn from Boston beers Super Bowl winning Ad
How emotion regulates what we pay attention to
Why characters are the most underused tactic in advertising
Wear in vs Wear out and why incentives for agency and client aren’t aligned
The Originality Delusion and the power of old ideas
Bitcoin maximalism and the power of blending something old and new

Confidence, Creativity & Catching Big Ideas - Andrew Robertson, CEO BBDO Mar 02, 2022

Show notes

Andrew Robertson has been President and Chief Executive Officer of BBDO Worldwide since June 2004, and has worked with major clients including AT&T, ExxonMobil, FedEx, Ford, GE, Mars Inc, PepsiCo, SAP and Visa.

It has been named Network of the Year at Cannes a record-setting seven times and the world's most awarded agency network according to The Gunn Report/World Advertising Research Center for thirteen years in a row. Since 2005, BBDO has been honoured as Global Agency of the Year in Ad Age, Adweek (three times) and Campaign (five times). BBDO Worldwide was also recognized as the Most Effective Network in the world by the Global Effies in 2011, 2014, 2015 and 2017.

Andrew first came to BBDO in the UK in 1995, joining Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO where he subsequently served as Chief Executive. In 2001, he moved to BBDO North America to serve as President and CEO.

He began his advertising career at Ogilvy & Mather, London as a Media Planner. He switched to Account Management and was appointed to the Board of Ogilvy & Mather in 1986. In 1989, he joined J. Walter Thompson and in November 1990, was appointed Chief Executive of WCRS.

Andrew has a degree in Economics from City of London University. He currently serves on the Boards of Autism Speaks and Hope Funds for Cancer Research. He is a past Chairman of The Advertising Council.

What we covered in this episode:

Falling into advertising after starting out in civil engineering
Why Andrew learnt selling insurance and gambling through the night
The late night conversation that led Andrew to advertising
18 years at the helm of a global adverting business
Why getting the people right is the most important task of any CEO
The importance of time spent with customers
Learning to love problems and embrace them as opportunities
Loving what your business creates
Where the trophies of ‘The most awarded network agency in the world’ are kept
Why ‘meaning it’ is the secret to staying on top of your creative game
Building a strong network bottom up with strong local creative agencies
Attracting a limited pool of truly exceptional people
Why emotion is the most effective thing you can do
The power of platform ideas
Don’t understand the value of craft
Calculating the downside risk to help you take the leaps that lead to upside
The pursuit of certainty leads to the norm
How the snickers creative idea was ‘caught’ in a line of copy
Why all great ideas are obvious after their invention
The power of a new way of seeing an old idea
Why Andrew’s favourite ad was one that delivered bad news
The benefits of sleeping with a homeless guy
It’s hard not to buy from someone who makes you smile
How confidence in the team beats the silver bullet when it comes to pitching
The expectation of agencies to deliver effortlessly seamless and connected communication at every tough point
Half my advertising is wasted but it’s gets a lot worse in digital

The secret to winning the best Super Bowl Ad - Lesya Lysyj, CMO Boston Beer Feb 23, 2022

Show notes

Jon chats with CMO of Boston Beer, Lesya Lysyj, who has nearly 30 years of marketing experience in the food and beverage industry. Prior to joining Boston Beer, she served as President U.S. (Sales and Marketing) for Welch’s Foods.

Watch the ad here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9GUnNAL9yY

What we covered in this episode

Counting down the Top 10 Super Bowl ads of 2022
The power of humour and nostalgia for Lays
Why babies are the stars of many Super Bowl ads
The reason car ads are so predictable
Robo puppy and why Kia made the best car ad
The winning Super ad of 2022 and no it wasn’t a set up
Inventing ‘Your cousin from Boston’ and why it works
The power of sticking to the same creative idea
Why we get bored of our own ads before our customer does
The case for releasing a Super Bowl ad early
Creating 2 billion PR impressions from the campaign
The power of Your Cousin From Boston lock up
Taking a big swing with the company dollars
Why a CMO can’t enjoy the Super Bowl when they are advertising
The actual robot dogs that protect Boston Dynamics
How Boston Beer approach testing advertising
Why the idea you like is not always the best idea
Founder Jim and his famous post it notes
How to get payback from a Super Bowl ad
Lesya’s top 3 tips for making a winning Super Bowl ad
Why the CFO is such a fan of System1
How do you top a winning Super Bowl ad

How Brands Grow - Byron Sharp, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute Feb 03, 2022

Show notes

Byron Sharp is a Professor of Marketing Science and Director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute – the world’s largest centre for research into marketing.

His first book How Brands Grow: what marketers don’t know has been called one of the most influential marketing books of the past decade (Warc, 2015) and was voted marketing book of the year by AdAge readers. In 2015 he published the follow-up How Brands Grow Part 2 with Professor Jenni Romaniuk. He has also written a textbook Marketing: Theory, Evidence, Practice which reflects modern knowledge about marketing and evidence-based thinking. The revised 2nd editionof the textbook was published in 2017.

Byron has co-hosted, with Professor Jerry Wind, two conferences at the Wharton Business School on the laws of advertising, and is on the editorial board of five journals.

What we covered in this episode:

Being turned down for a publishing deal for How Brands Grow
Why experts are terrible at predicting the future
Marketers getting distracted by Purpose with little empirical support for it
The ethical reason we should be focussed on the best return on marketing
Byron responds to Peter Field’s Purpose research
The top marketing myths exposed by How Brands Grow
The No.1 surprise in How Brands Grow
Why your customers are mostly the same as your competitors
The law of Double Jeopardy and why we are over exposed to our own brands heavy buyers
The paradox of very small brands having a larger customer base than expected
Physical and Mental availability overlap
How similar the top brands look vs ten years ago
Lucozade sugar tax backlash and how that proved the laws of marketing
The surprising importance of light and very light buyers
Why a lot of your sales come from people who haven’t bought you for at least a year
The importance of not changing your design
Whether the laws vary depending on category
Why market research is designed to highlight difference rather than similarity
The importance of distinctiveness and being remembered
What Levitt, Kotler and Akker got wrong about differentiation
Why even bankers can’t tell their banks apart
The power of pink concrete mixers
Asking an 8 year old to tell you what’s different about your brand
The real role of advertising for your brand
How search works just like point of sale to catch people as they fall
How the laws remain the same in B2B
Why Apple isn’t your typical brand when it comes to selling product differentiation
Why Ehrenberg Bass has just own distinctive asset
Why fruit doesn’t need packaging
The biggest unanswered question in marketing
Plans for Ehrenberg Bass to make training available to marketers
What Byron missed out in How Brands Grow
The importance of marketing the research and highlighting the implications
Describing Mark Ritson as the best business journalist in the world
What Byron thinks about the environment and the role of marketing in it

How to build a digital brand – Abba Newbery, CMO Habito Jan 24, 2022

Show notes

Abba is the CMO at the FinTech start up Habito, the fastest growing online mortgage broker in the UK. Prior to Habito, Abba worked as director of strategy at News UK, pioneering the moves towards digital content and as a planner at agencies UM and Carat.

What we covered in this episode:

Begging Dan the founder for a new job
How Habito are disrupting the Mortgage market
The power of anger and frustration to fuel business
Convincing Uncommon to be a founding client
Taking inspiration from Skateboard art and Santa Cruz
How to make mortgages ‘gnarly’
Switching off advertising due to too much demand
How to measure the impact of your campaign
Why Habito went straight to TV as a channel
How mortgages can ruin your sex life
Producing the mortgage Karma Sutra
Writing an erotic novel about mortgages
Why Habito sponsored the gnarly world of Skateboarding UK
What it takes to train for an Ironman
Business lessons from Ironman
The generosity of the UK Fintech scene
Abba’s top advice for getting into Tech
How to create ‘strategic serendipity’
Where to go for a 7 x salary mortgage

How to be more creative - Kev Chesters Jan 06, 2022

Show notes

Kev Chesters is the co-founder of Harbour Collective and co-author of "The Creative Nudge: Simple Steps to Help You Think Differently". Previously Kev has been Chief Strategy Officer at Ogilvy UK, Head of Planning at W+K and Planning Director at S&S.

What we covered in this episode:

How Kev got sued by Dr Dre
Bumping into famous people in urinals
Why creativity in business really matters
The power of advertising to sell jeans
Why creative is not the same as making ads
The creative power of business constraints
How dancing horses can sell mobile tariffs
The feel good power of internet memes
Why creativity is the underdog’s most competitive advantage
How short deadlines actual reduce creativity
Why nothing good ever came out of a workshop
The importance of never giving up
Jon’s most creative achievement with no budget
What would you do if your budget was your Dad’s money
The power of discontent to drive creativity
How being scared signals real creativity
The tyranny of average that holds us back from being brave
Why creative is the only key to progress
How to create the conditions for creativity to thrive
Why anybody can be creative in the broadest sense
The twin conspiracy of biology and societal conditioning
The power of positive dissent and why consensus should be killed
Why ‘the meeting’ is never the actual meeting
What you can learn from the Devil’s advocate
The importance of failure to our success
Getting used to the feeling of fear
Creative nudges that will help you become more creative
How algorithms are great for efficiency but terrible for exploration
The importance of being unreasonable
What we can all learn from Lady GaGa

Tony’s Chocolonely: creating a slave free chocolate brand - Ben Greensmith Dec 22, 2021

Show notes

Tony's Chocolonely is on a mission to make chocolate free of child-labour and slavery worldwide. I catch up with Lord Chocolonely III, or Ben Greensmith who runs Tony's in the UK about what it's like to run a mission-focused challenger brand in 2021.

About Ben

Ben started his career in food and drink over 20 years ago at IRI and then working for Unilever in a mixture of sales and category management roles. He joined innocent drinks in 2007 and was there for 8 years, holding a number of senior commercial roles and helping build the UK business that was eventually sold to Coca-Cola in 2013 for £0.5 billion. He left in 2015 to join Proper Snacks, most recently holding the position of Chief Operating Officer. Ben has been working for Tony’s Chocolonely since September 2018 as employee number 1 in the UK and is responsible for leading the business in the UK and Ireland. His official job title is Lord Chocolonely iii.

About Tony's

At Tony’s Chocolonely our mission is to make chocolate free of child-labour and slavery; not just our chocolate but all chocolate worldwide. Tony’s has been around for 15 years in our home country, the Netherlands, where we’re now the number 1 brand with a 20% market share. Tony’s launched in the UK in January 2019 and already the 6th biggest chocolate bar brand and the fastest growing.

What we covered in this episode

Being named Lord Chocolonely iii
How the packaging was invented in 15mins
The truth about inequality in the cocoa supply chain
The food unwrapped programme that inspired Tony’s
How Tony prosecuted himself for crimes against chocolate
The lonely battle to end child labour that created Chocolonely
The principles that ensure Tony’s helps make production slave free
Why Tony’s wants the competition to copy them
Challenging the removal of an endorsement by Slave Free Org
The different ways Tony’s are making an impact on living wages
Why Tony’s bars are created with unequal chunks
How Ben convinced Tony’s to let him launch the brand in the UK
Creating a £30m chocolate business in just 3 years
Challenger brand lessons from Tony’s
How Tony’s rate of sale compares to the Chocolate giants
The price per gram of Tony’s and how it compares
Creating headline news with an Advent calendar
SPOILER ALERT: some days may contain extra chocolate
Celebrity endorsement for the calendar
Customer reaction to the missing chocolate on Day 8
Getting on Have I Got News For You
What should be making the news
Results of Uncensored CMO poll asking whether it was a good move
Why Tony’ back a sugar tax and High Sugar, Fat & Salt (HFSS) legislation
Answering the challenge of being responsible for making people fat
How to protect your culture as your business grows
Crazy about chocolate and serious about people
The power of healthy dissatisfaction
How to be more outspoken in 2022
The importance of fitness to create energy for the demands of the job

How Direct Line won the Marketing Week Grand Prix 2021 - Mark Evans, Direct Line Dec 14, 2021

Show notes

How do you run marketing for one of the best known insurance brands in the UK, Direct Line? That's exactly what I find out from their CMO, Mark Evans, who has been at the company for a decade.

What we covered in this episode:

Starting a podcast during lockdown
Where Mark gets his energy from
The importance of being tuned into your purpose
Career lessons from Jimmy Carr
Why you should always coach from a position of strength
What you can learn from a World Cup winning Rugby squad
Lessons from being made redundant 4 times
Why you should embrace your failure and learn from it
How Mark survived a decade as CMO at Direct Line
Why you should fire yourself every 18 months
Whether it’s better to work for a Marketing or Finance CEO
Why marketing needs to be more than the ‘colouring in department’
The importance of knowing your numbers
Why Direct Line decided to retire Winston Wolf
The success trap - improving your game even when you are winning
How Direct Line positioned itself for success
Flipping ‘last brand standing’ to becoming the ‘first brand standing’
Discovering the importance of insurance the hard way
How covid changed the new ‘We’re on it’ campaign
Topping the charts on the System1 insurance category
Why it’s worth sticking with the same agency
Who is tipped to be the next Superhero
Record profits in a tough year
How Churchill make Insurance feels effortless
Churchill’s plans to Chill some more in 2022
The power of music to change our the audience feels
Marks most popular podcast episode on ‘oh the places we go’
The importance of being true to your audience

Follow me:

Contact me:

Website | www.uncensoredcmo.com
Email – jon@uncensoredcmo.com

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected