The Managing Marketing podcast is ten years old this week. In July 2015, the first episode went live, featuring a conversation between Darren Woolley and Shawn Callahan from Anecdote about the role of storytelling in advertising and marketing.
Since then, hundreds of guests have appeared on the Managing Marketing podcast, sharing their stories in conversations with various TrinityP3 hosts. Some of these people are marketing famous, but many are telling their story on a podcast for the first time.
To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Managing Marketing podcast, our main hosts come together to reminisce and share stories from their experience hosting the show, including memorable moments, technical glitches, and the best conversations.
Please enjoy this best of the past decade with the TrinityP3 podcast team, featuring Ellie Angell, Anton Buchner, and Darren Woolley.
You can listen to the podcast here:
Follow Managing Marketing on Soundcloud, Podbean, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify, Apple Podcast and Amazon Podcasts.
So, the insight here Darren, is we’re happy to interview wherever, whenever.
If you’ve got a mouth and willing to talk, we’ll record it.
Transcription:
Darren:
Hi, I’m Darren Woolley, Founder and CEO of TrinityP3 Marketing Management Consultancy and welcome to Managing Marketing. A weekly podcast where we discuss the issues and opportunities facing marketing, media, and advertising with industry thought leaders and practitioners.
If you’re enjoying the Managing Marketing Podcast, please either like, review, or share this episode to spread the words and wisdom of our guests each week.
The Managing Marketing Podcast is 10 years old this week. In July 2015, the first episode went live featuring a conversation between myself and Shawn Callahan from Anecdote about the role of storytelling in advertising and marketing.
Since then, hundreds of guests have appeared on the Managing Marketing Podcast, sharing their stories in conversations with various TrinityP3 hosts. Some of these people are marketing famous, but many are telling their story on the podcast for the first time.
To celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Managing Marketing Podcast, our main hosts come together to reminisce and share stories from their experience hosting the show, including memorable moments, technical glitches, and the best conversations.
Please welcome to the Managing Marketing Podcast hostess with the most Ellie Angell. Hi, Ellie.
Ellie:
Hello.
Darren:
And the ROI Guy, Anton Buchner. Hi, Anton.
Anton:
Hi Darren and hi, Ellie.
Ellie:
Hello, hello.
Darren:
Look, first thing I wanted to do is acknowledge both of you because I started this podcast and then invited you both to come in and share the hosting responsibilities. But what I like is each of you has brought, obviously, your own particular style and approach to it and yet there’s a consistency I think, in philosophy and so, I really want to acknowledge that, so thank you.
Ellie:
You’re welcome. It’s been fun.
Anton:
It’s been a great ride. I wonder whether we should be singing Happy Birthday, though for turning 10, I feel like we’re almost growing up. Almost double, well double digits.
Darren:
We’re double digits, and we’re heading into puberty, so watch out.
Anton:
This could go anywhere, this could be interesting.
The origins of the Managing Marketing Podcast
Darren:
This could go anywhere. Look, the reason I started the podcast was actually because of Shawn Callahan. He turned up in our office in North Sydney at the time just after work and he pulled out this new toy that he’d bought a couple of months earlier called the zoom digital recorder.
And I went, “Oh, that looks great, what are you going to do with that?” He said, “Oh, I’m going to get to recording a podcast.” And I said, “Have you recorded anything yet?” He said, “No.” And I said, “Well, let’s do one now.”
So, we literally sat in that boardroom with his zoom recorder and I introduced the Managing Marketing Podcast and recorded that episode that you can hear now, episode one with him on that day with his recorder. Immediately went out and bought one myself and I think we’ve bought about three or four at this stage but you know, and that was the start of it.
Anton:
I remember that Darren, I remember him walking around this funny little device and then you so excitedly showing us, “Look, we’ve got a Zoom recorder under the tripod.”
Ellie:
I get comments about that device as well. I mean, people sort of say, “Is that what you’re recording on?” I’m like, “No, no, I know it looks like it’s from the 80s, but this is a brilliant recorder,” and it’s worked for me, worked for us, for sure.
Darren:
Well, one of the things I like about it is the portability. I’ve recorded podcasts in all sorts of places. When I was traveling to the UK, the U.S. and Singapore particularly, you could just take it in your bag and then if you found a quiet spot, you could just sit down and spontaneously record a podcast with people that you’d just met, incredibly valuable.
But now, well since COVID and travel increasingly using online with Riverside.fm so we can still reach people around the world without having to get on planes with my little zoom recorder.
Behind the scenes things that go wrong
Anton:
And the recorder was tricky, wasn’t it because you got to press it twice. So, there was the first button to get ready, and then the second button press was the record that tripped me up a couple times, pressed record and away I go and I go, “Oh, shit, can we do that again? I didn’t press the second.”
Darren:
Well, I’m glad you said that because that happened to me and quite embarrassingly it was System One in the UK had just started and I had a podcast with one of the people there, I’m not going to name names. And I pushed it once and not the second time to record, we did the whole podcast, and I didn’t bother checking it and went back to the hotel and then had to make up a story about a technical glitch.
Unfortunately, the technical glitch was the operator, me and not the equipment because there was nothing recorded there, very embarrassing. What was your most embarrassing one or probably the one that you most disappointed that you didn’t catch the story? Anton?
Anton:
Oh, that’s me, sorry. I think what comes to my mind was one where I did the recording but then went to find the recording and couldn’t find it and I’m going, “I swear I did everything correctly here, where is the recording?” And then I suddenly found it, but it wasn’t in the files where it’s supposed to be.
But that shock, that first initial shock of, “Oh no, I’m going to have to tell the CMO to do this again and what have I done and what an idiot, how many of these have I done?” So yeah, bit of a shock, but luckily a good finish and a good ending and good result. Ellie, what about yours?
Ellie:
Oh, look, I’ve always managed to press the button, so yay for me. Yay for me twice but the battery on the recorder has failed a couple of times. And the one drawback of that device is it doesn’t really tell you; there’s no warning light or sign.
So, yeah, I’ve had to go back a couple of times, but more embarrassing than that, I think there was one occasion where someone was saying something really interesting, and I … am I allowed to swear, Darren?
Darren:
Yeah, yeah.
Anton:
I think I just set the precedent, oops.
Ellie:
Someone was saying something really interesting and surprising to me, and I just involuntarily just went, “Fuck,” in the background. And I just said, “Oh, God, we’re going to have to stop that. I’m trying to be professional. You’re going to have to say that again, and I’m just going to have to react surprised without using the F word.”
So, once I was trying to start recording remotely and my dog started going mad in the background, berserk, someone turned up for a delivery at the door, and I was recording it remotely and anyway. There’s a few moments like that where you just think, “Oh dear, I’m just not being very professional here,” but there you go, it’s all good.
Darren:
So, Ellie on the swearing, very early on, I recorded with Mark Ritson, who didn’t even ask about swearing, he just let fly all the way through. And so, whenever someone says to me since then, “Are you allowed to swear on this?” I go, “We have recorded Mark Ritson.” And everyone knows, they go, “Oh, okay.” So, a little bit of swearing. So, in fact, a lot of swearing’s perfectly fine.
Ellie:
The problem was that you’ve got to match your client. The guest on this particular podcast was a quite sensible, didn’t swear, very, very professional and to your point, had lots of notes, Darren. I think was quite nervous, and it certainly didn’t help for me to be letting out expletives in the background as the poor woman was trying to tell me her story, so anyway.
Giving a voice and a podcast platform to first-timers
Darren:
Well, it was interesting, when I started, I was doing a podcast every fortnight, and it was only probably three years in that we went to the weekly podcast. But one of the things that I really like about the hosts that I invite to be part of this is in many cases the best ones are the ones that have never done podcasts before.
I can’t even count the number of people that have said to me, “I’ve never done a podcast. I’m quite nervous about it.” And then at the end said, “Oh, that was so much fun.” So, I take that as a sort of personal measure of success that I make it as painless as possible. In fact, in many cases, enjoyable. Have you had similar experiences Ellie?
Ellie:
Yeah. I’ve been surprised at some of the people who I would’ve thought were super confident and then who say, “Oh, my God, I haven’t done the … and can we go back, I need to look at my notes,” but I think without fail, everyone says at the end, “Now that was fun,” or some variation of that. And I think some people find it quite cathartic because we ask some quite interesting questions.
Sometimes it veers from the professional to the personal and back again and I think people find it quite cathartic sometimes just to be able to talk like that. And fair enough, we find the same thing in … well, part of the project work we do sometimes is stakeholder interviews in the process of discovery on consultancy work and we get the same reaction. Sometimes, it’s almost like a pub, we’re asking them questions, they’re talking for an hour and they love it.
Darren:
Because Anton, you’ve done quite a lot with sort of MarTech ad tech people, but also with CMOs. Do you see any sort of differences or similarities between those groups?
Special guests from CMOs to AdTech Movers and Shakers
Anton:
Yeah. I’m the same as you guys and I was inspired by listening to you both doing podcasts and hence got involved. I love listening to movers and shakers, I love hearing their stories, so I love hearing the good and the bad. Not necessarily all the glossy, but what are the challenges they’ve overcome to make change, so ultimately hearing change makers so both on CMO side and on MarTech side, that’s inherent.
And I think the CMOs, if I take that side of the fence that I’ve tried to pick are ones that have made some sort of change or working in a business that has either been a challenger brand or has challenged the business model in some way. I remember Simon Cheng at Menulog, challenging the delivery systems. He was fascinating to delve into his business model.
And then during COVID, I interviewed Emma Terry, who was the CMO of Tourism Tasmania. And because COVID was so weird, closing borders, and suddenly tourism’s gone, your business goes, so how did they pivot to use that word that became everywhere, didn’t it Ellie?
Ellie:
Yeah, it’s a pivot.
Anton:
Everyone pivoted but how they pivoted was fascinating. And so, in the MarTech side, I’ve always been fascinated by new technology and how that’s unleashing new opportunities as well. So, I’ve dived into AI very quickly and very early years ago and listening to the platform side and the tech vendors talk about the evolution and the impact that’s making on marketing.
So, I think they get the common thread to answer the question Darren, was it’s the movers and shakers that are sharing their story which I hope is very interesting for the listeners to take heed from marketers or tech vendors of what could work today and what could work tomorrow.
Darren:
Just picking up on that, you did pick up on AI very early on. I mean, it was before the release of ChatGPT that got everyone talking. Well, I mean, you did a whole series, didn’t you, on how AI was being developed and applied before it was the hot topic.
Anton:
I’m the tech nerd, so I’m a bit of the … well, I was a data nerd. I was a direct mail nerd. Here we go, still a nerd, there’s the common thread. I was a direct mail nerd, so that was the 90s. And then I followed technology and then AI had been applied behind the scenes for decades, but AI was starting to get talked about in the business circles a lot.
And the tech vendors hadn’t gone into the general domain, but behind the scenes was getting talked about. So, I thought, “Let’s go and uncover what the heck this is all about and how it’s starting to get applied into marketing.” And I think we all started seeing articles getting written about it, but marketers weren’t necessarily talking about it. So, yeah, interesting.
I had one very memorable interview with Acoustic, which is the company that came out of IBM Watson. So, I was very interested, Jay Henderson, I was interested to hear his views and Acoustic’s views of how they were leveraging Watson.
IBM was one of the leaders with Watson AI and how they were applying it now to marketing. So, that was, I guess, that first foray into how AI can impact marketers. And two years later, I’ve done another series now because ChatGPT when that launched last year, before exploded, what we all now know as AI solutions.
Darren:
Ellie, when you are thinking about guests to invite and do a podcast with, what are you looking for or what’s the sort of thought process you go through?
Ellie:
Well, I love all my podcast guests equally, of course, all my children equally. And I’ve interviewed a lot of different types of people, and I guess the diversity of that is one of the interesting things. I tend to try and find slightly different angles where I can, or people that we’ve … I often try and think, “What part of this industry have we not picked up on or in interviewed before?”
But a bit like you, Anton, I love the bootstrappers, I love the people with really outspoken views and look, three that spring to mind, and Belinda Lodge was a really interesting one for me. Again, I don’t think we’ve ever interviewed an ad land recruiter before, and they’re a really important part of the industry.
And she started talking about how she started her business 20 years ago on a milk crate outside the back of her flat and with a $200 computer from Harvey Norman type of thing. But she’s smart and she calls a spade a spade and she had some really interesting views about how this industry is headed and where the challenges are with bringing new talent in and maintaining it.
Sean Cummins as well, I do talk to a lot. I mean, Anton, you talk to more, I mean, I talk to a lot too, but I think I talk to a lot of agency leads and Sean Cummins is always good for a quote, and didn’t seem to mind talking about it.
And Henry Innis, I mean, Henry’s he’s just a mad genius and I think he just happened to stumble on marketing, I think he could have gone anywhere. And so, again, very outspoken and so we’re lucky. I think we’re lucky that he did come into marketing and he had some really good stories and some really good takes on stuff as well.
But yeah, the more interesting conversations are where people are unapologetically honest and upfront.
Anton:
I think we’re officially done a hat trick with Henry with us, haven’t we? I think all three of us have-
Ellie:
Have we really?
Anton:
Oh, Darren, didn’t you?
Darren:
No, I haven’t done a podcast.
Anton:
Oh, I’m sorry.
Ellie:
I didn’t realize you had Anton, oh my God.
Anton:
That was the first wave of AI I interviewed Henry, first wave. He was official president of the Dangar Bowling Club. There’s a interesting little tidbit. Dangar Island, sorry, the president of the Dangar Island Lawn Bowls Club.
Ellie:
You guys just proved my point guy.
Anton:
He’s a mad genius. You’re spot on Ellie.
Ellie:
He’s a mad genius.
Anton:
He opened with that, and I said, “Oh my God, Dangar Island, run me through it.” Oh, God.
Finding guests and making them comfortable
Darren:
Well, yeah, in the early days, I was scrambling around so most of the guests were people that I knew personally or had a good relationship with. But it’s been interesting the last probably two or three years as the podcast has become more known, I’m getting lots of emails from casting agents saying, “Oh, this person would be ideal for your podcast.”
And it’s really interesting because I found myself initially, I was rejecting it because I was going, “Yeah, I’m not sure you’re trying to sell something because you’re deliberately trying to get onto the podcast.” And then I noticed that there were a few, like a woman in the U.S. who’s a comedy writer, and now she’s writing comedy for brands, so that’s an interesting story that I want to capture.
But I find that many of them, if they’ve got a casting agent, they’re also doing lots and lots of podcasts and what it’s really hard to do is break them from this pattern that a lot of podcasts seem to have which is what are the questions you’re going to ask me or some of them even send you, “Here’s the questions you can ask me on the podcast.” And I go, “Well, I don’t work that way. I just have a conversation with you.”
We can have some topics that we’re going to talk around and you can tell me things that are off limits, but I don’t want to have this scripted response. So, I probably find myself pursuing one in 10, I’d say roughly but there was one recently.
His business is on an island off the east coast of Canada; it’s like right up heading towards the Arctic Circle. And the reason we couldn’t do it, he had a great story, but the reason we couldn’t do it is there was no time zone alignment that would work because he’s sort of halfway between New York and London.
So, I don’t have to do it at sort of 9 o’clock at night or he’d be up at 5:00 AM in the morning, so. But it’s been interesting how it’s picked up notoriety amongst the podcasting people around the world.
Anton:
I think people are approaching us now and from my perspective as one of the hosts, I love listening to both of you interview people as well, because I pick up on conversational styles and different ways of interviewing so it’s sort of learning from both sides.
But I like what you said there, Darren, it’s not a scripted interview. And I think certainly all the ones I do, it’s, “Here’s a couple of topics that the client would like to talk about, or a CMO or a tech vendor,” I’m also fairly strict on that and say, “Just pick three or four topics, two or three is better.”
And then I do a little trick at the beginning. I spend the first five minutes before I press record, hopefully remembering I have a big sign saying press record but just talking, just to remind me. But just talking and saying, “Okay, we’re going to talk about these topics and stuff, and then I notice in LinkedIn, you just release something about this and da dah, dah, dah.”
So, we get talking and we get into conversational pattern and I find they’re still talking in about five minutes about that topic. And I said, “This is perfect. We’ll just go back and press play, and we’re going to start and launch into it,” and I noticed that they feel comfortable.
And I think, yeah, most of mine, I’ve interviewed a first-time podcasters as well so yeah, just trying to get people to feel comfortable that you could just have a chat. And they’ve got the skillset, they’ve got the knowledge, of course, these are senior movers and shakers, so, yeah, it’s been interesting.
Darren:
Ellie, what’s your go-to method of getting people comfortable?
Ellie:
Well, I mean, like all of us, I was brand new to … I’d never recorded a podcast the first time I did it. So, when I started, I was very scripted. I was very kind of all I need to sort of really think about this and had loads of notes and stuff.
But as time’s gone on, yeah, it is big bucket topics that I give them and say, “Look, we can meander around this as much as we can, as you want. I do tend to when I’m talking to them about what we’re going to do, I talk to the fact that it’s a very constructive discussion, which tends to put people at their ease, no one’s going to try and trip you up in this conversation.
And like Anton, I find it’s great to just talk for five minutes because you can then refer back and say, “Oh, when we were off the mic, we were talking about this, and can you expand on that a bit more?” And it’s good, like it just feels a bit more convivial and of course, you want to bring the listener in, like in rate to be in the room with you.
And it’s a nice little technique that puts them at their ease, but makes the conversation feel more real to the listener. And yeah, like I say, people always say at the end of this bit that it was surprisingly fun so we must be doing something right.
Anton:
I’m going to go 40 minutes. Sorry. A good 40 minutes.
Bad guest experiences?
Darren:
Ellie, have you had any guests that it just hasn’t worked? Because it’s happened to me. I’ll share it with you in a minute, but have you, or either of you had in any guess, I’ll start with you Ellie.
Ellie:
I’ve had conversations that felt much more stilted and some of that I think is down to me. I mean, sometimes you obviously joke with some people better than others. I tend to do more of them with people that I’ve known and had good relationships with. And therefore, sort of know a bit about their rhythms of speaking and how they want to attack things.
But sometimes it has been challenging, and I mean, Anton, I need to take some tips from you because I find with the more deeply analytical people, it can be challenging. They’re just not used to speaking in these kind of forums and sometimes they’re answering a question and I’m sort of sitting there thinking, “Oh, my God, it feels like it’s drying up, what am I going to ask next?”
Anton:
The hole’s opening up, yeah.
Ellie:
I’ll send in the recording for post-production and it’s like, “Oh, my God, I only got 24 minutes out of this person,” and normally I’m setting at 45 and so that’s the closest it’s gone to going wrong. I mean, I’ve never had someone storm out on me, which look, I guess would be a badge of honor.
Anton:
Has that happened? Yeah, A podcast badge of honor.
Ellie:
Badge of honor, if you provoke someone so hard that they walked out in the middle of an interview but I mean, you guys know me well enough, I’d be devastated.
Anton:
We’d have to pick up the pieces.
Ellie:
I’d be having nightmares about that for years later. But yeah, where you fear the conversations going to dry up or the person’s clearly uncomfortable, that’s where it gets worrying. But even they say it was a good time afterwards, but I felt inside, “Oh, my God, that was a really hard discussion.”
Anton:
I think that’s interesting Ellie because I also haven’t had a storm out, so that’s always good news. But I’ve had the ones who talk, I won’t say names, but there’s a couple where-
Darren:
Let’s protect the guilty by not naming them.
Anton:
I feel bad because they’re really good colleagues. We prepped the discussion to be, it’s a conversation as Ellie said, we make sure it’s relatively short and sharp and picking a couple of minutes of talking about it and then throw back to me and try and make that a nice conversational thread.
But I have had a couple where I just couldn’t get in there. It was going on and on and just had to let them go. And I was like, Ellie, I’m thinking, “Okay, I’m normally pretty good at why, so why did you say that? Can I just stop you there and why would you say that for that particular thing?” And that gets them back into the conversation but I couldn’t even do that. And it was like, “I was just better off just to listen.”
And so, I have sent around some people and they’ve sent back feedback, “Oh no, that was great conversation.” And the person itself, like Ellie said, “That was a great conversation.” I said, “Well, it sounds a little bit like our agency saying I presented really well,” but you didn’t ask any questions to the client.
Darren:
Yeah, exactly. It was all one sided.
Anton:
Not a train wreck but always interesting with podcasting.
Ellie:
It’s true. When people talk a lot for a long time like that, and I start getting paranoid because I’m sitting there thinking, “God, what am I bringing to this?”
Anton:
You’re interviewing me.
Ellie:
You’re just turning into a keynote lecture and like, “What am I doing here? Am I the host or what am I doing?
Anton:
TrinityP3’s Ted Talks.
Ellie:
I get very self-critical when that happens. But look, everyone’s got their own style and as long as they come away feeling it’s positive and we get some good content out of it, then that’s the value exchange. I think, one way or the other, we manage it in the end.
Darren:
Well, I had one that I actually had to stop after we’d started recording because it was a subject matter expert, but they brought the managing director to be part of the conversation and I spent a lot of time in the prep saying, “Now this is not about selling the consultancy, this is about sharing the knowledge and proving your expertise by having a conversation on the topic.”
And I said, “Everyone’s very clear,” hit record, did the introduction and I put the first question to the managing director, “How did you personally become so interested in this particular area of expertise?” I’m not going to say, because it’ll give away.
And they immediately went, “Well, the business started 20 years ago in London and then it expanded to … and went on for about three minutes and couldn’t get a word in edgeways. And when they stopped, I just hit stop recording and I said, “I’m sorry, I’d already explained that we don’t do that here. You’re clearly not listening; it’s not a sales pitch.” And so, I said, “I’m happy, we can redo it at another time, but at the moment, I don’t think this is going to work.” Yeah, Ellie.
Ellie:
Actually, you jogged my memory with that in something that I do to reassure people beforehand as well. I think some people have come at this with … I’ve asked them to be on, and they’ve kind of assumed that I’m here to sell TrinityP3 services on the podcast and it’s like, no, no, no, I’m not trying to sell what you do and I’m also not trying to sell what we do necessarily, it’s interesting content that people are going to find useful.
And once they get that, not everyone, there’s only been a few times that that’s happened, but once they get it, it’s like, okay, fine, they relax. But certainly, having someone sell at you constantly, I can understand why you pressed stop.
Anton:
I found that with the tech vendors as well and very have to set that benchmark up front to say, “This is not a sales pitch for your piece of tech or your platform, this is about wisdom, sharing, what are you saying? What’s not working, what’s working?”
But yeah, I think that’s another thing that holds us to account, I think that I always keep in the back of my head, people listening to this and hopefully listening to us now, what are they taking away? Hopefully, taking away some comfort that they’d like to come on but yeah, the listener has to be interested.
Darren:
One of the ways I prep is I say to people, I imagine that we’re having a conversation in a cafe or in a restaurant or something, and that the audience is sitting at the next table listening in. Have you ever had that personal experience where you’re deep in a conversation with someone and then suddenly you look across and you realize the next table is more interested in your conversation than theirs? And I say, “That’s the feeling I want to create here.”
We’re going to have a conversation, forget about the recorder, that’s the people at the next table. And it’s actually one of the reasons that I do that unanswered question at the end is two reasons. One is it’s like we’ve suddenly realized that they’re listening in and we cut the conversation because we don’t want to share it with them.
But the other is that quite early on, I was doing a podcast with someone who had just left their very high-profile role, and I wanted to talk about it, even though they hadn’t said it was off limits, but I knew it was sensitive. So, I kept the question right to the end, and they went, “I can’t talk about it. I’ll be sued if I talk.”
So, I just cut their response and it became the unanswered question, which became my personal signature. When it’s appropriate, I try and put something in and the guests will often say, “Well, but don’t you want me to answer?” I said, “No, no.” “You’ll find, people will come up to you and ask you, “What is the answer?” And then it’ll be up to you to answer it at that stage.
One of the funniest situations I had was in Singapore, I was doing a podcast with a social media expert who turned up at the hotel I was staying in, and we met in the bar, and they were a little bit nervous about, and they said, “Do you mind if we have a drink beforehand?” And I went, “Sure.”
So, we had a drink and we’re chatting, and then we had another drink and we kept chatting and it was one of those hotels in Singapore that the bar was relatively empty. So, after about, I don’t know, I lost count, I think maybe eight or more drinks, they said, “Let’s do it now.”
And I was suddenly aware, I pulled out the little zoom recorder, put it on the table between us, and I suddenly became aware I was slurring my words but I wasn’t sure if I was over emphasizing. Anyway, we just kept going.
We recorded an amazing podcast, which talk about go off track, it went into all sorts of areas because alcohol had liberated the frontal lobe and so nothing was off topic. So, anyway, I listened back and it didn’t sound nearly as bad as it sounded in my head. So, it’s out there, I’m not going to tell anyone, you can go back all the way through.
Anton:
10 years’ worth of podcast and see if you can find it. I do remember it because I remember you telling us about it. Have a good listen and went, “Ooh, not too bad.”
Darren:
It was one of those things that I’ll never do again. I’m never going to meet in a bar before recording a podcast.
Anton:
I haven’t had that sort of experience myself personally. But I’ll throw in here one of the most surprising discussions I’ve had and I’ll drop the name, but recently I’ve just done a new AI series, as I said.
Leandro Perez, the CMO of Salesforce and I say it on the podcast, I had a version or vision, an understanding of Salesforce for decades, may not have been that positive. I said to him, I said, “But listening to Agentic AI and what Salesforce is doing, again, to pivot, drop that word again, terrible but what they’re doing in the AI space at the moment, and whether this is going to last the test of time, I’m not sure we might come back in 10 years and reflect on this.”
But that’s been fascinating to see a company that jumped in really early to Agentic AI, it’s now become all the rage in discussion circles but Salesforce has been very interesting. So, to get under the hood of that, and they took a leap of faith and what Leandro has explained why they took a leap of faith and how they’ve shifted their vision and shifted their go to market strategy has been fascinating.
And I’ve had a variety of clients and agencies pick up on that one and say, “Ah, that’s been really interesting. We didn’t know that, or we didn’t understand that,” so those sort of things. I think again, it’s back to whether you’re slurring your words or whether you’re getting some good words out, I suppose the point there is it’s always interesting, we hope.
Darren:
Yeah, absolutely. One of the other things that happened because as I said earlier, I love the portability of that little zoom recorder. I did caught up with someone who was part of the international IP law firm, and the only place they could record was early, one Saturday morning in a cafe in Soho in New York City.
And we got there really early, I think it was 7:00 AM and there was no one there and I had to ask them to turn the music down, and we sat at this table and the conversation just went on and on. While it kept going, the cafe filled with people and there were so many conversations and I thought, “Oh God, this is going to be hopeless.”
Anyway, the thing was we’ve been using an engineer Jared Latouff, who does all of the editing and mixing, and he was able to filter it out like he made — I don’t know how he did it-
Anton:
The background noise.
Darren:
With all the background noise didn’t disappear, but he just brought it down so our voices eqd them so that they really jumped out. But sometimes, you think those recordings that are going to go really badly, it can be fixed in post-production.
Anton:
So, the insight here Darren, is we’re happy to interview wherever, whenever.
Darren:
If you’ve got a mouth and willing to talk, we’ll record it. We’ll record the story because I think that’s part of what we do is capture stories. There’s now 10 years there of people telling their story in a conversation, I think it’s been really useful.
Hey just to change direction a bit, if anyone, it’s one of those, what would you take to a tropical island? But if there was anyone in history or anyone living and dead that you could have as a podcast guest, who would you have and why? Anton.
Who would you most want as a guest and why?
Anton:
Who would I have? Okay, I’m going to go out on a limb here, this might not mean anything to anyone. I would like to interview Tiangong Ultra robot.
Ellie:
You’re such a nerd.
Darren:
You’re such a nerd. You’re such a geek.
Anton:
You’re going to go, who? What is that? I’m not sure whether I say it’s an it or I’ll just say the robot, the humanoid. So, Tiangong Ultra robot was the first humanoid robot that won the humanoid section of the half marathon in Beijing. Ellie, I know you know this.
Ellie:
Oh, I know all about it.
Anton:
You know all about this.
Ellie:
I know all about it.
Anton:
12,000 runners and humans and 21 humanoid robots, first time they’ve competed. And the winning human won in an hour, just over an hour, I think about an hour and two minutes and Tiangong took two hours and 40 minutes.
So, whether I can interview the humanoid or interview the developers, which came out of X Humanoid, which is a state-run center, innovation center in Beijing, I would love to have a conversation in a few years’ time about, “Why did you decide to run? How have you improved your times and PVS over the years?” And hopefully, your conversation is a lot better than it was when you first …
Ellie:
Maybe the two of you could have a drink first Anton, that would loosen him up a bit.
Anton:
A little bit of WD-40.
Ellie:
Yeah, a bit of WD 40, it’s just like-
Anton:
So, that’s where I’m at. I’m at the stage of there’s these great innovations happening but I would love to see years down the track where this is just a fad or whether there’s going to be a whole host of because I think we’re all going to have our little humanoid robots next to us. That’s the challenge, a little assistance, anyway, that’s me. Ellie.
Ellie:
Cool. I can’t beat that. Well, I’ve got two answers to this. I think I mean, from a dream marketing advertising guest point of view, I mean, I’d be terrified to interview either of these people, but either Jon Hegarty or Rory Sutherland, I think both of them industry giants but more than that, they’re so articulate and they’re so compelling.
Every time I read one of John Hegarty’s post or see Rory Sutherland speak, there’s something about those two that I think would be so fascinating, but I would be terrified to interview them, but they’re so fascinating.
And then my second answer to this is more personal. I do-do a fair bit of work in the D&I space and some of that has bled into the podcast that I’ve recorded here, and I do work off of the podcast with trans advocacy, I would love to interview Laverne Cox.
For those of you who don’t know, Laverne Cox, she’s a trans woman, an actress who’s been an incredible trailblazer for trans people around the world. And she would’ve some amazing sort of transferable wisdom that could be applied to things like allyship in our industry and stuff like that. So, those would be my three very different people but those would be my three dreams.
Darren:
Mine is actually a bit of history, Bill Bernbach from Doyle Dane Bernbach. And the reason I’d love to have recorded a podcast with Bill is that I find myself referring to many of his quotes on a — if not weekly, at least monthly basis, a principle’s not a principle until it costs you money.
It is one of my favorites, especially in the era we live now, where there’s people saying lots of things to look good but not willing to actually commit either their time or resources that means that it actually costs them something.
And so, many of you know it’s the only legal way of getting an advantage is creativity. So, many of his quotes that there was a little book produced with all the sayings of Bill Bernbach that I was given very early on in my advertising career.
And so, he became almost for me, this icon of advertising because of the clarity of thought but also that there was a truthfulness in everything he said that has been timeless, you know human beings don’t change.
Some say we took a hundred thousand years to evolve into the state we are today, we now live in a time where the world around us is changing, but we don’t, the way we interact with it does, but the way we react to it remains the same and so, I think that’d be fascinating. Also because-
Anton:
Sorry Darren, if I don’t, you said that I’ve got the book as well, the book of quotes up there. I’ve kept two books, Lester Wunderman’s book on being direct and the quote of Bill Bernbach’s but I’m looking around here, they’re packed away in a box somewhere, I think.
Darren:
And then I’ve got Lester’s book as well, and the third one I have is A Technique for Producing Ideas by James Webb Young. If you don’t have that, they’re my three books on advertising. I know there’s a lot of others but I think those three.
But what I was going to say about Bill Bernbach is one of the things that I loved about the Mad Men Series, even though it’s a piece of fiction, it really brought to life that era that he was a star of Madison Avenue and understanding the cultural pressures or the cultural approaches and understanding that were at that time and thinking, “I wonder what he’d make of advertising today.”
And I think in some ways Ellie, your interview, if you did the interview with Jon Hegarty, Jon Hegarty has that same clarity of thought and that incredible focus that it’ll be the closest we’d possibly ever get to interviewing Bill Bernbach because I think there’s a similarity of thought there.
Ellie:
No, so as you were saying, this is no word of a light as you were saying, Bill Bernbach, I had two names in my head. David Ogilvy and Don Draper, literally I had Don Draper. I thought, “Oh, it would be great to interview Don Draper before remembering, of course, he’s a fictional character,” but spot on about Mad Men, spot on.
It was so relatable, despite the fact it was 30, 40 years ago, and obviously there were lots of cultural nuances that were completely unrelatable to today, the wisdom was still there, they captured that brilliantly in that series, absolutely brilliantly.
Capturing the often untol amazing stories
Anton:
But I think that wisdom to the point there, whilst we do see a lot of or massive variety in the marketing landscape and the advertising landscape in the type of work we’re doing, the world has obviously completely changed, but I think the fundamentals are still there Darren, and I was going to ask you now, what do you think Bill would say?
But it triggered me when you were talking an interview that’s just about to get released with Kate Ferguson who’s the CMO of the Sydney Children’s Hospital Foundation and I interviewed her and I was absolutely blown away by everything that is marketing theory and good conventional sound marketing theory, she’s put into practice.
She’s aligned a whole bunch of disparate brands united into one, she’s done less than more and focused in the two big things she’s doing. She’s done a whole MarTech transformation and got the donor data into a single customer view and she’s going out and raising funds to change the landscape of sick children’s healthcare for families, for the hospitals, for the children themselves and measuring everything.
And I just listened to her and as we pressed stop, as I pressed stop, at the end, I just applauded and said, “Wow, that is really the first CMO I’ve spoken to who has completely united every brand principle and good old thinking that Hegarty and Bernbach and the others would go, wow, that is fantastic.” And I just noticed as well that they raised, I think it was $84 million at their Gold Gala dinner, world record.
Darren:
That’s unbelievable.
Anton:
They’re a world record.
Darren:
Unbelievable.
Anton:
So, it’s always fascinating to hear and hear that the world hasn’t changed a lot, some of the sound principles can still be applied.
Darren:
See, Anton, I’m going to have to get notes from you on how to do a podcast with a CMO because my very first CMO very early on, everyone said to me, “oh, there’s too many agency people and industry people, what about some marketers?”
The very first CMO I recorded was someone we’re doing work with, and we recorded a great conversation because he’d put in place a new agency fee model with the agency, and we’re talking about why he did that.
We recorded it, I got the transcript done, he asked to see it which we always share it and then it went to his corporate comms people and came back completely changed. And I’m there going, “I can only make him say those words if he’d actually said them.” And so, we ended up having to scrap the recording because they wanted to change too much.
How do you have those conversations? Because obviously a CMO will have commercial sensitivities that you make sure that they stay within the bounds of sharing information, knowledge, experience without giving away those commercial sensitivities.
Anton:
Well, let me share a little secret insight that I’ve never shared. So, groundbreaking first release on this Managing Marketing Podcast with Ellie, yourself and I, so being a bit of a nerd, here’s the ta-da moment, I don’t just have a rambling conversation, I do do a bit of research on the person, like I’m sure you both do.
But I look for the ones that have released public domain information. And so, I then talk to them about, “Okay, I can access this. Can I talk about that? Can you talk about how you got that?” And invariably, it’s a yes/no, someone going, “Yep, that’s all in public domain, I can talk about that, I can’t talk about this part of it, but I can talk about the either strategic approach or the measurement approach, et cetera.”
So, that’s I guess the little insight that I try and cherry pick some of the stats or some of the information I can gather. And this particular one I just said, you set a world record last year, which was $33 million and Kate then talked about, “Yeah, I can talk about that, and we actually beat the MET Gala dinner.”
The Met Gala dinner raised 31 million, and we raised 33, so apparently it was a worldwide world record for funds raised by a foundation. So, I went, “Wow, that’s fantastic, can I ask you how you did that? What did you do? And how’d you galvanize support?” She said, “Yeah, absolutely.”
So, that’s maybe a little trick because yeah, I think the worst thing is I won’t say this one, but there was a platform I interviewed, digital platform fraught with legal cases at the moment and lots of challenges from the outside looking in.
And there’s just a lot of areas that you just can’t ask questions on because you know they’re not going to be able to talk about it. So probably, yeah, before the podcast goes into record mode, it’s, “What can we cover? What can’t we cover? And make sure we just don’t go into that topic.”
Darren:
And one of the things I say to all the guests is, we’re not recording this to be journalistic news, we’re not trying to uncover some dark secret or big ta-da moment, it really is about just capturing the experience, the stories, the insights of the moment and I think that that works really well.
Anton:
And it is more interesting, we all know this, the stories of how, I mean, we see that someone had achieved something or became a CMO top hundred list, “How did you get there? What’s the process? A lot of us don’t even know, did you put yourself forward or were you nominated?” I like that sort of questioning where you get them to open up about why they did something or how they did it and it’s always interesting.
Darren:
And how they feel about it as well, because I think too much particularly even on LinkedIn, the humble brag they call it, sometimes, it’s very hard to articulate how you do feel when you succeed because there is that pressure to not appear to celebrate your own successes and why shouldn’t you celebrate your own successes?
Yes, I get, it’s always a team effort but people should be allowed to stand up and go, “Thank you, I’ve achieved something.”
Anton:
And I think the CMOs and Ellie, I know I’ve listened to your interviews, the CMOs that are happy to talk like that happily share the challenges they face too, so it’s not all glossy, glossy. They say this was difficult to get the executive on board, to get the CEO to sign off, the CFO to sign off, they’re quite open in saying, “This is not an easy process.”
So, I think that’s also interesting and real because any marketer knows that life’s very challenging. You’ve got forces coming at them at all angles, agencies are challenged too because forces are coming at them at all angles. Tech is disrupting everything so there’s forces everywhere.
So, I think that that sort of insight of it’s not easy, wasn’t easy, here are some of the challenges I had to really overcome, and those are the tidbits that I love. And Ellie, I’ve heard you ask those questions a bit deeper too, to find what was the real challenge or hurdle you had to overcome here, they’re interesting.
Darren:
The other thing that makes me feel good about doing this is that some of those people, and recently, Ellie, you interviewed one of these people, I actually did a podcast with Chloe Hooper when she was at PHD and then you did one recently, and now she’s got her own very successful podcast as well.
It’s great to see people go from first time podcast and now having their own podcast. It’s a nice feeling to know that perhaps we made some small contribution to building the voices out there in the marketplace.
Ellie:
Well, I am going to be on Chloe Hooper’s podcast in a couple of weeks’ time, so The Limitless Equation, so I’m officially on the circuit, I’m on the podcast. I’ve got gripping on with one hand to the circuit here, but yeah, no, Chloe and I had an amazing conversation. She’s incredibly direct and personal and it got quite personal on both sides in terms of the intersectionality of our experiences in some ways.
And then yeah, she’s invited me to be on hers, which I’m very honored by because she attracts some incredible women onto that podcast. I mean, there’s some much more storied and successful names than mine so I’m very I’m very honored to be on that so that’ll be a couple of weeks’ time.
Going from being a podcast host to a guest?
Darren:
Ellie, what’s it like going from being host to guest?
Ellie:
Well, we’ve recorded a few. I mean, some of the most memorable ones of … well, one of the most memorable ones is when you recorded with me as a guest and it was just after I’d affirmed myself in the industry and then that got really personal, that interview.
But I think what’s it like going from big — I feel less pressure in a way, I’m happy to answer pretty much any question that gets put to me and we were just talking about people’s restrictions and I think within reasonable boundaries, we’re not under that. We don’t work for a big corporate, we don’t work for a public realistic company or somewhere with corporate comms breathing down our necks and that gives her freedom to be able to talk openly about stuff.
So, when I’m given that opportunity, like my guests, I find it quite cathartic. I kind of enjoy it and I don’t have to do the prep, it’s less hard work. I don’t have to do the prep that I do when I’m being the interviewer so I kind of prefer it in some ways being interviewed rather than being the interviewer.
But it’s where the intersectionality happens and where the personnel is threaded through the professional, and people learn stuff in both ways. I think I admire anyone who can be vulnerable like that on a public forum and Chloe is certainly one of those people and that was a great conversation.
Darren:
Anton, have you been on other podcasts and what’s it like?
Anton:
I have and I was just thinking as Ellie was talking, it is different, I’ll be totally honest. As an interviewer, my head is always in the next question, and I’m trying to listen to what they’re saying, and I do have a bit of a thread I’d like to talk through.
So, I’m sort of thinking, “Okay, it’s a good answer, how do I navigate it to the next conversational point?” Or to Ellie, to your point, if they drag it off in a completely different direction, I’m thinking, “That’s fantastic discussion, how on earth am I going to bring this back.”
So, my head is probably worrying more as an interviewer, but as a, what is it a podcastee, is that what you say? As a guest, you can just sort of go and I suppose a little bit like the three of us here, you can sort of talk away, but I am always conscious of the shut-up factor.
Like don’t talk too long whether I’m interviewing or being interviewed, it’s like, “Okay, just give a thread, let the other person jump in here and making it conversational, get interaction. Because I listen to lots of podcasts, and I think the worst is where you just hear it on and on and on and interviewer ask one question-
Darren:
No, no, no, no, no, I’ll give you the worst. I was asked, by someone, someone sent me an email from New York, “Please appear on our podcast, here’s the five questions we’re going to discuss.” Except they’re all closed questions. They’re all questions that you could say yes or no, it’ll be from 11:00 PM to 11:20. So, it was 20 minutes, the brief was, it won’t go more than 10 minutes.
So, we start, it wasn’t with video, it was just audio and they did the introduction, which had been pre-agreed and then they asked the first question, I said, “Yes.” And then they asked the second question, and I said, “Sometimes, but not often.” And the third and the last question was, “Do you have anything else that you want to say?” And I said, “No,” and that was the end. We got it all finished in under five minutes and it never went to air.
I mean, I can see what they’re doing. They’re creating content but they’ve made it so formulaic that it — and that’s just not us. I mean, what I’m loving is listening to the episodes you guys are doing and really enjoying the perspective, Ellie and Anton that you bring to the Managing Marketing Podcast. Thank you for taking the time today to having this chat.
Anton:
Pleasure.
Ellie:
You’re welcome. It was fun. Like all the guests, it was fun.
Anton:
What about the next 10 years? Are we going-
Darren:
No, well, there will be another 10 years, but I don’t think we’ll speculate because then they’ll hold us accountable when we don’t deliver it and who knows where it’s going to be, let’s leave it open. But I think what we should do is finish with singing happy birthday to us. Ready?
Anton:
Oh, fantastic.
Darren:
One, two, three.
