#111 - The A.I. and Marketing with Jeff, Brand Strategy and Innovation with Jo and Listening Before Speaking with Robert and a Cocktail Episode

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Robert Rose  0:00  
yo Oh welcome back. It's like no no no no. Me back after before I had to put

Ian Truscott  0:18  
Hello and welcome to episode 111 of Rockstar, CMO, F M Mr. Marketing and the F is whether you decide you're probably wondering, does the world need another epic Marketing podcast? I'm your host Ian Truscott, I'm no Rockstar but I picked up a thing or two over my 25 year career from techie to CMO. And each week I chat to the true rockstars my fabulous guests and chums and hopefully share some marketing street noise that will inspire the Rockstar CMO. Come say hello, we are Rockstar cmo on Twitter and LinkedIn and proud members of The Marketing Podcast Network. This episode's called on Friday, April the 22nd Hope had a good week, and you are well safe and staying sane as you feel you need to be. This week Jeff Clark has read an article in a magazine. I chat with brand marketing expert Joe Jensen. we wind down the week in the Rockstar cmo virtual bar of Robert Rose for a cocktail and emarketing.

But first, we need to pay the bar tab. I'll be back in a moment. Right back. Right back. This first segment we're my champ Jeff Clark, a sought after marketing strategy advisor and former siriusdecisions Forrester Research Director. This week inspired by magazine article, we dive back into storytelling a third of our rockstar cmo effing marketing fundamentals and wonder if the robots can help.

Welcome back, Jeff to Rockstar, cmo FM How are you my friend?

Jeff Clark  2:05  
I am doing very well. Very well. Beautiful day here in Central Massachusetts.

Ian Truscott  2:10  
That's beautiful. I got told off this week by a salesperson that I was chatting to in my day job. And he was saying that he was always taught never to talk about the weather with the prospect always ask them something else but get some more engaged. So maybe our obsession with the weather is a bit outdated.

Jeff Clark  2:27  
It's finger your finger your English and yeah, so weather obsession is just part of the national character.

Ian Truscott  2:33  
Absolutely. Well, we've had a lovely week here and a bit grey today. But I understand that we're in for an a nice dry weekend which will direct me outside to the garden. So yes, yeah, that's the weather updates.

Jeff Clark  2:47  
And then maybe we should shift into gardening update because my wife starting to plant her vegetable garden. So we get into you know, what do you what are you planning? What are you harvesting?

Ian Truscott  2:58  
I think that might be a totally different podcast, but I'm getting could be. Let's see this if a listener gets in touch and and request. Right and another effing garden podcast

Jeff Clark  3:10  
fundamentals of gardening. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, good soil.

Ian Truscott  3:13  
I've got Yeah, I don't, I don't. Vegetables. I've got some little, little garden plants that I'm growing out in order to plant them out when the when the weather gets better, and when they get healthier. So yes. And so let's get to the topic of our effing marketing fundamentals. Back to marketing away from gardening. Yes. Where we do nurture things in both places don't read you like. And I know that this week, you've been thinking about our third effing marketing fundamental, which we were talking about last week, too. But you've got a bit more thought on this. And having picked up an article about AI, which is something I think we lost you talked about in the in our in our one hit wonder a wonderful series. I don't think we chucked it in the swimming pool.

Jeff Clark  4:03  
We did not it's definitely yes, we saved ourselves the embarrassment of saying that it was a one hit wonder.

Ian Truscott  4:14  
So I want to say you Jeff

Jeff Clark  4:16  
Well, so the the interesting thing. Yeah, I was gonna read the article. Anyway, it came out in the Sunday, New York Times. Last Sunday, whatever that date was, here we are on April 22. And, and then old colleague of mine at forestry and Bruce, pop a little note on LinkedIn sharing the article and saying if reading is part of your professional world, pay attention. So you know, you get a little shutter and it's like, oh, I guess I should pay attention to the article is called AI is mastering language should read trust what it says. And I'm sure you'll provide a link to it. It's by Steven Johnson who's written a dozen books on science, technology, personal experience, and, and it as I was reading through it, I was thinking about the fact that, you know, it's like AI is, is entering so much of our regular communications, you know, like, when you're in Gmail, and you're writing a sentence, and it'll, it'll, it'll throw the next phrase out at you, or, you know, you're in a community or you're in a chat session, and it's like, you know, that what's responding to you is, is, you know, is some form of AI that's been programmed to discuss whatever you'll support questions or to answer marketing or to help them navigate you to the right website. And also, I joined this, this online network called Alignable. It's here in the US, I'm not sure how far outside the US it is. But it has this nasty feature of sending me emails, you know, with full sentences from a person who is obviously a fake person, you know, like Shane from Alignable said, connect with Jenny's request to recommendation Well, you know, I already know, Jenny, and actually, I know Jenny, why are you telling me to do this? I can do this on my own. And so and so, you know, in a lot of those are, you know, fairly rudimentary forms of AI is as, as early as you read through the article, you realise where this is going, and how sophisticated it's gotten. So, so the I guess the I was like, Yes, I guess there's your pay attention.

Ian Truscott  6:33  
Yeah, no, absolutely. And we are seeing AI content being created more and more. So do you think that we're having? I mean, I'm not familiar with the article yet. You only shared it with me today. But so do you think, where is this heading? Are we are we going to be able to sort of say to Siri as a CMO writing a digital ad with photos of happy people, and a call to action from white paper? And while you're about it, when you're writing the white paper? Yes, because I did read actually, earlier today that apparently English people say please to Siri and Alexa, parrot.

Jeff Clark  7:09  
And then probably Siri, Alexa in England, will not respond unless you do safely.

Ian Truscott  7:16  
What's the magic word? So I've gotten off track with so do you think we're going to be in? I mean, I've done some research into this as well. And do you? How close do you think we're getting to the, you know, full pieces of marketing content being created by these these machines?

Jeff Clark  7:35  
Well, I mean, your your example is, is, is complex. So So you know, today, it won't, it won't do the ad and the white paper and the you know, but it is getting, you know, it's getting awful close. And a lot of the things that that are behind this are, you know, I mean, they are fairly recent, recently released, pieces of technology, there's this. And if we're going to, you know, apologies, and maybe again, this has nothing to put in the show notes, there's a series of three letter acronyms, or in some cases, four, or maybe a few others. That, that you have to navigate through this. So GP D three, which is actually the third generation there was a GPT. I think one and a two is generative, pre trained transformer. And so that's, this is the stuff that's able to, you know, help or complete a thought because it goes through a tonne of information, internet, other data, whatever data sources you make available to it, and there's where some of the research is being done is in some facility in Iowa, where they just got big server farms. And so they're, they're, they're able to go through billions of models and parameters. And, and you know, it's good, it's sort of recognising and understanding, you know, what you're telling it or requesting of it and then being able to spit back to you something that is very intelligible. And so, you know, it's, it's, um, and sound, it sounds human, so it doesn't, it's not something that you would go oh, that's obviously was written by an AI engine or, you know, bot or something like that. And, and there was an example where, in this article where they, they asked the, the machine if you will say, compare a dolphin to Brian Eno. So Brian, he knows the musician, composer, a dolphin is the dolphin. And, and you know, it goes and creates several paragraphs of things that are like, well, here's how they're like, and here's how they're different. Right? You know, you read through it, and you're like, Well, it's pretty. Yeah, that's pretty. You're doing better than then probably most people. Certainly anybody who wasn't familiar with either one of them. But yeah, it is. Anyway, it does a remarkable job of coming back and giving you a human Like response Now the downside is that it since it is, it's just, it's just going through all these various resources that that it's you know, it can be biassed it can it can pick up propaganda can pick up misinformation. And you know, it edits, I guess it, it's sort of, you know, the, the naked untrained version is just going to give you stuff, which is the, you know, that's the downside is that it could be used for, you know, it could be used for a lot of irresponsible America, there was a quote from the gentleman, Mr. Johnson wrote, The article says using it for anything other than Prowler tricks would be irresponsible. And, you know, he quotes other people like Stephen Hawking's and others saying that, you know, AI is unstoppable, it's becomes an intelligence explosion, that can lead to human extinction. You know, Elon Musk said, it's humanity's biggest existential threat. Yeah. So you get all of these wars. And, and so manufac, Musk and a bunch of others have, then they develop this sort of open source AI model called Open AI. And so there, and then Elon Musk got out of it for I guess, because there was some conflicts of interest. But, you know, Microsoft and others have gotten involved in so they're trying to be able to teach the machine so that it prevents it from doing bad things, it prevents it from just, you know, creating spam or promoting, you know, pseudo drugs or, you know, or doing some of the things we accused the Russians doing during our elections. So it's, it's, and, you know, that's, it's a valiant effort to try to, like, rein in and provide some governance for this tool. You know, but, you know, governance is only as good as the people who are governing the people who aren't. Yeah,

Ian Truscott  11:59  
well, also with these things, and it's a lot of conversation isn't about AI, machine learning, it's about how it's taught. I think, to your point that I mean, if you were to point it, if you were to point an artificial intelligence, content machine at Twitter, for example, God knows what it would come back with.

Jeff Clark  12:17  
So you may ask, it hasn't been done yet.

Ian Truscott  12:20  
But, I mean, I've played with some of these tools. And you're absolutely right, you can give it a rough topic, and they can spit out something fairly, you know, generic and banal about a particular topic company, there's no personality in it, obviously, or anything like that, but it will dry but which reminds me of a lot of b2b content.

Jeff Clark  12:39  
That is, that's a and yeah, so that, I think that'll get down to some of our conclusions about this. But yeah, so the, the other well, the other three letter acronym AGI artificial intelligence, general intelligence is, is exactly that problem is that it's, it's just since it's look, it's learning from when it hits available on the internet, or whatever data sources you give it, it just, it's going to reinforce sort of the most bland vanilla version of content, that that it's going to find, it's not necessarily going to give you genuine, unique voice. If you can, you can say, you know, please write a poem that sounds like Shakespeare, please do that. And it'll go do that. But then again, it's still it's still not genuine,

Ian Truscott  13:24  
there's no there's no voice in it. So that was GPT. Three, we're talking about there and AGI artificial, artificial general intelligence, and this open AI model well, so we've got to look out for in this space.

Jeff Clark  13:36  
Well, so the thing that's, that's emerging now and is called large language model. And it is, I mean, it's, it's just another layer of sophistication on top of these, you know, these other innovations, you know, where it can kind of recognise, predict, generate human language, you know, based on these large datasets. And, you know, it just does a better job of if you ask a question, or you want something that's in longer form more depth. You know, like, some of the examples that they quote in the article was explaining the Big Bang theory in a language that an eight year old can understand or write a poem about a French village and the style of Shakespeare or so. So that's where you're, you're picking up some more complexity and nuance that that were the, you know, the average person would not necessarily be able to pick up that this is, this has been automatically generated, but, but, you know, you think about the, you know, the applications, I mean, they, they, they cite certainly customer service will be transformed. It's like, Well, why do I need humans to, to respond to questions that that, you know, a knowledge base and an AI engine can can answer

Ian Truscott  14:58  
Yeah, I did. But it's funny this came up in a conversation this week around product development through my day job and the AI that the use of AI in customer service. Yes, absolutely. It could be replacing humans but also enable because at the moment, if you're in a care, if you're in a customer, a call centre, you've got a very limited time each customer, so therefore the experience isn't great. But if the if the AI could do the, the easy bits, and the humans dealt with the harder problems where somebody needs to go through that conversation, and they weren't, had didn't have that time constraint, then actually the service could be improved. Getting it, it really reminded me of the early days of web content management, where I did a presentation that for a client when we were selling a CMS, and I said it takes away all the drudgery of creating HTML, and HTML developer in the room when quite like that. Think, you know, we haven't seen we haven't seen web web developers have been thriving on scrappy just because CMS has became in so hopefully, there's a positive thing with

Jeff Clark  16:04  
it, hopefully, yeah. And that said, I remember, you know, backgrounds at Forrester and I delivered a presentation on kind of future of marketing operations we dealt in delved into AI, and it's like, there's just so many examples of where AI enables you to, to do things that you weren't, you just weren't even able to do before. So it's not taking your job away. It's just it's, you know, when it comes to tagging content properly on the website, or in a content management system, or, or as you know, having you know, enabling these chatbots, etc, that, that enable people to navigate to the proper spots in a website or get to the right customer service. You know, personally, it's, it's like, those are things that are like, oh, like, Thank God, we have that, you know, and but then it's like, when, so I guess the reason that, you know, Ian, Bruce probably flagged this, it's like, okay, so. So if I see it starting starting to take my job, or do my job better or quicker than I can, then, you know, where does that lead us? And, you know, which is so you know, I mean, we're kind of talking about, you know, what's been where it is today, and so, you know, if you think out a decade, two decades, with a lot of investment behind it, then you do wonder where it all where it all goes?

Ian Truscott  17:23  
Yeah, no, absolutely. But I like I like where it I mean, this apocalyptic idea of, you know, it making us instinct, I'm a bit worried about that. But on the other hand, you're

Jeff Clark  17:35  
worrying we're gonna be extinct for other reasons. Anyway, yeah.

Ian Truscott  17:40  
There's, there's a product called lately, which I've which I've used, and I've had the CEO on the on the show before, which grabs, grabs long form content and makes it and creates little tweets from Oh, yeah. And there's lots of those kinds of tools that are using machine language and AI in order to help you as a marketer to free up, you know, those kinds of jobs. I mean, I use Grammarly all the time, for example, and it's almost like an AI, you know, editor, you know, yeah. So it kind of has taken away a little bit of edited editors job on my writing, I suppose. But what so what do you think that we need to do as marketers around this? Jeff, is this something that's, I mean, you said it was in the New York Times on Sunday. Right? So this isn't like a trademark or some obscure like, this is this is main strip,

Jeff Clark  18:26  
or it's making its making out to the mainstream mainstream? Yeah. So do you think reporters at the New York Times are probably reading it and going, Oh, shit. My next job?

Ian Truscott  18:38  
Well, absolutely. I mean, it's about them as well. So but I mean, we could talk about the future of journalism is going to be AI. But what what do we do as marketers how to how to? How do we embrace this? Well, I

Jeff Clark  18:49  
think the thing is that I think, you know, and then, of course, we've often talked about the, you know, the fact that with our content, we need to be authentic, we need to understand what you know, what customers really want and how we could talk, you know, how we should be talking, communicating with them. And that's, and I think, I mean, you know, every one of the things that I was thinking about, as I was reading through this is that, you know, there's, there's so much that's hard to predict, and, you know, a lot of times like like fashions fashion has come out of designers who are observing, you know, what, what young people are doing, and then they, they kind of see what, what might be a trend, and then they start building on that, like, you know, who would have thought that, you know, jeans with holes in them would become a trend? Well, you know, that's, it's probably not something that that any automatically or any AI could predict. I don't know, that'd be maybe actually maybe good. But, but but, you know, you I think, you know, this is where, you know, understanding the customer base and, you know, and and, you know, determining what is is The they're getting their style of communications, how they talk, you know, how do we get to understand them more intimately, you do need to stay on top of the trends of the applications, you've got to and see where you know where AI can be an assistance to you, as opposed to, you know, your foe. But, you know, you have to avoid anything that smacks of bland genericized language, because, frankly, I think one of the, the challenges here is that we just become overwhelmed with a sea of communications that drowns out, you know, all other voices. And certainly we're, you know, frankly, we're kind of in that today, when you if you're, if you really spend a lot of time on, you know, social networks and reading, and it's just like, you just get overwhelming, it's overwhelming. And so, you know, we was just gonna say, you know, what customers? You know, I think I think I think we need to ask ourselves is, will the customers understand where we've provided the human touch? And how will they understand that or will just get drowned out by all of this sea of banality? Is it?

Ian Truscott  21:06  
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that when, you know, when you ask the question, What will we do with AI, as marketers, probably the things we've done with everything can bloody ruin it. You know, I suspect that it won't be long before the unscrupulous are cranking their hands on their AI machine to spit out tonnes of content that that somehow is much more attractive to the Google algorithm, its own robot, written for the robots, and we are drowning in a sea of sea of columns, as you say. And but perhaps as well, it might be that if this level of intelligence could be used in the other direction, which is to help us curate all this content, right, and to feed us with the good stuff, I mean, that already tries to do that, doesn't it with the social algorithms, you could call those AI and machine learning, trying to give us the content we're interested in, but then we know what happens with that, in that we lose our curiosity, and we end up going down these rabbit holes of, of stuff that we already know. And like, right, so you're confirming our biases are leading us into dreadful places. And this is

Jeff Clark  22:10  
where I mean, and I don't think it wasn't in this article was some of the things I was reading is it still I mean, it still isn't getting to the sophistication of the human brain to be able to, you know, understand, you know, sort of the universe you're in and being able to make decisions and to communicate. And so, you know, I think that's, that's the thing is to, you know, you've got to avoid the sort of the, either whether it's doing what we always did, or doing what we've done before and other companies, just always trying to, you know, keep rethinking about, you know, who is my customer? What do they want? How do I want to talk to him? Where am I going to talk to? Where are we going to find them? And how do I communicate to them? That's, there are ways and one of the topics we may touch in the future when you're talking about product lead, you know, go to markets is that, you know, you know, maybe I'm communicating that through the very product that that they bought for me or that, you know, so there's there's just you're not to think out of the box, as opposed to, you know, that's my next email campaign.

Ian Truscott  23:13  
Right. Cool. So So if I pick that up correctly, though, those four key recommendations and stay on top of this stuff, make sure you're abreast of what's going on with AI as a marketer. Use it to get to know your customers intimately, you just saying about that we can we can use these technologies to get to know our customer better and analyse the content. And then I think we were saying that we wanted to avoid the bland general size language, which I described as b2b content. And not to not to be swayed by this thing and do the easy thing and try and do the hard stuff and keep the human in it. Right.

Jeff Clark  23:47  
Yeah. And sometimes it's almost better not to say anything that is to just contribute to the sea of banality.

Ian Truscott  23:53  
Yeah. But I suspect that some of us might, because when we're given a machine, we tend to play with it and send out emails, and that was anyway,

Jeff Clark  24:02  
the so I probably did that yesterday. And

Ian Truscott  24:07  
so we've done the weather. We've done our topic. We've had a look at the third Fe marketing fundamental. What song are we going to play out with?

Jeff Clark  24:15  
Well, by the wonders of AI, there was a song in 2019 that was submitted in Eurovision called blue jeans and bloody tears. Yeah. And it was quoted as being the unofficial anthem of Eurovision 2019. And if you listen to it, it's it's comes from the sea of banality, but it is kind of catchy.

Ian Truscott  24:43  
Well, I'll play out with that. I'm unfamiliar with that. So I'll play the play out with that, and include a link to it in the show notes as all the other stuff that we've talked about, Jeff, and will you be joining me next week?

Jeff Clark  24:54  
Yes, I Well, I think it will. We'll continue on our fundamentals, but we'll probably get back to the fundamentals.

Ian Truscott  25:01  
Like, have a good week. I'll see you there. See you later when there's no in your bye bye bye bye, baby bye. Stain rose Mobius Thank you, Jeff that was blue jeans and bloody tears from 2019 created using AI, both sweaty machines and Israeli production team who fed hundreds of Eurovision songs, melodies and lyrics into their machine. Then the algorithm produce 1000s of new tunes and lines of verse from which a few musical units were carefully selected and welded into that song that you just heard. Of course, I'll include a link to that and the article we discussed in the show notes. Right. onto this week's guest brand marketing director Joe Jensen has driven revenue in excess of 20 million pounds per year for multiple food and drinks businesses including Nestle, Cadbury orcas, Chris Guinness Foster's be at some all and Jameson's Irish whiskey by collaborating with the business to drive performance through product innovation, and the delivery of strategies that solve their brand's consumer challenges. I'm delighted Joe agreed to join me this week and make her podcasting debut. She has worked with some of my favourite brands, and I hope you enjoy

Hi, Joe, how are you? Welcome to Rockstar. Tony good. See, I see. This is your first time on the podcast and I screw up the intro. So you you are right there on point. So welcome to Rockstar CFO FM. So Joe's for folks that don't know you tell us a little bit about yourself.

Jo Janssen  26:44  
Okay, so hi everyone I am My name is Joe Janssen. I am a brand marketing director. My family and I live in London. But you can probably tell I don't have a London is accent. I'm originally grew up in Australia, quite different. I grew up in firearms, merino sheep farm in Australia, which is very different to living in London. I have so my experiences I've been a food and drinks brand marketer and innovator in FMCG. So fast moving consumer goods or some people call it b2c business to consumers. Other people call it packaged goods. But it's also really, and I've been that for for shy about 25 years, I have worked on some pretty big brands, I think there was a recent IRI top 100 UK brands report that came out recently, when I looked down I was like, Oh, I worked on actually four with seven top brands. So that's some things I've done. And I've also worked on some pretty big ish alcohol brands. So the likes of some of Foster's and Guinness and Jameson Whiskey, etc. What I do is I, I help directors of food and drinks brands to drive the revenue. And I do this by actually delivering strategies that solve their brands consumer challenge. And in my own life, I'm a big believer of a few things. One is to believe in yourself. And you can achieve anything if you actually try. You'll always have your doubters in life don't just don't listen to them. And you can you can do anything if you if you try. And they're gonna have big believer in is what I call the two H's which is your health and your happiness. And honestly, they are priceless. And you cannot put a value against them and they are so so important. Everything in life. Everything else in life is really materialistic. If you don't have your health, you don't have your happiness, you're a bit screwed. And I outside of work, I love to travel. You know, many, many people have said to me Why the hell are you still in the UK all these years later when you come from sunny, sunny country. One of the reasons was or wasn't recent is that I really do love to travel. It's a fantastic way to learn different cultures, widen your horizons just give greater experiences. And whilst I am now British citizen, I've done the full remit of the British immigration system the complicated one that it actually is. Yeah, I still travel on my Australian passport and one benefit of travelling on your Ozzy passport is you get a stamp everywhere you go. I've got three full passports which is quite quite nice to actually have. And just a really, really grateful to that you actually approached me to actually do it is my first one so I hope I do not cook it up. And hopefully today I might do something that enlightened someone Who is maybe thinking into marketing? Or it might just spark someone's thought of

Ian Truscott  30:06  
actually like absolute actually. Absolutely. That's what we're here for. So, so Joe what? So, like you say you've had a wonderful career with working some wonderful brands, some of my favourites, especially in the drinks industry, Heineken and Diageo and those kind of folks, what inspired you to become a marketer in the first place having come from your sheep farm?

Jo Janssen  30:24  
Oh, yeah. Well, as kid I was growing up, I loved animals, and I was sort of being fit. I came to realisation when I was about 10, that I was really crap when it came to needles and all that sort of stuff. So I'm thinking that that's not going to be replaced, I could actually go, I think I had two very creative women in my life that were quite inspiration to me. One was my Nan, bless her, she lived to 100 and talked about believing in yourself, she always said that she was going to live to 100. And she was going to get a lift from the queen. And she did. And the other one was my mom. And both of them are really, really creative, really, hands on can make do anything amazing birthday cakes. So anything, do anything, etc. So I'm quite creative. But I'm also a bit of a numbers geek. And I love a good number. And I think, you know, I can't say I 100% knew what I wanted to do in life in Australia, you have to do the degree that you're going to go into. So you sort of it does make you sort of make some decisions that sort of that 16 1718 year old of like, where am I going? What am I doing? I threw up a few things like do I go into law, but I could I did law subjects at uni, but I could always argue both ways. So I was like, great at this, at what stage of thought to become an accountant, but I always loved the creative side of things. So what I do love about marketing is that you can balance that real creative side with business acumen. And you can you know, you can really drive revenue. And it's quite, it's quite, I find it quite satisfying to actually, you know, walk down the supermarket aisle and go, I worked on that, oh, I launched that. Yeah, my kids. You know, my kids think it's quite funny when they go what mommy worked on me, it's like, I did like, etc. So you know, you're a driver of change when you're in marketing. And I do like to drive change. I'm quite curious. So I'm quite, you know, always observing people and I'm strong believer in we have two eyes, two ears, one mouth, is those in proportion to how they actually APY on our body. And marketing is, you know, you're in, especially in brand led organisations, you are the heart of the, you know, the organisation, and you are so involved, you're not, you know, we're not sitting there. I think some people think we sit there with our colour, Indian pencils, we're just colouring your day. That's not marketing. You've got you're working cross functionally, with all different departments from finance, logistics, all those sorts of ones. Like anything, any job has its pros, and its cons. So you know, a big pro for me is that you can really leave a legacy and you can, you can really see what you do some of the work you've done. Probably a con of being in marketing is that everyone thinks they're a marketeer. Don't everyone? I think, you know, everyone has an opinion on what marketing should actually do. And I sort of sort of very nice analogy, but I think opinions are a bit like bums. Everyone's got one and not one. Not many of them are very pretty. But you know, it's a great you. It's a great, it's a great area to work in your driving change. It's consumer insights, trends. Very, very, very No day is the same when you're working in.

Ian Truscott  33:59  
Exactly. And when we were preparing. When we were chatting about you coming on the show, you talked about solving brands, consumer issues, that sounds related to what you were just saying, Yeah, I really, really liked when we were chatting you freight, you've talked about putting the consumer at the heart of things. And and it helps us solve and you talked about solving brand issues. Tell us about that.

Jo Janssen  34:19  
Yes. So great brands really have consumers at the heart of everything that they actually do. And they have really, really strong insights and all brands, even the strongest, strongest biggest brands in the world will have some form of consumer challenge. You know, no brand is perfect, as no human is perfect. And to really, really understand your brand's you. I really believe that if you put consumers really at the heart of what you do, and you have lots of rigour to your thought, you can create really, really powerful insights. And once you have a powerful insight, that is a big changer when it comes to marketing. So Do you know those that actually put insights at the heart of what they do? You know, as I just said, it really does differentiate you. Most organisations will have truckloads of information, facts, yes, anecdotal pieces of commentary, opinions, etc. But they are not insights. They're just facts and figures, etc. And I hear so many people in meetings go, oh, the insight here, is this all the insights that and I think it's not quite, that's not quite the insights, you know, because what an insight is, it's a really deep understanding of a consumer motivation. And when you understand what motivates consumers that you can really, that's a really strong, powerful thing to actually unlike unlock growth. And in marketing, we talked about the five W's we also talked about the five eyes, the five P's. Eyes. Yeah, some people argue there's more than five. But you, when you're looking at the five W's so the the what the who, the where, the when, and the why. Yeah, I think I mean, they're all important, but I think many people overlook the why. And then you focus in on the why and why consumers behave the way they actually do. And that will get that will really help you to get to an insight. And the way to get to an insight is to just continuously ask the question, but why, but why, but why would peel away the layers of the onion, etc? Kids are absolutely fantastic. Most people would be up there winning gold medals, I think for how many times they ask, but why mommy, but why. But if you continuously ask them why. And it when you initially ask why as you might get more functional responses. Yeah. But when you keep going down, and you keep asking why, you know, ask it three, four or five times, etc, they're more likely to get to the emotional responses. And it's those emotional responses, that will actually get you to why consumers are actually behaving the way they actually do. And when you get to that, when you get to that level, you've got you've hopefully should have quite powerful insight. And that is a game changer, because that really helps structure, your strategy. It really prioritises the activities that you're actually going against, and you focus everyone on actually solving your brand's consumer issue. And when you focusing on that, you really do step change performances. So you know, whether

Ian Truscott  37:41  
these, whether these conversations usually start what's the first way is it somebody comes with an idea that we're going to launch this product, and this is our message that product, and then you start on your why's on there, where it can come from,

Jo Janssen  37:53  
like, you know, sometimes I mean, I some of the roles that I've done, they've been direct approaches, and I've sort of had this brief, where they've gone, we sort of know we've got a problem, but we really don't know what it is. So we go on, you know, you can go on an insight journey. Do it that way. You can you can do you know, or, you know, an idea can come from anywhere. And I think the key thing is just sort of having some rigour of thought that actually goes behind it and actually rooting everything in what consumers consumers thinking and the consumers motivation. And you know, and then from there, you can you can really, really focus this focus on things, I think, many organisations sometimes focus on the symptoms of potentially a brand issue, but they don't actually focus on the root cause of it. So when you're, when you're focusing on the symptoms, you can do a lot of firefighting, but you're not actually step changing performance, etc. You get to the heart of an issue, and then you focus there, that that's really, really powerful.

Ian Truscott  38:58  
So, so for me, you know, because I come from b2b. So I'm not that I'm not that over all of b2c, what what sort of symptoms are, is it that you see people responding to when really they should be thinking a little bit deeper than that?

Jo Janssen  39:11  
So you can see a scattergun approach might be something that you collect, trying to do everything trying to be all to everyone, etc. And you're trying to be everything to everyone. You're effectively nothing to no one. Yeah, and you people be doing lots of lots of little things, and not then be able to measure them and see whether they're actually delivering. Right, you might see

Ian Truscott  39:39  
a lack of focus. channel by channel. Yeah,

Jo Janssen  39:42  
headless chickens running around on everywhere, etc. And so you do sort of you do see that see you you're more likely to see reduced reduce focus. It's a small things leading to nothing. And then sort of going well hang on. We've had these discussions years ago and we're still in the same Place this spray, when you see discussions going around and around and around. Yeah, it might be that there's a lack of focus and a lack of understanding of what your sort of core consumer is. So I love the fifth W fifth W of why I think it is really incredibly powerful. And those businesses that focus on it, I think, make such a step change for it. And I think it also helps you, when you're focused on your consumer, when you focus on your consumer insight and actually solving your consumer equal consumer issue, then when some certain random things slightly come in, oh, we should do this, oh, we should do this, etc, is Yeah, sounding boards be able to say, Well, does it solve a consumer issue or not? And if it doesn't, then potentially do it. But if it doesn't, then you've got a good reason why not to actually do that. And I think you know, so, I love, I love the fifth W of why, because I just think it's very powerful in your professional life. And it's very, very powerful in your personal life. So for me, my kids are a big part of my why, and be part of why I do think sort of thing. Now, I'm gonna go into a slightly personal topic here, and this is a little sensitive one, etc. But and it might be a potential trigger for some people, but I really struggled to actually have kids. And these linked to the why. So bear with me on this. And I was, you know, for years, etc. It was one part of my life that was eluding me. And reams and reams of flipping testing here and testing everything. I just came back with what's called unexplained infertility. And I see this in so many women, and I see it so much on, you know, social networks, etc, like this. And I was like, well, that's great in some way, with there's not a medical reason why, but I was like, Why? Why is this happening? You know, what is it excetera. And for me, it ended up being, it took me quite some years to actually work it out, because that was sort of how my body rolled, etc. But actually, for me, one of the big reasons why I struggled was because of stress. And I took on too much was taking on too much in life, trying to be a bit more Superwoman, etc, on certain things. And that had that had an impact on my ability to have kids. So once I understood that why, yeah, it's I achieved what I couldn't achieve. But yeah, I'm a big fan of, of the way. The why

Ian Truscott  42:49  
Yeah, it comes up a lot on the show about the way in Simon Simon, economic planning gets done. So why is a good topic here. We also, when we were preparing for the show, we also discussed one of your other passions, innovation, I really like this, because I think at the moment where we're, you know, looking at marketers role within the organisation, the fact that marketing and our agencies can play a role in product innovation. Tell us a little bit about that.

Jo Janssen  43:14  
Okay, so when I was when I was a little ABM, I say little I wasn't, but I was young as to what I remember by marketing director at the time saying to me do this piece of information, it will be really good for you. And I was like, I really didn't enjoy it. Because there's so much uncertainty with with innovation, because, you know, there's so many moving parts, etc. But, to his credit, I did it, I enjoyed it. And actually, I've, you know, I've gone on to do a lot of a lot of innovation, I think innovation, an idea for innovation can come from anywhere. And But coming back to your core brand consumer issue. If you're really, really clear on what that actually is. It really helps with your strategy. And then where you actually build growth platforms, and how that actually links in so there's, there's a clear link there, if you've got, you know, clear, clear understanding of you consumers clear insights, what your strategy is, then what you actually build from it. But yeah, you know, an idea can come from anywhere, it doesn't necessarily mean it has to actually come from the marketing department, it's probably a bit more likely to, but it's not just 100%, but it actually has to, and your agencies and also, all people within organisations play quite a pivotal role in actually delivering innovation because innovation, it won't, it won't work and you won't get it to market and you won't succeed with it unless you have a very strong cross functional team. So that can be everything across from finance, commercial team insight, to Supply Logistics, legal, regulatory, international team, etc. But also your agencies can play a really important enrol as well. And they can play a great role in terms of whether it's from design, you can even, like there's innovation agencies. So you know, some of them are brilliant that you can actually work with on helping you do that. Because nobody knows all answers to everything, it's a myth out there, there's someone that says everything is not true. And you've got all different types of innovation. So you've got sort of what I would call tinkering. So just small, little tweaking, tweaking changes. And on the left hand side, you can do a linear line. And then right across on the other extreme, you've got, like, meta changes. So these are like true peridinium shifts. So you know, medical breakthroughs and smartphones would you put smartphones over there, because they were game changing in terms of, and then you've got a lot in the middle sort of, you know, incremental, whether it's in flavour variations, or those sorts of things. And that, oh, you've got some of, you know, more dynamic transformational things. But, you know, both internal teams and agency teams can work really, you know, working really, really strong together. And you, you just, you just get that feel, and you just know, I mean, it requires some rigour, again, rigour thought at the start, in terms of where you're going, why you're doing it, you know, the why is really important, again, in terms of innovation, and lots of innovation, especially in food margins in food, and not high, the better in drinks, but they're not mega high margins in food. And so you've got to, you've got to have rigorous thought, again, when it comes to innovation, and be really clear on all aspects in terms of the insight for the piece of innovation, the financials, you know, the brand visual identity that actually goes with it, whether there's, you know, a branding or naming associated with it, you know, also all the commercial sort of side of it, or the logistics side of it. And one big ones, one of the main struggles with innovation is actually making it financially work. Because a lot of brands will have, so many brands will have, you know, the original product that, you know, they'll have like, say,

you know, in drinks, you'll have a, say, in the original of the original brand. So we'd have demonstrated original say, and, you know, that will be the lion's share of the volume and the profit that and then the value that actually goes with that. And to weave innovation in it sort of, you know, it's gonna it's gonna have a clear role, that strategic role it plays in your hand. But it also it can be harder to to make innovation financially work, because you might not have the economies of scale that you have with with one of your original things. So that's where it's really, really important to have differentiated innovation innovative was incremental to your brand and doesn't do a huge amount of cannibalization. Yeah, you're launching stuff that is cannibalising 50 plus percent of your core brand. That's that territory to actually be in because so you know, incremental, low cannibalization, based on a strong insight, a really strong category story. You know, and retailers and retailers really want it and a product that actually consumers will really love. So, yeah, agencies, both internal and external agencies are really, really key for innovation. And you just, you just get that feeling like when you're working on innovation, whether something's really gonna, you're gonna get a good feel of whether something's going to actually work and you have a good feel for your agencies. And you know, all agencies have different strengths and which ones will be great to actually work with. So yeah, it's it's good.

Ian Truscott  48:59  
Yeah. I mean, lots. I'd love to chat more about innovation. I think that's a really interesting area, because as marketers, we have lots of data, as you mentioned earlier on, and we can really support that. I think both in terms of b2c and b2b, particularly, as technology moves to SAS, but we're coming with well over a little over time. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna leap to our final question. Okay. We have a regular feature the Rockstar cmo called the Rockstar cmo simple our portal to Hell for Ojai trends. vssa called from this marketing industry we love what would you check into?

Jo Janssen  49:36  
I would chuck into the pool generational labels, so that really like when when I hear people talk about Millennials, Generation X generation says, just like consumers do not think that way. I have never ever considered myself Gen X. I know that why you I don't know anyone that walks around and says, I'm a millennial. I'm a Gen, I'm a baby boomer, etc. And when you come back to you to really understanding your consumers, you need to think like them and consumers don't think that way. And the breath of age, you know, a millennials, what is between 1981 to 1996? So you're talking people that it's between 26 and 41. For things that's going on in your life between the 26 year I know what are you when you look back and you think, like you just your life is just so different. So that's what I chuck into a pool generational labels.

Ian Truscott  50:36  
I love it. Yeah, I love it. And I've think there's, there's a book about value graphics, which is, which is that we should look at values of our, of our audience rather than the age as a bit of a mark of that. So I love the idea of throwing these demographics in put some weight sounds fantastic. put some weight on it, I love it. And Joe, when people spin the dial on the interwebs, where they're gonna find you,

Jo Janssen  51:03  
oh, they can find me. I'm actually not a mega person in terms of social social media, etc. No, that goes, that goes against what you should be, etc. But people probably can find me They can find me on LinkedIn. Just reach out to me on LinkedIn. You know, really happy to help anyone have conversations with anyone about things, etc. So, yeah,

Ian Truscott  51:24  
it's so Thanks, Ben. Did you well, I'll include your LinkedIn link in the show notes. And thank you very much for your time. Joe, I very much enjoyed speaking to you.

Thank you, Joe, if you liked our conversation, please look out for Joe on LinkedIn. I'll include that link in the show notes and say hello. It was her first time. Right? It's Friday evening, time to wind down in the Rockstar cmo virtual bar and find my friend and content marketing guru Robert Rose chief troublemaker, a content advisory for a cocktail and a marketing

Good evening. What are you drinking?

Robert Rose  52:23  
Ah, hello, my friend. Welcome to the bar. Welcome to the end of the week and welcome to the bar tonight. You know I have I've got a little Billy Joel playing in the background. You know, whether you do or not in the bar is up to you. I know we don't want to. We don't want to run afoul of the copyright police here but I have a little bit bit of Billy Joel. So I've got a little New York on my mind at the moment. And so I have a drink that's called a New York sour for us this evening. Which is actually interestingly, not invented in New York. It was invented in Chicago. And it this was back in the 1880s. And it's uh, the interesting thing is is that it's a classic whiskey sour which of course we all know and have had on this show before we have but it is a little different. And the way that it's a little different is that you have a whiskey sour and I recommend a bourbon here rather than something else but a bourbon is always good for this and then you have a little bit of lemon juice. And then when you make your so you make it like a classic whiskey sour there. You know, and again, it calls for a simple syrup of sugar. I don't I skip that part because I just don't you know, if you needed to be a little bit of sweetness, add a little honey or something in there which is always nice but you know I don't need that that level of sweetness but then then here's the thing you've made the drink. And now pour in just the tiniest one a tiny bit but you know a little bit of red wine over the top of it. And it forms this layer the red wine will form this layer over the top which is just beautiful. By the way, it's just makes me very pretty drink but it's also surprisingly tasty. So basically you just you know, and what you want to do is is is use a spoon if you can to spoon in the red wine so it doesn't sort of you know, pierce the the layer of the whiskey and you just gently pour it on top and you will amaze your friends first of all with how beautiful this cocktail looks. But then more than that, it becomes a lovely tasting thing as well.

Ian Truscott  54:47  
I love the sound of that. And I think I made the whiskey sour that you did on the show but I forgot to put any sweet in it because you didn't put the sugar and that was quite sour. It was delicious. Absolutely delicious. And and by the way So, not many people know this. I don't talk about it very much, but it's actually Billy Joel, who's playing the piano music in the background. It's one of his unknown tracks. Well, yeah, there you go. So,

Robert Rose  55:14  
unknown Billy Joel. Right, which makes it all the more ironic that we don't know that it actually is Billy Joel. We're just going to pretend that it is.

Ian Truscott  55:25  
Exactly, exactly. I mean, that's really what this show is about, isn't it about transporting us away and, and pretending. Anyway, as you heard, I'm going to attempt to make this drink with the ingredients on my desktop. I I've put some ice in you put ice into that, didn't you?

Robert Rose  55:41  
I did. Yes. You know, you make it like a traditional make. You're just there, your traditional whiskey sour in there. I'm suspecting that you're probably going to have a couple of substitutions in there. But other than that, it's just a straight whiskey sour and then the wine is spooned in very gently.

Ian Truscott  55:57  
Alright, so what I've done is I'm using the most English of bourbons, Hendrick's gin, I'm back on the Hendrix again this

Robert Rose  56:04  
week. Yes, I see. It's a little bit it's a little lighter, if actually then most bourbon.

Ian Truscott  56:09  
Exactly. And what I'm going to zoom in is it's some it's an it's an tonic. That's brought to us by the lovely people at Fevertree, cucumber tonic water. Now that we've got ads on the show, people might actually think I'm sponsored by Fevertree I really shouldn't be generic. You should reach

Robert Rose  56:27  
out to them you should have your team of salespeople that I know you employ to to reach out to those people.

Ian Truscott  56:35  
Yes, I'm surprised they aren't already

Robert Rose  56:37  
you know, you should you know, she you should make the call and say Don't you know who I am? I'm an influencer. I need to I need your influencer department, please.

Ian Truscott  56:48  
Absolutely. Now send him a photo of me with my influencer face. Standing in front of a bottle of Fevertree I'm gonna get this guy. So I've spooned in just for the list. I've spooned in some of this lovely tonic water. That is delicious. But I could drink one of these every week.

Jo Janssen  57:06  
What do we call it? I

Robert Rose  57:06  
suspect you might Yes.

Ian Truscott  57:09  
I'm going to be called

Robert Rose  57:11  
what we call that the New York sour? And and if your next question is, as I suspect it might be where are we going to be drinking this lovely thing? We are going to go to New York. Yes. And we are going to we're going to enjoy a New York because I have New York on my mind right now. And it's just feels like I haven't been in feels like I haven't been in years and years and years. And and and when I think about it, that's true. I have not been to New York in almost two and a half, almost three years now. So it's it's crazy making for me because I love that city so much. So, gotta get to New York and just do all the things hashtag all the things,

Ian Truscott  57:50  
all the things? Well, as you know, I used to be based there. We've drunk in New York.

Robert Rose  57:53  
I know. Plenty of time in New York. Yes. I

Ian Truscott  57:56  
had an office on Time Square. was living in Connecticut came into Grand Central. I mean, there's nothing better than that. To get that. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I haven't been I haven't been for even longer. And it's the longest period of time, in my whole career since 1996. Just to show my age completely, that I had the longest period in my life. I have not been to America.

Robert Rose  58:20  
It's astonishing. That's amazing. Yeah.

Ian Truscott  58:23  
Anyway, so you haven't been for years. I haven't been for you. So where are we? Are we going to? Are we really going to do it nice. One of those really nice bars in New York. We should. Yeah. Yeah. So we're sipping these drinks? And one of those classy bars? Maybe? Maybe we've had a steak? What do you think?

Robert Rose  58:41  
I think of Yes, yeah. Oh, you know, and this would go this, this drink goes very well, with a nice steak.

Ian Truscott  58:50  
Mm hmm. So the conversation has turned from drinking and to how many years? We haven't been in New York, to marketing. And what are we going to talk about this week? Well, it's,

Robert Rose  58:59  
well, I think this week, we're going to talk a little bit about listening. You know, and, and we often think about you this is something that's been on my mind. For, you know, I've been thinking a bit about how we create content. And I don't mean just content marketing, like thought leadership or inspiration or entertainment or those kinds of things. I mean, full on how a business decides to create marketing and communications content and what we're going to talk about. And what I find is, is that in so many ways, and actually data shows this. What we do in marketing is where we're not listening to customers, as much as we are just waiting to speak, right, you know, and it's the, it's the classic, you know, active listening idea, right? You know, it's like when you're sitting in that you're sitting in that chair Eating. And, you know, you're you're watching on Zoom and someone's presenting, you know, a big presentation and you're sitting there going, Wow, that's a lot of data that she just laid out. Do I agree with him? Which statement? Should I respond to? Oh, I need to sound smart. Should I ask a question? Now? How about now? Oh, I'm ready now? Well, I'm ready with an answer, I've got an answer for that, I'm going to write that down. I should say something really cool here to sound smart. Striking your closes. And you're all you're doing is just waiting for your opportunity to insert something there for whatever reason it is. And that's marketing in a nutshell, right? I mean, it's, you know, the classic of this is that I and I just heard about this, you know, and but it's something you hear every day where, you know, a, a customer comes in to the website, they download a white paper, and then they go register for a webinar or something like that, oh, my gosh, the algorithm sees they've done two things that triggers the conversion algorithm, and often goes to a salesperson. And the salesperson then, you know, basically calls up that consumer who was just trying to like, understand the space and trying to understand the options available to him or her. And the salesperson goes, aha, how many licences would you like today? And so we're just waiting to speak. And so what I find is, is that there is a value in waiting. Just listening, just just literally listening. And it's, and the funny thing is, you know, I mean, I've learned this over 30 years of marriage, right? I mean, there are times when you just listen, and you're not there to fix something, you're not there to make it better. You're not there to try and tweak, you know, and all those things. You're just there to listen, and to and to hear things. And that's hard for marketing and or salespeople. Because our whole job is to listen for the trigger that says, Great, now, let me help you fix your need or your wants. And, and when I think about this, it's, you know, we often think of Oh, yes, what we'll do is we'll employ a technology solution to listen better right to be able to deliver a better answer to our consumers like personalization, right? Well put in personalization. But personalization is honestly, the quintessential waiting to speak, right? It is literally finding just the right amount of information to insert whatever the best response that it has at its fingertips are. And that's why personalization is usually so poorly done, even by companies like Amazon right there. It's just enough information to be wrong, right? Yeah. Yeah. In other words, you bought this and you bought that and you bought this? Well, we're gonna recommend that. Well, I just bought that. And yeah,

you know. And so anyway, all of that to say, is there something we can do, and one of the things that I have found really interesting results in is to just change up how we ask questions on our websites, or our landing pages or the gates to our thought leadership. You know, for example, polls and surveys, we often use sort of the A, B, C, D, you know, multiple choice on polls and surveys, because why we want to be able to rank and, you know, sort of the data by quantitative measures so that we can make some response to it. Instead, what if we did a poll survey where everything was just open ended? Like, just tell us how you're feeling? Right? Yeah. Or actually going out and doing interviews with customer personas, where we're not there to say, Hey, listen, what do you think about this interface? And what do you think about this message? Or what do you think about this logo? Instead, we just listen, we just listen to what they have to say. Or, and this is my favourite one to do of late this is an experiment that I've I've suggested a couple of times, is that you know, how we gate white papers or edX on our websites. And the gating is usually some sort of identifiable piece of you know, your name, your title, your buying stage, your email, address all these things. What if instead of gating it with that, we literally just gate the white paper with, tell us why you're downloading this, just like literally type it into a thing? That's the gate. I love it. Tell us why you're downloading this paper, just looking around. I'm trying to get educated. I want to copy it for because I'm a competitor, you know, tell us why. And that gets you the white paper. And just listening can give us so much better insight that that can be a valuable exercise as well. And that's what's on my mind.

Ian Truscott  1:04:41  
I love that. And I love that idea that we can incentivize feedback in that way that instead of that, for me, maybe the most useful thing I can get from this person that wants this white paper is their opinion, and not their email address. That's right,

Robert Rose  1:04:55  
exactly. You know, so you can start to understand how they feel rather than who they are.

Ian Truscott  1:05:01  
Yeah, and I also I really like that I mean, that phrase that we're waiting to speak. It certainly sounds like my podcast interview technique. I think that what I like there is you're right, that's what the conversation is, is that we're listening only just enough in order to to tell them something about ourselves. And from a b2b perspective, that's all we do, isn't it talk about ourselves?

Robert Rose  1:05:27  
Well, and the funny thing is, the irony of it all, is that personalization engines actually get more accurate, the less that they speak, and the more that they listen, right. In other words, the more data that is assembled before a piece of content is presented, is usually more accurate. So if you sort of run that equation, personalization systems should never, you know, really ever present a piece of content because the more they listened, the better they'll get. Yeah, and, and so of course, at some point, you have to because that's the whole point of a personalization system is that it is personalising, but it's always that question of how much data do you need in order to provide a contextually relevant piece of content to someone in that moment? And the answer is almost always, well, more would be better. Right? And you know, and so, the listening is is, you know, more is almost always better. But of course, there is a, you know, there is a declining rate of return, I suppose, before you actually speak in a marketing sense. But what I think that also shows is that some would be good, some listening would be good.

Ian Truscott  1:06:44  
Yeah, well, I mean, these days, we've got dynamic forms, and that kind of thing, right? There's no reason why some of our, some of our good stuff, some of our white papers can be gated in the traditional when some of it gated in this way. And, you know, you can you can do that split and figure out, figure out what's working best, and you may find that actually, your message gets spread and heard more, I mean, I fucking hate gates anyway. But it spreads more, because you're, you're asking the human question, and it might be a huge relief to them, that they don't have to give you their email address.

Robert Rose  1:07:16  
Yeah, no, that's exactly right. You know, and, and, and, you know, sharing that with a, you know, with a with, and this is especially true, for example, where we may already know, or we should already know who they are, you know, how many times have you gone back to a website? And, you know, and you're, you're going for that second white paper, and, you know, cough Gardiner, cough, and you have to yet put in your email address again. And then what, what annoys me so much is that when you put in your email address for that second time, they go, Oh, welcome back. It's like, no, no, no, no. Me back after the back before I had to put that in. That's called listening.

Ian Truscott  1:08:12  
I love that. Yeah. And also, I think, this is what came into my mind, because I don't know what you're going to talk about these things. But what came into my mind, then as well as it's taking this approach to how you look at your data? So for example, when we look at web analytics, we're typically looking at vanity metrics about us, right? We should be actually looking at that, in that same way is, is that we're, what is the customer doing? And thinking, What can we discern about what how have they're viewing this and their behaviour, from a listening perspective, rather than Oh, they it took them five, five pages to get to one of our calls to action, we need to put that call to action somewhere else. Do you see what I mean?

Robert Rose  1:08:51  
Is that we need to begin sooner. Yeah, we need to make it we made it we need to make it earlier so that we actually, you know, and I mean, we've talked about this before, where, you know, we get so wrapped around the axle of trying to quote unquote, remove friction, that we forget that sometimes friction is a good thing. Yeah. And that slowing someone down is a good thing. You know, and it's it can be it can be a it can be both both for the business, and for the consumer to slow them down a little bit and say, Hey, listen, just you know, take a moment, take a breath and get what you need. Yeah, have

Ian Truscott  1:09:27  
a look around. Yeah, I love it. All right. That's a great thought. Thank you very much, Robert. And loving this drink also, and the you know, you outing Billy Joel is playing in the background. That's fantastic. So where might people here be able to read your thoughts where you're listening?

Robert Rose  1:09:45  
Well, they could they could show up now, which I'm a little more pleased to say now to go to Content advisory dotnet, which is our little hovel on the web, because we've just spruced up the joint a little bit we've been We've put some new content up, we've gotten, you know, we've cleaned up the navigation a bit, we've added some things that weren't there and ostensibly just, you know, gotten a little sharper with our website design. We had a little cobblers kids thing going on there for a while, but spent a couple of weekends and got it all shaped up.

Ian Truscott  1:10:18  
Nice. And so will we continue to call it a Hawkman?

Robert Rose  1:10:22  
You know, yes, of course, because it's not like we upgraded it to a mansion or anything, we just pull this cobwebs out of the corner is really

Ian Truscott  1:10:31  
good. So that's content advisory dotnet. And when people spin the dial on the interwebs, Robert, where they're gonna find you? Well

Robert Rose  1:10:37  
currently find me on LinkedIn and Twitter. Although if Elon continues his little adventure here, who knows what the hell whether or not the current?

Ian Truscott  1:10:49  
I don't think there'll be a lot of listening going on then when when his champion his form of free speech takes interviews. All right, and well, I see you in the bar next week. Of course. I'll see you then. Thank you very much. And that piano music is clearly not Billy Joel, of course, but a chap called Johnny Easton shed under a Creative Commons licence, and you can find a link to it in the show notes. So that's a wrap on episode 111 or the Rockstar cmo effing Martin podcast. Thank you for dropping a dime into your podcasting jukebox, selecting our track and driving along with us. I've been your host Ian Truscott. Thanks again to Jeff Joe and Robert for sharing their insight. Please say hello, follow their work and check out all the links in the show notes which you can find on your favourite podcast app or at Rockstar cmo.fm. You can also find all our previous episodes need another thing writing podcast? Let us know on the socials or drop a rating or review on your favourite podcast app. Or just keep listening. I'm glad you're here. Next week, as you heard, Jeff will be back and my guest will be Lloyd Jones, CEO of adverset communications. And until then, have a great week and I hope you'll join us here again next week on Rockstar cmo

Transcribed by https://otter.ai