A few days ago, Steve Pockross released a new episode of his Yes, And Marketing podcast on which he interviews a series of “eclectic and enlivening” marketers where “your weird shower thoughts and disparate liberal arts references take a road trip.” I was last week’s featured guest, and I don’t think the episode fails to deliver on its rather unusual promise.
Steve posted a nice summary of the session which lays out the topics we discussed including:
- A rambling introduction where we talked about the Grateful Dead as related to marketing and business models, the philosophy of math and Russell’s paradox, the linkage between mysticism and quantum mechanics, the art of the proper French dinner, an unlikely similarity between geophysics and marketing (inverse problems), the quote from A Christmas Carol that most applies to upwardly mobile CMOs (“mankind was my business”), Gad Elmaleh, The Three-Body Problem trilogy, and stuff like that.
- Imposing simplicity, a critical duty for all marketers
- The two archetypal marketing messages, Bags Fly Free and Soup is Good Food.
- Long vs. short copy and how to correctly apply David Ogilvy’s “long copy sells” adage.
- Content marketing, and when to write C+ deliverables vs. A+ deliverables, and how to be explicit about that in planning. (Lest you end with straight Bs.)
- What to look for in a CMO for a startup, particularly if they’re potentially joining from a large company and you’re worried they may struggle in a startup environment.
- Aligning sales and marketing, a perennial favorite topic, but this time both from the CMO and the individual marketer perspective.
- The importance of rigorous definitions in messaging, and how you can use them to turn gray messages into black-and-white messages.
- Walking the benefits stack by repeatedly asking “so what?” and not being afraid to do so.
- Never forgetting the kiss, i.e., the ultimate benefit from the point of view of the customer, in your marketing.
Thanks to Steve for having me, to Crispin Read for referring me (his episode is well worth a listen), and to all of you who find the time to listen. While I’ve been doing a lot of podcast interviews of late, like the Grateful Dead, I promise that each show is different. And this one’s a barn burner.
