Marketing Room 101 (Ben Norman)

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined in Marketing Room 101 by Gillian Clarke, a marketer with over 25 years experience working with some of the UK’s most loved FMCG brands, from Fox’s to Wham, Kit-Kat to Quality Street, and most recently Honey Monster cereal.

In 2022, Gillian set up strategic consultancy Brave North which promises straight to the point marketing that works in the real world for brands large and small.

Gillian and Ben discuss the importance of all the 4 Ps and why marketing can’t just be about the ‘promotional P’, Gillian makes the case for putting emotion back into advertising and the need to balance statistical rigour with gut instinct.

The Honey Monster is also compared to a Georgian town house and takes down Tony the Tiger.

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined in Marketing Room 101 by Nick Asbury, the creative copywriter with a rap sheet including 25 years of work for major brands, writing for Creative Review, Design Week and The Guardian, co-authoring the latest edition of ‘A Smile in the Mind: Witty thinking in graphic design’ and most recently, writing his stand-out book ‘The Road to Hell’, which outlines a case against brand purpose that Professor Byron Sharp described as ‘an antidote to shoddy thinking’.

Nick and Ben discuss the origins of brand purpose, why it leads to bad marketing and the troublesome truth behind the ‘do well by doing good’ mantra. Nick also presents a better way for brands, agencies and advertisers, suggests a rethink for creative awards and doesn’t buy a pink Jaguar.

Pick up your copy of The Road to Hell here

Find out more about Nick here

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined in Marketing Room 101 by his first ever international guest. All the way from the USA, Christina Garnett is a fractional Chief Customer Officer and founder of Pocket CCO, who helps businesses to understand their customers better, to make them happier and to retain them for longer.

Championing collaborative business culture and a customer-centric approach, Christina makes the case for destroying silos (in business, not agriculture) and creating a better culture for teams, as well as highlighting the power of a whole team aligned around the customer.

She also uses a perfect Marvel related analogy and struggles to understand beans on toast.

Find out more at Pocket CCO

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined by Global Executive Creative Director (ECD) of Jellyfish, and founder of Good Girls Eat Dinner, Jo Wallace.

Having made the move to LA in 2022 after 20 years in some of the UK’s most successful creative businesses, Jo and Ben discuss the differences between life and work in LA and London, why brands need to do the hard work to be single minded to avoid word salads, and how a braver culture of ‘yes’ could be the key to effectiveness.

Jo also shares advice on how to tackle gender bias in senior leadership positions, why we need more female role models in the industry and how to actually do something about diversity.

They also discuss miss-matched office furniture, someone’s uncle’s dog and London’s architecture.

Ben Norman opens the door to Marketing Room 101 for the first time. In this episode, he is joined by Paul Feldwick, an icon of British advertising with a career spanning 6 decades.

As a strategist and planner Paul worked at London agency BMP for over 30 years, and led global strategy and training following the merger with DDB. Since leaving, he has written Anatomy of humbug and Why does the pedlar sing? (which Rory Sutherland described as ‘possibly the book I would most highly recommend to anyone in marketing.’ )

In this episode Paul and Ben talk about the power of showmanship, and why marketers need to entertain. Paul makes banishes the rotten brand onion and champions looking back at brand history, not just forward at the next big thing.

If you haven't already, get hold of his books here...

http://paulfeldwick.com/books/the-anatomy-of-humbug/

http://paulfeldwick.com/books/why-does-the-pedlar-sing/

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined in Marketing Room 101 by Laura Jordan Bambach.

Perhaps one of the busiest people in the marketing world, Laura is Founder and Chief Creative Officer at ⁠Uncharted⁠, Founder of ⁠SheSays⁠ & ⁠Oko⁠, plus a speaker, author & artist.

As one of very few female Chief Creative Officers Laura has bagged almost every award and accolade going, including being named one of Britain’s most influential people in the Debrett’s 500, as well as leading teams at Grey and Mr President to endless creative and effectiveness awards at the highest level.

Further proving her boundless creative energy, Laura is also co-founder of SheSays, the global network supporting women in the creative industries as well as OKO and The Great British Diversity Experiment.

Laura and Ben discuss setting up an all female creative agency, the power of creative community and the danger of confusing the easiest metrics to analyse, with the metrics that actually matter.

They also discuss the comparisons between the dawn of AI and the birth of the world wide web, and Laura also decides she wants to be an axolotl with bat wings.

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined in Marketing Room 101 by Gareth Turner, a strategic consultant with almost 25 years experience running marketing for household names like Weetabix, John Smith’s and Lurpak, who founded Leeds-based consultancy Big Black Door in 2013.

Gareth makes the case for putting strategy before tactics when planning brand activity, not jumping straight to specialisms and separating the creative idea from the execution. He also campaigns to end modern marketing slavery and laments a wonky floor.

Find out more about Gareth here - ⁠bigblackdoor.com

In this episode Ben Norman is joined in Marketing Room 101 by Taylors of Harrogate Strategy and Innovation Director, Dom Dwight.

In recent years, along with his team, Dom has been responsible for some of the most effective, creative and entertaining advertising in the UK, most famously taking Yorkshire Tea to the category top spot whilst bagging almost every effectiveness award along the way.

In this conversation at Taylor's Harrogate HQ, Dom makes the case for the death of dullness, and the return of the sort of advertising that inspired him to get into the industry in the first place, including those soundtracks that inspire a good old singalong.

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined in Marketing Room 101 by brand and tone-of-voice consultant Vikki Ross, who has spent over two decades working with some of the world’s most well-known brands, like Virgin Media, Sky, and Sony Music.

As a creative copywriter, she has helped these brands tell their stories, develop their voice, sell more stuff and stick in the mind.

On top of her day job, Vikki is also the woman behind #CopywritersUnite, which brings copywriters around the world together to support, motivate and celebrate each other. Starting in London in 2012, events now take place across the world, from Amsterdam to Berlin, New York to Sydney.

Vikki outlines her case for human creativity and why we need to unplug AI for copywriting, she raises a red flag to dishonourable people, and highlights the danger of distraction.

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined in Marketing Room 101 by author, mentor and former agency owner Gareth Healey.

For around half of his 30 years in the creative industry Gareth was CEO of his own 175 head-count marketing agency, with offices in Leeds and London, before exiting to focus on helping other marketing agency owners run their businesses better, grow their agencies and sell them, as well as writing his book - Stand Out or Die.

With a hand and an ear in agencies of all shapes and sizes, Gareth makes his pitch to rethink agency pitching, introduces smarter pitching practices and explains exactly why doing so will benefit both brands and agencies and improve client-agency relationships.

Find out more about ⁠Cactus⁠.

Get your copy of ⁠Stand Out or Die⁠.

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined in Marketing Room 101 by Chris Norton & Will Ockenden, co-owners and founders of Prohibition, the award-winning PR and social media agency they set-up in Leeds in 2012, who have worked together for almost 20 years.

Chris and Will make the case for a more authentic, human approach, be it in PR, social or influencer marketing, and why we need to do something about fake followers, and influencers backed by bots.

Chris also has a rant about agency pitching, Will craves some company and Ben likes George Clooney.

Find out more about Prohibition PR here and listen to Embracing Marketing Mistakes podcast here.

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined in Marketing Room 101 by legendary advertising creative, Trevor Robinson OBE, founder of agency Quiet Storm, as well as Create Not Hate.

From sofa surfing around London trying to break into the creative world to receiving an OBE for services to advertising and diversity, Trevor’s career is extraordinary and his insight invaluable.

As a creative, Trevor has created highly entertaining and far-reaching work that’s almost certainly made anybody reading this laugh at some point – from the iconic 90s ad campaign ‘You’ve been Tango’d’ to Haribo’s kid’s voices in recent years.

He makes the case that these, and most other great creative campaigns, wouldn’t exist without faith in creativity, and therefore decides to eliminate fear from the creative industry.

Trevor and Ben also talk diversity in advertising, and how Create Not Hate isn’t about ticking boxes or meeting quotas, it’s about how diversity in a wider sense leads to better, more effective creative work.

Find out more about ⁠Quiet Storm here.⁠

Find out more about ⁠Create Not Hate here.

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined by a strategist, a speaker, a trainer, an author and a lecturer, which all happen to be the same person.

Yes, Kevin Chesters has had some of the most important strategy jobs in the country, like Chief Strategy Officer (CSO) at Ogilvy and dentsu mcgarrybowen, plus senior roles at W+K and Saatchi & Saatchi and client-side strategy stint at BT.

On top of that he wrote The Creative Nudge with business partner and good mate Mick Mahoney, as well as lecturing across several universities, training organisations across the country and fitting in the odd keynote or TEDx talk.

In this episode Kevin and Ben discuss -

• Creativity, and why it’s often misunderstood
• Positivity, and why marketing needs more of it
• Tyre kicking, and why we need to get rid of it Briefing, and how to get better at it
• Autism, and getting diagnosed with it

Plus, Kev moans about moaners, reveals the answer to happiness and quotes a Korean proverb.

In this episode, host Ben Norman is joined in Marketing Room 101 by Owen Ensor, CEO of sustainable start-up Meatly - the first company in Europe to gain approval to sell cultivated meat (or lab-grown meat), and the first in the world to be approved to sell cultivated meat pet food. We’re talking real meat (not ‘like meat’), made without animals.

In this chat, Owen and Ben discuss the fascinating journey that led Owen to enter such a fascinating industry, how Meatly went from underdog (there’s a joke in there somewhere) to world’s first, creating the brand and developing messaging, and why we need to rethink and re-regulate the way brands speak about the animals used to make their products.

Owen also announces his love for a somewhat niche kind of 1960s advertising and brings Freddie Mercury back from the dead.

Find out more at ⁠meatly.pet⁠