How to do marketing people love

Ryan Barry: 

Hi everybody. And welcome to season five of Inside Insights, a podcast powered by Zappi. Crazy to think we're on our fifth season. And I got to tell you folks, season five is actually going to top all four of the first seasons. But if you haven't listened to the first four, don't sleep on them. They're great. I am joined, as always, by my lovely co-host and Columbian friend, down in Columbia, Patricia Montesdeoca. Hola, Patricia.

Patricia Montesdeoca:

Hola, Ryan.

Ryan:

What's crack-a-lackin? You got your marathon shirt. You're ready to go.

Patricia:

I do. I got my 50 K on for the energy. It's been a fantastic summer so far, and I'm looking forward to getting started on season five. Unbelievable.

Ryan:

Season five. The leaves aren't changing yet, but they're coming. Season's changing. And also joined by Kelsey Sullivan, our producer, Kelsey, my fellow Rhode Islander. How you doing?

Kelsey:

Doing great. Pumped for season five.

Ryan:

Kelsey has some motion sickness, and she was out on a boat with me last week. And she still had fun, despite everybody asking her if she was going to be okay.

Kelsey:

Yeah.

Ryan:

Good vibes in the Boston Harbor. If you're ever in Boston and you want to talk marketing or insights, and you want to go out on a boat with me, hit me up. We'll have some fun.

All right. I am very excited about our kickoff. I'm also very excited about all of season five. We've got a theme. What needs to be true to make marketing and innovation that people love. We're going to be talking to insights leaders, CMOs, marketers, heads of brand, about this topic. To give you some ideas, how you can better infuse customer centricity, at scale, in your organization. 

It's a wonderful time to be an insights leader, the opportunity to connect data and signals, to understand what makes consumers tick, to disseminate that strategically into the business, to the people creating innovations and marketing, has never been as prevalent as it is now. But the opportunity to seize data and bring the empathy insights people can do, is right now, we all got to step our game up.

I can't tell you how excited I was about this interview, and how much fun I had having it. Today's guest is Mark Ritson. Mark Ritson is an editor of Marketing Week. He has founded the Mini MBA program, and he's a legend in marketing. If you didn't know that, read some of his stuff. He shoots straight, and he says nothing but the truth. We actually, for the first time in Inside Insight's history, have a two part episode, because Mark and I were having so much fun that we broke our conversation up into two parts.

Today, we're going to talk about how you go about understanding what consumers are doing, and how they feel, and what makes them tick. So that you can build brands, products, and services that they love. We even talk about Shania Twain, and I don't know about y'all, but I love me some Shania Twain. In fact, I was doing a Peloton ride today, and Shania Twain came on. And you know what, Man! I Feel Like a Woman! Your boy's dancing in the basement, and that's okay. That's okay.

Patricia:

That's the best part. 

Ryan:

That's right. So Mark and I are going to talk about Shania Twain and how that relates to world class customer experience. Understanding people so that you can build products people love, in part one.

In part two, we're going to talk about the things that are changing in marketing and the things that aren't changing. We're also going to give you guys some advice on how to navigate yourself through a recession. But for today we got a lot of fire power. So let's get into it. Let's get into the chat with Mark.

[Music transition to interview]

Ryan Barry:

So Mark and I have been talking about marketing for 10 minutes. We thought we should hit record now. Hey, Mark. We thought it was the right thing.

Mark Ritson:

Morning, afternoon.

Ryan:

Morning, afternoon.

Mark:

I always like to say to my Australian friends, hello from the future, because it's... Where are we at? Friday here and Thursday with you. So the world is still around, don't worry.

Ryan:

The world is still around. I get a kick out of that with my kids on new year specifically. It's like the middle of the day and we're like, it's new year's in Australia and the kids are like, wow.

Mark:

It's a Sydney Harbor bridge. One of the worst things I used to do with them, I spent my life as you have on these conference calls around the world. And I'm inevitably at 4:00 AM in the morning in my underpants in Australia. And there's a team from Chicago or New York on the other end of the call. And the first thing they say to you is, "Hey, what time is it down there?" And I'm like, "It's 4:00 AM."

Ryan:

Yeah. Thanks.

Mark:

So I started to say to them, but we're two days ahead just to mess with them. So I said, but you know it was Wednesday there, I'm like it's Friday here. We're two days ahead down here. And they're like, "You are?" I'm like, "Yes it's been two days ahead down here." No one ever busted me.

Ryan:

Oh, that's funny. All right. So Mark and I are going to... I have a feeling we're going to rant and rave and talk about a whole bunch of different topics related to how people buy things and how companies market to them. And I'm very excited about this. 

I want to start with a question I've always wanted to ask you. I've seen you rant about not another podcast. Why do you think most podcasts suck? And by the way, at the end of this you could tell me if mine sucks and I'm okay with that.

Mark:

It's a really interesting question. I'm giving you a little bit of bullshit here, but it's true. You're kind of famous, you know what I mean? Your company's kind of famous and therefore you kind of get a status for this podcast that most other marketers don't have. Most marketers doing this are lovely, good marketers but fundamentally unknown. And then what they typically do is get another unknown marketer and they ask the same questions again and again. And I just think it's a lack of differentiation in the marketplace. It's stunning that we have so many marketers that are intent on building brands, but they all fundamentally do the same thing. You know what I mean?

Ryan:

Totally. I don't know who said this, but when everybody zigs, if you zag it's usually a good thing. As long as it resonates with the people you're trying to connect with.

Mark:

Yeah. Well, there's no point in zigging with everyone else. So you may as well zag, do you know what I mean?

Ryan:

Yeah. Well, I think for people like us that's probably just natural, but that does make sense to me. And it is interesting because whether it's LinkedIn or a podcast, it's actually a great way to test messaging to see what's resonating. I have this whole thesis that the insights industry needs insights ops because there's all this technology being thrown at these people. And then they're being asked to be strategic at the same time and figure it out. And it came up naturally in an interview last season. And I had 50 people email me and be like, oh my God, I totally like it. And I was just riffing, it was a great sort of way to do it

Mark:

Well. And look, your industry fascinates me at the moment. You've got this high level, as you say sort of strategy driven insight value added thing. Which has its place, man, if you can do it but it's high end as you know. And then down the bottom, it's one of the few places where automation is genuinely changing an industry. 

There's a lot of industries that are changing by automation, market research is one that definitely is. So you get this bifurcation of these that are really advanced but hopefully not full of high level analysis firms. And down the bottom, this still very good kind of more tracking based automated thing where they'll even recruit the samples. I find that fascinating.

Ryan:

Yeah. And I remember when I left Kantar many years ago, actually eight years ago today…But my reason for joining was if people could be freed up to think and the data was more programmatic, well then we'd do better marketing. You'd sell more stuff, companies would grow. But that's a really big behavior change. When you think of the amount of people who got maybe in a career managing the execution of a survey. And now they're like, you want me to be strategic and curate a bunch of data and challenge a marketer's bullshit. That's a different story.

Mark:

It's a big ask, Ryan. And I think there's a challenge there, which I've said frequently to my MBA students, the last person you want designing a survey instrument is someone who works in a research company. What you do want is someone that can understand what you're trying to do and turn it into a proper instrument. But don't start from an empty page with a research team. So it's a fine skill that you guys have where you're able to go, we can translate what you're thinking into an instrument. Do you know what I mean?

Ryan:

Yeah.

Mark:

That people will still pay for that because they need that. The oldest question in marketing is, I get asked it all the time. What's the ultimate measures of marketing? I'm like, what was your strategy? What are your objectives? Because the only way to measure anything is to go back to where you started, and that's the ultimate metric. But you have so many marketers that don't have that clarity in the first place to go back to. You write a good objective, you've already kind of isolated what your metrics are.

Ryan:

Yeah. Well, as long as you're consistent, I see a lot of brands that they're super strategic and intentional with campaigns. And then they're like, oh, let's tout our awards. And it's like, what are you doing? You just were doing this really well, and now you've just thrown in this random noise into your... If the intentionality exists. And so I'm going to go to something I was going to ask you later. What do CMOs need to do to actually get consumers and their insights more into their day to day workflow? I see a lot of problems. I had a guy who I respect, an Insights leader and this is what he said to me, "I've transformed insights as much as I can without marketing fundamentally changing, and so I'm going to go look for a new job now," which interests me. So what do you think marketers need to do differently to actually harness some of these tools, and to the rare strategic people that we do see?

Mark:

Look, I'm a big fan of the qual-quant dichotomy. They're totally different things and they work in different ways. I think in the qualitative world it sounds very basic, but it's just the ability to get your ass into the market and bring the people that make the decisions into the market. So I put ethnography at the top of the list of any research method, small data. I think the first way you can bring insights into a company, into strategy, is to go to the place where your customers are, like physically go. Do you know what I mean? 

Like my biggest boss ever was Bernard Arnault, runs LVMH. I think he is now the third richest man in the world or whatever he is. And Mr. Arnault spends every weekend in his shops, just talking to the sales associates and watching the customers. Every weekend, no exaggeration.

And we have video of him doing it. He knows the name of the guy on the door of all the different boutiques. And we know because when he was in Japan to do a numbers presentation, every Japanese boutique in Tokyo was ready because he was going to come in. And he goes straight to the sales associates he knows, asking him how things are going, what's selling best. Meets a couple of clients, has a chat with them. He doesn't talk about it. If you listen to him being interviewed, he's all about the ballet and about opera, but he spends his days in the stores.

And the whole point is it's pure data, you can do that. And I was trained by the best CEOs who said to me, "Get your ass out into the street, come a day early to a meeting, wherever you go walk around, see what's going on and visit the boutiques." And I think that's gone, this big data thing has ruined that. The idea of curiosity and hanging out is... Particularly in B2B where you can get a sense of a company by visiting them. Like talking to the people inside is a brilliant tool.

Ryan:

Yes. I know you talk a lot about market orientation and there is a hack to get it. And you can describe a little bit more of what you mean by market orientation. So I'm somebody who spends a lot of time talking to our most junior users and holy shit, we learn what's going on. It gives you such intuition to form strategies. Then the data helps validate assumptions via creativity, and I think of this all the time for the way our customers use us. They've already made up their mind with no market orientation and then they want an ad test score and it's like-

Mark:

You got it.

Ryan:

We could have helped you make the ad better. It's a completely different thing.

Mark:

No. And so that's absolutely right. And that's the qual bit. Then the quant bit is just having the right data. And I see quant data like water, you pump it into the irrigation troughs that you've built. It needs to go into certain places. It needs to be shared. There's nothing like having data which everyone can see and compare themselves. Like a league table of how the different 10 affiliates are performing on various metrics and who's winning and who's losing. 

That's how you use data. You pump it into the places where decisions are made. I love what Scott Galloway said about CMOs, just not a lot of them just not having the data to talk in the boardroom about what's going on in the world of the customer. When we went through the pandemic, there was a certain breed of CMO who'd sit at that leadership table and go, this is what's happening to the customer.

This is what the data says they're going to be doing. And there was another group who were making those shit ass ads with tinkling pianos, and people looking out of windows, we feel your pain. It was a moment for data and insight. And I'm a big one for I think the leadership literature in America is whole shit, that leadership is empathy. Leadership is promoting others, that's not what fucking leadership is. Leadership is partly that, but it's also a lot about making what appears to be the right decision and getting everyone to follow it, right?

Ryan:

Yeah. And then leading people to follow it.

Mark:

And then making them do it through whatever technique. Most of the leaders I've worked for that have been effective were total bastards a lot of the time, great leaders. And that's an uncool thing to say, because it's meant to be empathy and promoting others and all that wank. So what you saw during COVID is what happens when you promote that sensibility. You get a bunch of people who aren't leaders going, "What the fuck are we going to do when the world is completely changed?" They couldn't make a leadership decision to save their lives. There were exceptions. I love the P&G story. I love how they came out of that stronger and better. I love that.

Ryan:

Well, McDonald's was another example, they doubled down on what was working. It was, we're good at this, we're going to figure out creative ways to apply it and reduce some noise and we're just going. And that's a bold decision to make. 

Mark:

But there weren't that many, Ryan. This is the interesting thing, we had all these great leaders and great decision makers, and people were in touch with their customers and strong brands. They all did exactly the same thing with the stupid ads. They were off the pace.

Ryan:

Somebody was taking the pace out of this and they had all the, we see you and understand your spots without the logos. And you couldn't make out ABI's ad from Nike's ad, they all just looked the same.

Mark:

And the interesting thing is it's all going back to this market orientation point, it's all this mistake that people think their brands are really big parts of the customer's life. And even the strongest brand is a tiny thing. No one gives a what your brand thinks about COVID right now, that was the point. These people that have not grasped market orientation because they work eight hours a day on a toothpaste brand, think that the toothpaste is a huge part of this customer's life. 

When I speak of market orientation, I mean a swivel. So marketing isn't how we think about this customer down here, that's bullshit. It's when we properly through Zappi and other companies, we properly get to see how they see us through their eyes?

And everything changes when you do that. The importance of your brand becomes very small. Brand purpose becomes hilariously stupid for most companies. The definition of competition is completely wrong in most companies, they haven't got it. The competitors are not who the alternatives are that the consumer is looking at, the touch points that matter versus the ones that don't matter. My biggest interest in life is watching that swivel and trying to show companies, hey, you have no idea why people like you, or how they buy, or who they look at. You've never even grasped this. It's a stunning realization.

Ryan:

Well, to that swivel point, the same person who bought a wellness product perhaps stopped for a Big Mac on the way home and is maybe considering a Peloton bike, but also is going to brush their teeth. And they're just one person.

Mark:

Bob Hoffman has that great line about open your refrigerator, look at all the brands and all those different brand purpose intentions that you have no idea about. How many of these things did you buy because of brand purpose. It's a great reality check.

Ryan:

So market orientation is the easiest silver bullet in marketing in my opinion. I think you agree with me. It's that gentleman who probably drives around on a 200 million yacht today, what a hack and it just leads to shortcuts and decision making. So you talked about data. So two things, market orientation and leaders being people who can make credible decisions and lead people to it. I respect the shit out of that.

Mark:

And not necessarily correct. I think one of the other lessons is there is no correct strategy, there is no right answer. And most leaders grasp that and yet convey that complete sense of certainty that this is the right answer, when no such right answer exists. I find that fascinating as well.

Ryan:

Yeah, me too. And also this is a Jeff Bezos quote that I really like, how many decisions do we make are actually completely irreversible. You can make a strategy to execute against it for two years and you're going to iterate along the way if you're smart anyways. So you spend a lot of money on navel gazing exercises. Where's it's-

Mark:

It's that balance, Ryan. It's very interesting. You're holding the wheel for the sort of overall strategy, but at the same time, as you say, the course correction that happens is you're learning. There's that balance between those two things. One of the courses I run, I finished with a simulation where the brand managers manage a brand for five years, and their grade is their share price at the end. 

And I really wanted the simulation for exactly this point that, a lot of them in year two or year three they shift their plans and change their strategy completely, failure. A lot of them just hold on to this completely dead set for five years and fail. It's that balance of just being able to go, okay, this because then all the other students are competing with them. So how everyone is moving around you does have an impact, but you've still got that general course. I find that fascinating.

Ryan:

It is. And the best leaders, those of you listening, you don't realize until you're in the chair, how much pressure comes from the street, the board, the investors for short term results that are not right. So you have to set a tent pole, drive the bus there. But the way I do it is each quarter I take stock, what did we fuck up? What did we learn? How do we iterate? And then you could set it on course.

Mark:

But so you just did something very rare, so you stopped and learned and then moved on. So when I work with brands, I try to get two days with the team. And the first day I say, we're just going to learn from the last 12 months. Like literally not allowed to talk tactics, not allowed to talk strategy. Let's just rewind back. Imagine we go back in a time machine, 12 months, what have we learned from doing all this shit? Let's break it all down, share it with each other, and come to a conclusion. And then day two you go right, based on what we've learned, what are we going to do strategically? Not tactically, strategically what are we going to do next year? And it sounds so obvious.

Most companies get lost in the bullshit of agility and they don't have that sense of strategically where we are going. And it's a beautiful thing when you have a strategy. It's such a beautiful advantage to be able to go, our strategy's so good. I've only had these experiences seven or eight times in my life, but I'm working with a client. Our strategy's so good that whatever the competition does, there's no way out of this. It's just going to get better and tighter. Do you know what I mean? That moment we can go, it's beautiful.

Ryan:

It is and it's rare. And I find myself in the middle of that and it feels good because I don't care what the others do. I'm just going to execute and learn. But the learning thing is a hard muscle for people. And Mark and I were talking about this before we started recording how learning's changing. And I was telling a story about my seven year old who's super curious. And he taught himself about how dysfunctionally the US government works. Just because he was curious and was able to replay that back to me. And I think learning how to learn is something that I would love to see more companies bring into their L&D sort of frameworks, because it's just like learning how to run tactical projects. Cool. It's a muscle.

Mark:

There's a long way to go with learning. Learning how to learn just generally, I've found it fascinating the last five years doing online training that this idea that we would ship people into a lecture theater or fly them to Vegas. And they spend three days in a room and that's the best way to learn is like no one does that. As I've said to you before we started, I've used podcasts for my students now because they learn better. They go jogging, they walk the dog, they look after the kids. But they can learn rather than sitting in an amphitheater with 60 other people, while someone does a theater performance, is basically what being a professor is now.

Ryan:

So true.

Mark:

Yeah. There's a real change coming in that area. It's ripe for change. And for me the fascinating thing about education is, it's not just the economics of it. The key point that I've learned, having been a real professor for 25 years is... And the thing that broke me was that if you do online in a particular way, the people learn better and they learn more. Like your son, he learned more doing it that way than spending the same amount of time being taught by a teacher. That's the killer point. It's not just cheaper, more convenient, more democratic, whatever. It's a superior way to learn. 

The problem with the Gary Vee's of the world is they take it too far, and they're against all education training. You still need the structure of learning or you end up getting it wrong. Those guys that post on Twitter, these 10 hacks are better than an MBA. I always go after them because I'm like, first of all you haven't got an MBA so you don't know anything.

Ryan:

Yeah. You don't know what you don't know.

Mark:

Yeah. And most of them are like these 10 hacks on marketing. I'm like, all of your hacks are about communication, which is 5% of marketing. And if you'd have done a proper training course in marketing, you would've known that. So stop trying to train other people because you don't know enough yet. You know what I mean?

Ryan:

Yeah. It's true. But it's also just people being willing to learn. I'm somebody who I have an advanced degree in market research and I've been building a software company. I don't have an MBA, but holy shit do I want to learn. But that's a curiosity thing. And one of the things that companies need to enable, and this is a huge pet peeve of mine, the McKinseys of the world make millions of dollars telling insert beer brand here they need to be agile. 

That means absolutely nothing to Jessica who's in innovation, R & D manager in China. And she's like, what the fuck does that mean? And they don't enable any of the things that actually means to become true or create the space for failure and iteration, and all these other things that actually... What they really mean is cut costs and go faster. And I wish they would just say that.

Mark:

It's true. The biggest lesson I've taken from the appetite for learning, is that market orientation proceeds research. Yeah. So the role of market orientation is basically to make you realize I don't know anything. Oh fuck, everything I think is wrong.

Ryan:

The oh shit moment.

Mark:

Oh shit, my list of competitors isn't what the customer just told me she's looking across. So I always use college professors as an example, I used to teach in all these business schools where we all get great research. We get a pack of feedback at the end of each semester from the MBA students telling you where you suck and what you're good at and all of that. It's painful while you sit down and read it. And I used to say to my students, look, most of your teachers... Every business school has really bad teachers and really good ones. The really bad ones are getting the same amount of research as the really good ones.

So how come the really bad ones have stayed bad, because we all started out not being able to teach? And the answer is not the amount of research which they have literally delivered to their office. It's the absence of market research. The absence of a hole that needs to be filled with insight that creates the curiosity, which brings in the data that starts the cycle of testing and learning. If you don't have that realization that you really don't know what the customer wants or does, you'll never seek the research that will give you the answers.

Ryan:

So I think the buzzword for that in market research circles, for those of you listening is foundational research. But you have Mark's market orientation point, if you take nothing away from our conversation, take this, it's so easy. I have a friend Christian who runs insights at Colgate. You know what Christian does? Every Saturday, he goes to the supermarket with his wife and his kids. And he looks at all the aisles and he watches people. And then when he is in his strategy meeting, he adds value. And this dude's got a lot of data. Colgate probably has more data than anybody. That's an instinctual feeling that helps everything else. So now let's just assume, let's give everybody listening the benefit of the doubt. They listen to you. They start to find ways to turn the microphone around.

Mark:

Okay.

Ryan:

Where else do you see insights being used effectively through the workflow of creating things into the world and then optimizing them as they go forward? What are some good examples or where CMOs can get more value? And you can answer it from both sides.

Mark:

There's a few places. So I love the idea of research then producing segmentation. So a big error that almost everyone makes is they see segmentation and targeting as the same thing. They're totally diametrically opposite. Segmentation is part of insight. Segmentation is about the market. If Canter were doing a bit of market research on the US market for research, in theory should have an identical segmentation to you guys, Ryan, because market segmentation is not about you it's about the market. 

And then targeting is selfish. Targeting is choiceful. Targeting is about Zappi, targeting is where we're. So the chess board needs to be built from research before you start moving the pieces around. So that moment of creating a proper segmentation that's fit for purpose out of simple research, and then being able to drill into the target segment and go right. We want these guys.

I did it yesterday with a company we found... I love segmentation, it's the horniest part of marketing. I spent the day building this giant segmentation with this tech company. We find as I promised them, the minute you finish it, the segmentation starts speaking to them. Even though they're smart guys in their industry, I'm like, wait, and say, shouldn't we finish it over here, down here, do this, do that. It starts talking. So we pick this segment, that's just jumped down from us like this is the one. And they're off doing focus groups next week with as it turns out lawyers, because that's the group they want to find out more about. And I love that whole progression, so that's just building the map of the market is a great place.

I'm a massive fan of the whole job's to be done, Clayton Christensen concept. So this idea, like he doesn't understand the market, the late great Christensen for those who don't know, so he was an innovation strategy Prof., came up with disruption and everything. He has no idea about marketing. So a lot of the stuff in jobs to be done is kind of just like a messy amateur way of describing other aspects of marketing, which is discovered with his own brain. But that jobs to be done, and asking what jobs need to be done for the customer. And then taking that particularly into product development, I love that area. And then the other one is I love brand tracking. For me brand tracking is where it's... If I can get a cycle going of a client tracking its brand properly and then feeding that into the planning meetings for the next year or the next cycle.

And we get into that set goals, measure, come back, review, learn, set goals, that wheel very rarely happens. But having tracking data that is not generic, that's simple enough that everyone gets it. But powerful enough to capture what's happening, that's where I love to be. I love that. I love a 30 item questionnaire that's been asked five years running and the insight is in the movement or non-movement. The first thing you learn from brand tracking, if you're a manager and you're a marketer, is nothing moves.

And you're like, oh the instrument. And I get lots of people say to me, you have to change the instrument because it's not moving. I'm like, no, you have to focus more because this is what the market is really like. You want to increase consideration, you need to put all your horses on it and you have to go hard. You want to change the perception that you are agile, you are going to have a campaign that screams agile for 19 months. And that's the reality. That's what brand tracking teaches you, man. You've got to push and I love it.

Ryan:

And be patient because this stuff [inaudible 00:29:00]. I have an optic in my business where despite how flexible we've made the platform, people think we're rigid and that's a three year mark-on job for us. And nothing I'm going to say to you is going to change that. It's just consistent, it doesn't matter about anything other than the experience matching reality. And then consistency in the messaging.

Mark:

You got it, man. And it's like a giant hammer and you've just gotta keep kind of hitting it as often as you can. A knock is like, oh no, we've done this now. I'm like, no, we're only just beginning, to your point we've got to be more obvious than this and do it for longer. That's the nature of the game. I believe in differentiation, I'm pretty rare these days. But only if you pick two or three things and then go after it for 10 years in a very obvious way. And again, it's not unique. Frankly, it's not even that you own an attribute. None of this ever happens. When we look at this data, we never see a brand that owns an attribute in the market.

That's all bullshit. But two or three associations that come to mind for your brand relatively strongly, that's all we can hope for. And if you can get that, you win. It's mostly about salience, it's mostly about coming to mind. I think everyone accepts that now. But I still think there's that associative image thing that also plays a role, albeit less of a role than we once thought. It's mostly B2B, B2C. If Zappi comes to mind when I'm thinking about insight, you're pretty much there.

Ryan:

Yeah. I was telling you a story, which we don't need to say here, but when somebody's ready, they call with salience. If they don't, then that's a B2B dilemma. But is an interesting-

Mark:

And by the way, this is the work we were talking about which is worth sharing. So LinkedIn is doing some really interesting B2B inside stuff. They've invented this 95-5 rule for B2B markets, which I adore. And I've seen it work with senior managers who've never got brand building before. They've got a shit ton of data that shows 95% of B2B customers are not in the market right now, for banking, for research, for head recruitment, whatever. And 5% are. And the minute you get that when you look at the data, you go. That's why we need marketing and sales. That's why we need to build a brand as well as target customers, because to your point, the best marketing in the world doesn't make someone pick up the phone and go, "Hey, I've just seen you on this podcast. And what I need is $12 million of research." Right?

Ryan:

Yeah, exactly.

Mark:

The need is generated internally, but then Zappi comes to mind and they move into the 5%. That's why we do long term brand building. Yeah, we do it for the 95, so when I become the five we're there. And that point again is so simple, but most marketers and most managers don't get it. You can't go out and just sell you. You can't spend more money on sales teams or lower your prices, same 5%. You know what I mean?

Ryan:

Yeah. I don't have the data to back it up, I'm about to say you might call it bullshit. But I would argue it's the same with B2C products. It's still about salience and the moment of I have this problem, or I have this job, I'm hungry, I'm thirsty, I need to make a call, I want a beer or whatever that is.

Mark:

It's the same, Ryan. It's the ratios that are different. I worked in banking, so the famous Peter field and Les Barnett duo that invented the long and the short of it. The bank I was working for got Les to come on and do a big analysis of what's the equivalent of 95-5. And for financial services, he's a statistician, he knows his stuff. You want about 70, 75% of your budget in long term brand building, and only about 25% of it in product activations. And that normally B2C yogurt had set it 60-40. And the bank guys are like, how can we be even more brand centric than yogurt and candy bars?

And Les was like, because if you think about it you're only ever in market for a mortgage or to change your bank about three or four times in your whole life. But you're buying yogurt all the time. So the moments of activation relatively speaking are much less and the need to build that brand. So when I'm like, I'm going to change mortgages, this is a moment in my life where I can switch banks. We're ready to go. So it varies by industry. The rough rules, 60-40 long and short, but yeah, B2B 50-50 approximately and long and short, but financial service is 75-25.

Ryan:

Which makes perfect sense.

Mark:

But by the way, no one will ever do in banking because they're product obsessed.

Ryan:

They're either product obsessed or short term revenue obsessed, because they're run by the street. And Mark joined us for one of our customer get togethers and-

Mark:

That was fun.

Ryan:

That was fun. Wasn't it? We'll do that again. And we were talking a lot about this in this conversation of how ADD in marketing kills us because they're very few companies that stick to golden arches or those... But it's so easy to get bored, I'm distracted. I want to try something new. And so the consistency of the message is very hard for people to stay focused on.

Mark:

Yeah. And it's a market orientation point. So you think I've been hammering my image like this with this campaign now, everyone must have seen it. And by the way I've spent 900 man or woman hours designing this ad. So I'm now fully sick of it. You turn it around and the customer still hasn't noticed it.

Ryan:

Yeah. They haven't even seen it.

Mark:

They haven't even seen it. It's a Byron Sharp stat, it's around about 85% of ads that you are exposed to, the next day you can't remember them and the brand that sponsored them. So 85% of ads were a total waste of time by any metric. And there's two drivers: creativity will make your ad more likely to be noticed and remembered, but the distinctive assets making the ad look like your brand is a scandal. Most marketers and most agencies create marketing material, which isn't distinctive enough and looks like their company because they think it does. But they don't understand how little of a fuck any of the customers give.

Ryan:

Yeah. I don't care about your potato chip until I care about your potato chip.

Mark:

I don't even notice it. I didn't even know this was an ad for your potato chips, because it wasn't clear. It was just a field. The old agency was wearing ads where you'd do a 90 second TV scene and at the end it's like, Ooh and it's potato chip brand. What a surprise? That was clever. You can't do that anymore. It has to be a potato chip logo, an asset all the way through because you need to get your money's worth out of the pixels. You know what I mean?

Ryan:

You do. So there's something about the segmentation point I want to go back to and it's another plus one on market orientation. I don't do segmentations, I used to. We evaluate ads and new products. But I remember every single segmentation I ever did came with, this is our thesis, this is our... One armed Sally who buys this... And they'd already made up their mind before they did the damn segmentation.

Mark:

You got it.

Ryan:

You're right. If I look at the personas in my specific market, CMOs, chief growth officers, brand managers, insights people, Zappi is like a... Look I'll allow myself to sleep thinking people care about me, but they don't. We're a small part of how they do their job. It's only when you realize that and that's why I love your segmentation point, that you can actually grow your company sustainably because it's a self-awareness thing more than anything and like-

Mark:

It is but people don't want to hear it. It's easy when you insert a business inside a brand, you start... I worked for Benefit Cosmetics in San Francisco for many years, loved the brand, loved the CEO. And I remember we did the first ever bit of brand tracking and we went upstairs and gave it to John Andre and I can remember we had 14% awareness. So which beauty brands are you aware of? Benefits in North America were like 14%. And everyone was questioning the data. They're like look, we thought we were basically done in America because everybody knew us. We saw America as complete.

And I think it's that moment where you realize, no, just because you are working in an office which is pink and benefits everywhere. And you've been doing this for 15 years, salience fades real quick. And there are corners of the market that just don't know who you are. You look at social media, the people that engage with your posts are the unrepresentative, unimportant tiny tip of an iceberg. The silent majority underneath who have no interest in writing anything, but will definitely read stuff. And you'll never know they're there, that's the market.

Ryan:

It is. And I noticed this, I'm sure you do with your own LinkedIn, the amount of people who tell you they've engaged when they meet you versus ever do anything it's profound. It's a big difference. So I want to ask you a question linking to your continuum. So let's assume for a sec I know the market, I've done an objective segmentation. I've been curious, I love the story that you just told me because they were interested in learning more about lawyers. They hadn't even made up their mind yet.

Mark:

Yep.

Ryan:

Let's assume it's lawyers. I know lawyers. I have a strategy that I'm going to track over time with brand tracking and sales data. When I'm now in the process of building assets, I'm launching innovation, I'm evaluating. I want to unpack that part of the creation process with you a little bit, because if I'm honest, we don't connect that data either way today to the orientation side or the tracking side.

Mark:

Yeah. Got you. It's in the middle.

Ryan:

Yeah. It's in the middle and selfishly it's the part of the supply chain I play in. And it interests me because the amount of times I hear we're launching tomorrow, we need an answer tomorrow, nothing's going to change, it kills me. It's not why we started our business. But how do you see businesses using... And I'll use traditional words, concept testing, advertising testing. How do you turn that from testing to learning and connect that better to the continuum that you just laid out for the market?

Mark:

You're absolutely right. It's kind of that middle area which you'd think would be the most important, but often gets neglected. I was watching a Shania Twain documentary last night as you do when you're on your own.

Ryan:

As one does.

Mark:

As one does.

Ryan:

Did you feel like a woman?

Mark:

I did feel like a woman. Yeah. Don't tell my wife though. So I'm watching this Shania Twain documentary, and it's like I've forgotten about Shania Twain. And I forget that it was the third album, the best selling album of all time by a woman. And she has this really savvy manager and they're all talking about Shania's voice and creativity and it's all true. And he goes, look, there were 12 hit songs on that album. Most albums have two, maybe three hit songs. No one talks about this.

The reason we were so successful is because we had 12 hit songs and that's great value for money. And I'm like the dude's got it. No one who's talked about the history of Shania Twain ever spoke about the actual quality of the product itself. And this is an incredible thing about modern business, especially marketing. Nobody thinks about the product. Second, the reason I'm growing mad with Mini MBA, there are some strategic things and some cleverness there. But it's mostly because it's better than anyone else's course in the world. I know that. And the people on my course know it, that's a big fucking advantage. You see what I mean?

Ryan:

Yes. Experience matters.

Mark:

But I think your question starts with why aren't we doing more on product testing? I don't think people realize product's that are important in the whole thing. They talk about ads as if the focus in marketing is on advertising. It's a relatively minor thing. Is the product any good? And marketing is meant to be involved in that, that's the first point. It's one of our four levers, it's one of the four Ps. My message to all marketers, stop around with the Ps. They were invented in 1960. They're the tactical levers. The first time you meet someone that says there are five Ps or 12 Cs, shoot them. They're an idiot. It's like Gary Vee, it's an idiot magnet. It's a test. NFTs, they're there to show you which marketers don't get it.

Product's important and marketers can feed into that. But the next challenge is when you read the marketing textbooks, they're all totally wrong. They talk about finding an unmet need and designing a product. I've never ever been part of that process ever. What happens is just like you, a product gets created because someone can make a product. I launched Mini MBA because I had a daughter and I had to find a way of making money without traveling. It didn't start with, there's an unmet need. It starts with something else or I've got this skill, I'll make something. There's nothing wrong with that, the point then is as soon as you start making it start turning the wheel, go to customers early and say to them, what do you think about this?

Does that feel right? How would you do it? Test it informally, make a prototype, test the prototype, then test and learn forever and keep improving. But I think we've got these two barriers, which is we don't think product's that important. And we think products appear off a conveyor belt and then it's kind of like now marketing them by promoting them. And I think it's a... You're absolutely right. It's a massive problem in the middle of insights that clients don't realize. Shania Twain was successful because she has a great voice and it was a really clever strategy. But mostly, she had 12 fucking hit songs on her album.

Ryan:

Everybody in the world knows the words till today, probably even many years later.

Mark:

Exactly right. And if she had shit songs, no matter what her strategy, no matter how she looked, whatever her voice was like, no one would've heard of her. She'd still be singing songs in Vancouver, in a rodeo or somewhere. It would be... And so I think the first job we've got is to make people realize, you know what the most important thing is? Is the product any fucking good on it or not? And can we focus on that a little bit? No ad testing, we're not targeting, just how can we... The two things I do in a very amateur way, I remain a fan of net promoter scores. I don't believe it predicts future business growth. I think that was beautiful bullshit. It's good for a guy like me, when I have 6,000 customers a year, I can split my participants when they give me my feedback on the net promoter score question.

I can look at the promoters and I can just read comments. And then I can go to my passives and read comments. It's just a pure little bit of insight into my product. It's quick and dirty. And the other thing I do is I do a touchpoint analysis, which is a little more advanced. We get them to say, thinking about where you are now at the end of the course, what were the four or five moments... Because mine's a service. What were the four or five moments where you really intersected with my brand? Now rate whether it was positive or negative and put it in sequence, and we can code it. And we have this beautiful diagram that basically says, here's the biggest touch points. Here's the most negative ones. Here's the most positive ones. Here's the sequence. And we just pick one each time and go right, that's our boy, we're going after that one.

And you get your team together. But I think my point though, Ryan, is you have to believe that the product is part of marketing. And you have to believe it can be changed before you even get to that insights feeding it stage. Most companies I know the product comes off a conveyor belt from Switzerland, and it's like okay, now I'll market it. And I think that's the cost of it.

Ryan:

That's right. I see this all the time when we work across all the big categories and it's you who innovate two years away with an R&D team. And then it gets dumped in a creative brief, down to some campaign manager. And then they call our system to do at best late stage copy testing when it... 

What I believe and I'd love to get your thoughts on this is, marketing's in the room at the creation of the innovation and the product experience and the proposition are thought about at the same time, my hypo and I've seen this work for brands. Then when they get an idea of how you communicate? It's just about making it a great idea, incredible and figuring it out. Your point is on strategy? How do I make this, what's my score when you are ready with your $2 million firm? At least what I see you think about them as two different constructs, but it's you who innovate to go to market. I don't know why you wouldn't think of the whole piece of string.

Mark:

No, I think that's a good insight and I think it speaks for there's a good parallel with pricing. So marketing is predominantly now the coloring department. Most marketers unfortunately, are working on comms stuff, brochure design, social media and they see that as marketing. The problem with that is to your point then, we're never going to get the connection between the market and product developments. And I don't think marketers should be in charge of product development. 

There's a difference between controlling it and having influence. I don't think marketers were ever in charge of that, but we should have influence. And the same with pricing, we're going through this massive period of inflation. Every company's going to have to increase price because the marketers, 90% of the time aren't involved in pricing because they're over there designing a fucking Twitter ad.

We're going to do two things. We're going to under price, because that's what happens when you don't have marketers doing the price analysis. And the way you present the price, which is more important than the price itself, will be done poorly by people who are economically driven. Who doesn't understand that if you frame a price, it doesn't matter what the price is. There's setting a price, the price itself and how you present the price. This one is 80% of the game, if you understand the price from a marketing point of view. So again, just like product, because marketers are no longer at the table, again not controlling price but influencing-

Ryan:

Influencing.

Mark:

We need customer data. We need price perception. We need a Van Westendorp. We need conjoint. It's not there man, because marketing's become not even comms, it's fucking digital comms. It's like 4% of our discipline occupies 90% of our thinking. And for me that's... I love comms, I just don't think it's that important in the scheme of things.

Ryan:

Well, if you know the market, if you segment and target, if you bring in the right people across functionally downstream, the rest of it is about optimization. And it's an interesting insight I'm taking from this conversation, because one of the things I want to do is connect the pre-launch data to the tracking world. So that there's a bit of a loop close that says, when you do these things, this moves needles, when you don't it's disconnected. You ever hear the story that there's a Simon Kucher partners pricing consultancy that there's this dude Madhavan who wrote a book about monetizing innovation? 

So the story he told changed my thinking about innovation forever. He told the story of the Dodge Dart and the Porsche cayenne. The Dodge Dart was started with an engineer's idea of what a car should look like. They built a factory somewhere in Ohio, they hired a bunch of people. And they thought, no marketers allowed we're building the car's car. And they put every freaking bell and whistle you could imagine in this thing. And just on a cost plus basis, they had to charge... I can't remember what it was. Let's just say for the sake of discussion, they had to charge 70,000 bucks for it.

Porsche said we have all this equity in our brand, the moderate yuppie can't afford a 911, and we can't afford to only sell to the elite who can afford one. And so how about we monetize our brand asset and build a car with minimum viable Porsche other than the logo. What they did was they stripped out everything and understood the willingness to pay for each thing in the innovation. 

30,000 people in the Dodge story don't have a job. Porsche Cayenne is the most profitable line of business Porsche has ever launched. And it's one of the reasons they've been thriving, and it validates your point. What did they do? They had market orientation and customer willingness to pay at the center of the innovation and it flew long term. And the other guys they navel gaze a lot. So it's to your point of marketing being in the room, not necessarily being a decision maker.

Mark:

I'll tell you another good one. I really am keen on marketers killing products before we go to market.

Ryan:

Same.

Mark:

And it doesn't happen enough because the difference between marketing and sales is we can save a company 20 million bucks by killing something before it dies. I used to go around the world with a big medical company before the era of teleconferencing and so on. And we'd literally for the planning season, everyone would present their brand plans in... We went to like 25 countries. We went to Taiwan and the Netherlands and everywhere. So we're in India, we're in New Delhi, and we've got a whole day. 

So we'd have six brand plans, me, the CMO, the two divisional heads were flying from the states, and the whole of the Indian team was there. And each of the brand managers for the brands would present the plan for the following year. And there was a big excitement about basically a vaccine for some kind of tick related encephalitis thing.

And the woman who was quite young that was presenting it, the Indian woman. She basically went through the process and got to a certain place and went, there's no play here. We shouldn't launch it. It doesn't work in India for these reasons. It's not worth it. And at the end, the GM of India came out and basically dressed her down in front of everyone and said, "Look, this is a big product for us. 

And I was expecting this to be a 25 million product in year one. And what are you doing? This is not marketing." And almost got her to tears. Like it was horrendous. And then my CMO came up behind him and he was one of my favorite people, and he basically while the Indian GM was there said to the marketer, "That was brilliant. Ignore him. He's an idiot. Come and work for me in Chicago." Oh no. He was like, listen, it's the best presentation of the day. Saving me 25 million bucks is as good as making me 25 million bucks from the drug.

Ryan:

100%.

Mark:

And he said, your plan was perfect. You've made a perfect explanation. He said, "Don't worry about him. He's an idiot, come and work for me." And she's still to this day as far as I know, she's still in Chicago.

Ryan:

And he is an idiot. You're dead set on an idea that doesn't have product market fit and you're still going to launch it.

Mark:

And she explained beautifully using marketing skills, segmentation, et cetera. There's no market in India for this shit. It's someone in America imagining that Indians want this. They don't, look, here's the data. So that moment of killing, not just of improving, but there has to be a moment there where we are ready to shoot it. And I think that you've got to have cold blood in your veins to be a marketer, because enthusiasm is not a good skill in our industry. You've got to look at it cold and hard, right?

Ryan:

You have to look at the facts. But the truth is, Mark, if people know the market and segment and target right, they'll miss less. But because they don't do that, they're that late in the game and that poor woman has to stand up there and say-

Mark:

That's right.

Ryan:

What's interesting is one of the things I wanted to talk to you about tonight or this morning was the global local tension. I was expecting the story to go the other way. The dude from Chicago said we're doing it in the Indian GM.

Mark:

Yeah.

Ryan:

And you wrote a wonderful piece about, if you're a global person. And by the way, I've held PNLs locally and now I hold one globally and it's-

Mark:

If you've lived in the matrix my friend, you'll understand.

Ryan:

Yeah. I've been in this crazy thing. And to your point, I remember when I sort of took over our Singapore business, it wasn't until I sat there and had 20 coffees with people that I knew shit about how that market worked.

Mark:

That's it.

Ryan:

But do you still see some of this like, I'm sitting in New York City and I know what we need to do in Taiwan, or do you think that's changed a bit?

Mark:

As bad as it ever was. So for your listeners, there's a matrix. So I don't know, we do any company you like, literally any global company. But basically you've got your brand managers sitting in Chicago or London or Zug, or they could be category managers or divisional managers. And then you've got your local marketing and product teams in Delhi and Stockholm and wherever else. And if you teach a young MBA student they go, this makes sense. And everyone works together and it's all come by. It's a total shit fight in every company I've ever worked in. And it's a shit fight because the global guys are like, why don't the fucking Germans do what we tell him to do. And the Germans are like, who the fuck is this guy?

He's never even been to Stockholm telling me how to market my products. He's never even met a customer. And they're both right and they're both wrong. And one of the things I did in the article, first of all is I just explain. For anyone old like you that's been through it. Everyone's like yeah, this is exactly the fucking problem. It doesn't work. It's never worked for anyone. There's a couple of little wins I saw in my life traveling which was, I think it was Roche that did it best. But you can't be in a global management role until you've been in a country role and not North America, a proper country.

Ryan:

It's just too different here.

Mark:

And it's usually the center, there's the mothership and the country team. It's from paper walls. So you had to have gone and been a country manager somewhere else first. And then if you're the global guy, exactly to your point, get your ass on fucking plane. Don't be sitting doing zoom meetings, telling here's the plan and here's what you need to do. Get your ass to these places, drink coffee, drink beer, hang out, listen, feel their pain, learn, be humble. 

And those were the global people that everyone's like, but there's Ryan, Ryan's different. We'll do anything for Ryan. That's all it took. But the big thing I was trying to say in that article was the long and the short of it, building brands, activating. If you actually think about it in a global setting, it actually explains how to do that better. In the long of it, the brand building bit, I do think should be done by pretty much the global team. Global consistency, creating all of the materials-

Ryan:

The franchise if you will.

Mark:

Yeah. The long term brand strategy. But the short of it, which in B2B is sales force targeted segment specific, must be done by the local market. And I don't believe in global segmentation, it has to be done in each country by each team. Each market's different. So from segmentation all the way through, they do the short targeting piece. And look, this is all theory, I've never seen it done. It just seemed like a better way of doing things than what I've lived through for 25 years, which is just a shit fight.

Ryan:

Oh, it's crazy. I remember reading your article, I was a few weeks removed from being on a global call where three people who lived in different countries worked on the same brand, hated their global person and never once met. And that was just funny because I just brought myself back to that forced family zoom conference I was on-

Mark:

Oh, I had a team-

Ryan:

So we've got to get on planes again, right?

Mark:

I had a team in Japan. I worked with a team on a single product launch for seven years. And in that whole seven years, the American it changed, there were three different people. Being the global kind of marketing lead for that product in the states, none of them ever came to Tokyo in the whole seven years. And it takes a lot to get a Japanese manager to tell an American to go fuck himself, but we got there. Yeah, we did.

Ryan:

That's really good.

[Music transition to takeaways]

Ryan:

So part one, what did you think, ladies?

Patricia:

It was so fun to listen to you guys. It was like you weren't even talking about work. You were just riffing. And I mean, it was a rant and a rave, but you guys were just riffing. And I mean, I'm not calling you old at all, but this is not your first rodeo. Neither of you, right? Yet both of you sounded like it was your first day at school. You were so excited about everything you were doing, and just infusing it all with, "Let's just go fucking do this." I love that.

Ryan:

Wow. I wanted a beer the whole time, because I did the interview at seven o'clock at night. And this wasn't recorded, but Mark is one of a few people who I virtually looked up to, who I'm now happy to call a friend. Mark's going to come to Boston, and we're going to have that beer. And we're going to go to Fenway Park. And I'm very excited about that, but it was also four or five in the morning in Australia. 

Mark was having a coffee. So I felt like a scumbag if I went to get the beer. I also have to say to everybody, I am working on my potty mouth.

Patricia:

Oh. I'm sorry!

Ryan:

This episode doesn't suggest that I am. So Mark brought out the inner sailor in me. And so I promise I will do better in episode three, but fuck it. We had fun. So what were some of your takeaways, Patricia?

Patricia:

It was really, I mean, and this season, what I'm going to be doing is not recapping the whole conversation, but kind of giving you the two or three nuggets that I thought were important for you to take home. And thinking about the topic, about creating products and marketing people love. And in essence, what you guys were talking about, is what do CMOs need to get their job done better? To get consumers what they want. To get more value. So that's what I thought about when I picked out, plucked, from the bounty of riches what I was going to share.

The first one, there are four. The first one is understanding the role that the quant/qual dichotomy plays in determining market orientation. Now, why do I talk about that? Because there are two things going on there. We need to know where the marketing orientation is, but how we do it is a very important part. Now let me talk about quant and qual. They are different things. They work in different ways. Qualitative, get your butt into the market, find out what makes people tick. That's in essence, that's all about it is. There are some called ethnography, et cetera, et cetera. But at the end of the day, it's all about not relying on big data, and getting out there. Being curious and hanging out.

Quant is about, and I loved the way he spoke about this. Quant is having the right data, like water. He talked about it like water, pumping it into the irrigation troughs that you built, making sure it goes to all the important places. It needs to be shared, so everybody can see and compare. You pump it where decisions are made. I loved how he talked about data, and quant being like water. And how does this work into the process?

Well, you start with a market orientation. He says, first thing you're going to know about your current market orientation is you don't know, pardon the expression, shit. You don't know anything. You have no idea what you're doing. So that's where you have to start. "This is what I don't know." Then you do the quant and qual, in the right balance, and that's going to stop. You're going to create that foundational research. Stop, learn, move on. That's what's going to get you at the correct market orientation. So that's the first place to go. You didn't speak about it in this order, but pulling from all the things that you did, I felt this was the first thing people need to take away.

The second one is understanding the difference between segmentation and targeting. Sometimes people use these terms as replacements of each other, but it's absolutely not. So we have to understand the difference and then make sure they both get done right. They're diametrically opposed, right? You have to start with segmentation. It's part of insight. It's about the market. It's not about you. It's about the market. So if Acme does a segmentation, and Kantar does a segmentation, the segmentation should be the same one, because it's the market that they're reading.

After the segmentation is done, then you go into targeting. And targeting is choiceful. It's selfish. It's about me, my brand, not the market, but the brand. So what you do is, you create the proper segmentation, and then you find the segment that you're interested in. Now, if it's done right, before you're even done, the brand owners are going to be like, "That's me, me, me, me. That's the one. That's where I wanted to go." And they're going to, they're not even going to wait for it to be done. They're going to jump because that's what it starts speaking to them.

And it immediately solves the global/local tension, because segmentation should not be global. It should be targeted to the market. And that way, the targets, pardon that use of word, segmentation should be focused on the market. And the target pulls from that. So that's how you solve the global/local tension. By doing that right. That was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

Three. This one, I thought... I included it and I wasn't going to include it, but I thought, you guys talked about it, and it shouldn't have to be talked about. But the importance of the product? Are we really talking about the importance of a product at this late stage? Obviously it needed to be talked about, because people need to be remembered, reminded, pardon my English. God, I can speak. That the product is the most important thing. It's not the communication. It's like research. If we have shite data, then we have shite results, right?

If you have a bad product or service, then no amount of marketing or communication is going to solve that problem. You have to make sure you have the right product. So you start thinking about it. Products happen, because somebody can create a product or service, and then you start asking people, "What do you think about this? Does it feel right? How would you do it?" Test it informally, create a prototype, have people try it, test and learn forever, and keep improving. Don't stop. Because at the end of the day, the most important thing, is the product any good?

Ryan:

Let me tell you a story about this. It plays. So show of hands, how many people listening get inundated with ads on their Instagram feed. Me. Okay. I have been getting inundated with ads all summer, because I'm about that salt life in the summertime. I want to be on the ocean, for a towel that doesn't get sandy, that dries fast, and it looks cool. Well, after about 6,000 remarketing attempts, I bought the towel. The fucking towel doesn't dry me. So this is the problem. They got a purchase out of me. And it looks cool. A bunch of people since, on the Cape, at the pool, wherever, have been like, "Oh, I love that towel." And I've made a point to tell every single one of them, "But it doesn't dry you." That I have a good product guys. Think of how different it would've been if I'd have said, "Thanks. It's awesome. Here's where you buy it."

Patricia:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, absolutely. That's why sampling...

Ryan:

Fucking towel. It does look cool, though.

Patricia:

Sampling only works if you're sampling something good, right?

Ryan:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Patricia:

Now the last one, which is near and dear, I mean, yes, I do love segmentation, but create a culture of tracking. So once you've understood your place, you know, where you are. Once you do your segmentation and your targeting, and you hammer in the importance of the product, create a culture of tracking. It's one of the oldest tools in the book. It is something that's tried and true, yet, it still works. So it's about setting goals, measuring those goals, coming back, reviewing, learning. Did you get it right? Did you get it wrong? If you got it right, do more of the same. If you got it wrong, fix it. Then set goals again. 

And you keep going. It's tracking data so that you understand that it's not generic, so that you know what you're doing. You know if there's movement or non-movement in your metrics. And it's got to be a tracking that's simple enough that everybody gets it, yet powerful enough to capture everything, right?

Something short, sweet, that's consistent. Not bogged down with, "Oh, now that you're asking them, let's ask them these other 35 questions." No, it's focused. It's all about focusing on what you really want. This is what's going to help you understand what the market is really like. So you can find your space, put all your horses into it. Mark's words, not mine. And then go hard. I loved it. Put your horses on it. Go hard. In essence, learn from the past, break it all down, share it. Come to a conclusion, start all over again. Loved it. Absolutely loved it.

Ryan:

Mark Ritson, spitting hot fire.

Patricia:

Absolutely.

Ryan:

My favorite part of that conversation was that whole notion of market orientation. And you talked about it, but how many businesses are so insular in their focus, and don't realize that I'm actually a consumer in all your categories. And I probably don't care about much of it. So you and Mark said it very eloquently, like turn the swivel on your head and say like, "Listen, what are you actually up to that you can actually understand consumer behavior." 

And the truth is, it's one of the reasons why I joined Zappi, because if quant becomes accessible, scalable, easy, people can spend more time with people. Understanding them, and using quant to blow out decisions, optimize them, validate them.

Patricia:

Exactly.

Ryan:

But so few people are willing to do those simple hacks. The guy who goes to the stores. I saw a LinkedIn post from Diane Hessan, who's another one of my former idols, who I'm happy to call a friend. Diane Hessan's on the board of Panera Bread. And the CEO of Panera Bread, you know what he's doing? He's working in the restaurant. Why is he working in the restaurant? Because he wants to feel it.

Patricia:

That's how it works.

Ryan:

And that's going to be, I guarantee that gentleman's going to make a lot sharper decisions because he's in the coal mine. Right?

Patricia:

Exactly. Exactly.

Ryan:

That was a super fun episode. The next episode with Mark is season five, episode two, and we're going to talk about what's changed in marketing, what's not, and we have a star-studded lineup coming up in season five. 

A few name drops. Bianca Pryor, VP of Insights at BET. Absolute boss. I've known her for a really long time. I can't wait to talk to her about what she's learned about getting into the creative space. We have Jing Mertoglu, who's a Global Head of Insights from Beam Suntory. We also have Stefania Gvillo, who is the Global Head of Insights, Chief Insights Officer, at Dominoes…

Patricia:

…who makes a great gluten free pizza. Thank you very much.

Ryan:

So I'm going to, we'll talk more about this when we get to Stefania's episode. I'm a sucker for a Buffalo chicken thin crust. And a fun fact about me: That was my high school and college job, pizza delivery boy.

Patricia:

Woo. Fun.

Ryan:

Riding around the mean streets of Cumberland and Central Falls in Lincoln, Rhode Island, just slinging pizzas to people. It was a beautiful thing.

Patricia, great job with the summary, Kelsey, thank you for the production. To our dear listeners, keep us honest. If we're not delivering value to you, let us know, but you're in for a treat in season five. We've got a seriously great set of conversations lined up, and I'm really excited to get back in the mix. Thank you for listening.

Patricia:

Thanks for coming.

Ryan:

Talk to you next time.

Patricia:

Thank you. Bye guys.