#96 - The Authentic Empathy with Jeff, Brands Don't Win with Stan Bernard and Planning Over a Cocktail with Robert

This transcript was automatically generated by a machine, that on its way to becoming sentient may have it's own ideas of what we said....

"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"

Ian Truscott  0:00  
Like we've ruined so many other things before us.

Jeff Clark  0:02  
Yeah. Well, this was the wait for

Ian Truscott  0:07  
Yes

Ian Truscott  0:17  
Hello and welcome to episode 96 of Rockstar cmo F and M is a marketing and the F. It's a well you decide as you're probably wondering, does the world need another effing Marketing podcast?

Ian Truscott  0:31  
I'm your host Ian Truscott. And this weekly podcast serves as my excuse chatter, marketing friends, old and new that I've met through my career from techie to cmo and hopefully share with you some marketing street knowledge that my guests and I have picked up along the way. Come say hello, we are Rockstar cmo on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Ian Truscott  0:49  
I'm recording this on Friday the eighth of January if you missed last week's show, Happy New Year hope you are well safe and staying as sane as you feel you need to be back to usual format after the holidays this week. Jeff Clark is back I chat with strategy consultant speaker and author Stan Barnard about his book brands don't win and finish off on a Friday evening with Robert Rose in the Rockstar cmo virtual bar. But first, we need to pay the bar tab. I'll be back in a moment.

Ian Truscott  1:36  
Good news Jeff Clark fans he's back my Cham former research director at serious decisions Forrester and principal strategic advisory at Rockstar cmo has returned from his vacation for an authentic chat about empathy and takes on the tough job of choosing this week's track. Welcome back, Jeff Clark to Rockstar cmo FM How are you my friend?

Jeff Clark  2:00  
I am doing well. Thank you for calling me after I've been away for a month.

Ian Truscott  2:07  
Very welcome. I'm sure many of the listeners. I've missed Jeff.

Jeff Clark  2:13  
Well, you know, send the cards letters to I shouldn't give my home address. Send them this rockstar CMO. Yeah, shit.

Ian Truscott  2:23  
And you can find us on all the best social media. Absolutely. And some rubbish ones too. And how was your break? Was it good? Did enjoy yourself?

Jeff Clark  2:34  
Absolutely. It was awesome. Yeah, I was with family away in Norway. And because one of my family members just bolted in Norway five years ago, so we had to go get them and, and have a new grandson to hang out with and yeah, it was was awesome. And of course, there was lots of snow there. Yeah. Which here in Massachusetts? There's none.

Ian Truscott  2:57  
Yeah, so you had a perfect white Christmas?

Jeff Clark  3:01  
Yes, that should be our theme song for the end of this. This section. But no,

Ian Truscott  3:05  
I think isn't that bad luck if we play White Christmas? January? Yeah, I mean, the middle of I mean, the first week in June, when is this going up? Yes, no. Today? No, this is due to for airing on. I can't do the math. But we're recording this on Tuesday, the fourth of January. So Happy New Year.

Jeff Clark  3:25  
Happy New Year, May 2020, to be better than 2021 or 2020, or 19.

Ian Truscott  3:34  
Just be better. On that note of what we saw in 2021. I want to ask you a question. Because we you normally were very well prepared, aren't we on what we're going to talk about, but that I thought I'd spring something on you because something I've been thinking about, which is what were the big takeaways from 2021. For me, and I'm worried about this because we marketers are banging on at the moment about empathy and authenticity and almost everywhere. Do you think that we are going to ruin as marketers ruin those words? Like we've ruined so many other things before us?

Ian Truscott  4:17  
To wait for? Yes. You're supposed to wait for me saying what say? Have you forgotten the format of the show?

Jeff Clark  4:28  
But no, I was just such an easy answer. But I guess we should we should probably explain or talk about that.

Ian Truscott  4:35  
Yeah, so what's what's your view then? Because I'm both on both counts, like so empathy for me. I think it's a great. I think it's a great motivation for Marx's it's something but it's something we've talked about on the show, but we've never used the word empathy. Have we I mean, we were just chatting just before me pressing record, and it's something we talk about all the time.

Jeff Clark  4:53  
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think so. So part of this is like just the misuse of the of The word because I think that,

Jeff Clark  5:03  
you know, if you just if think of it as a definition, and, you know, everyone can look the dish definition up on the dictionary or dictionary.com, but it's like, you've got sympathy. So you can you can, you can understand what somebody is going through and be sympathetic for them to have empathy is taking it up another notch or more than another notch, because it's like, you have a lived experience that, that some other person you're being empathetic with has a lived experience that sort of like, you know, I don't know, we could say, you know, my mother died of a certain disease, or your mother just died of that disease. Now, I can add empathy with you, because there's a real strong connection and so yeah, to, to over to basically over promise something because a marketer, particularly through all of the channels, we have to work with, I mean, you're, you're you're divorced, divorced, or your separate from your, you know, the listeners, or who, or whoever is receiving the message. And it's just, it's impossible to have that type of connection with them. It's even hard for, I mean, I think sometimes there's, you have a really good salesperson who may have been somebody who came out of a field, and they've experienced things, and they're selling people who are experiencing those same things, they probably have a better chance of having, you know, empathy for the buyer than the marketer does. And so it's just, it's, it's, it's wasting, it's basically wasting time in your marketing, if you're trying to be if you're trying to be empathetic.

Ian Truscott  6:38  
But then you think that they're better. I mean, okay, so technically speaking, the words been used completely wrongly. But don't you think, though, that this is the heart of marketing, really, and as always has been, and the fact that the pandemic has arisen, and everybody's now thinking about, they need to be empathetic, or need to have empathy? Actually, what were you doing before, you know, who like, you know, isn't isn't the whole point of what we're doing is to be in the shoes of our of our marks and of our audience and our and our consumer, and understand and understand them? But I mean, we talked about that quite a lot this

Jeff Clark  7:12  
year, I think this past year, if we counted the number of times, you know, that I've talked, you talked about understanding the customer's need, yeah, as being the core of what you need to do in your messaging, or creating your messaging, then. Absolutely, it's like that's, that's the due diligence that the marketer needs to do so that they can have a, you know, conversation with a with a potential buyer that is actually meaningful. So talking about being meaningful to the buyer is mean, that's certainly within the grasp of the marketer. And so I totally agree with you. It's like, if we weren't trying to empathy, we've been maybe misusing it. But if we weren't trying to get to that point where we understand the wire, and how to communicate in their language. And so when you throw around terms, you know, it's like, if I, if I say, I'm being empathetic, it's likely that I'm not actually being just saying that, because that's what I want you to think I'm doing.

Ian Truscott  8:19  
Yeah. Yeah. And that's also been that that's also the truth about the other key buzzword of 2021, which is authentic, isn't it? Is this? You can't describe yourself as authentic, authentic,

Jeff Clark  8:32  
correct. Yeah. Right. It's, um, if I'll read, I guess I'll repeat it with a different word. If you're, if you're trying to if you're saying something as authentic, it likely is not. And yes. You know, it's kind of like, well, what? I don't know, it's like, what are you really grasping for? If it isn't just about communicating to the customer in terms about what they're trying to accomplish? And what their needs are, then. You know, I mean, that is the again, that is that is your, your attempt to strive to be authentic. Yep. But to put these things in into buzzwords and to start to label what you're doing is that is, it's really it's kind of disingenuous, and, and I think that's one of the things Yeah, one of things we were talking before before we got on the air was that, you know, both you and I had been involved in these, you know, campaigns where you you latch onto the buzzword, customer experience, customer centricity. I worked for a couple of companies where it was all about agility. And and it's like, it's not that that in some cases, those words are are wrong. It's just that if you latch on to the buzzword and then you go to the you know, the go to the trade show or your you're seeing your advertising, you know, your online advertising, it's like oh my gosh, that company is Using the same term we're using. Yeah, I mean, I remember being when I was at progress software, and we were like, we do all these internal work and coming up with new messaging. And then we saw Microsoft use the exact same messaging. And yeah, one of the competitors, you know, whether dotnet platform, and I was like, how did they do that? Well, it's like, it's like it. It's like we were all trying to look glom on to the same thought leadership. Yeah. Yeah, at the same time, it's not like they were reading. I'm sure they were not. They didn't have moles in our marketing department.

Ian Truscott  10:33  
And I said, that is such a good point. I mean, it's it drifts away a little bit from what we're supposed to be talking about. But how many times have I been in a situation where the SES we have genuinely believe that our competitors come along, just cut and pasted their website and use it? Whenever we say anything? They say the same thing? Sometimes that's because we're all operating in the same goldfish bowl, right? We're being influenced by the same people we're listening to the same analysts is listening to the same green customer. Yes. Yeah. And so that's why we come up with very similar messaging to one another, because we're in the same category being influenced by the same thing. It's not that, but then again, there is a lot of that there, isn't it? I mean, we both worked for a vendor that that were some of the leadership were obsessed with Adobe, I wasn't gonna name anybody. But and, and everything they did, it was like, Well, you know, it was almost like any decision was like, Well, what would Adobe do? Then? Thank you just chasing their tail lights. So then and

Jeff Clark  11:34  
then, particularly when you realise that? I mean, Adobe was was it probably still is a great marketing machine. Yeah, absolutely. Still is. And it's, but it's like, but you don't do exactly what No, Adobe does. So therefore, you shouldn't be talking like Adobe, or you shouldn't be using them as a, you know, as a, as a model. As a matter of fact, one of the things, one of things we actually when when I was at progress, this is long time ago. So you know, I'm not giving away any trade secrets. But we did this thing, by one of my colleagues had read this book called eating the big fish. And it was all about being a chair, will not challenge your brand, because that's a different kind of a different philosophy, if you will, but it was, it was no, actually we didn't use the term challenge. But it's like, who's the were the big gorillas in the market? Yeah. What how do they talk? Yeah. Now if you figure out what you're if you truly figure out what your differentiators are, and what is what you do that is unique that that appeals to the customer is still you're trying to like focus on the need, then that's the direction you go. And yeah, you don't go into mimicking? Yes, what the big guys do, because they'll be like, well, you're just the little version of your version of Microsoft. So why do I? Why would I do business? Well, that's,

Ian Truscott  13:00  
well, that's if you register a tool, right? Because what the buyers trying to do is they're looking for difference. And the challenge. I mean, I was just writing a piece about this and publish it. But one of the challenges is going to be trust, isn't it, because if you if you look exactly the same to a vendor they've heard of, then where they're going to go, they're going to go with the one they trust that and the one they trust is almost certainly going to be the one with the bigger marketing budget, or organisation. So you say I think then this there's something in this authenticity business, and isn't it because that is that that's going to be the difference between you and the big guys, isn't it is that is that you need to deliver an authentic message of being you and not being met?

Jeff Clark  13:41  
Yes, and I think that's where, you know, as we were saying, it's like if you if you, you can't talk about yourself as being empathetic or authentic, is you strive to be those things, you'll be a better marketer. Yes. But it's just, you know, just the usual thing where you can say, oh, go look at me, I'm, yeah, whatever. If you spend all the time talking about yourself, yes. You're not talking about the customer and what they want.

Ian Truscott  14:11  
Well, I'm not, I'm sending a short segment this week. But I, I like that. I think that's a good place to end because I think that your statement is if you strive to be empathetic and authentic, you'll be a better marketer, which kind of underlines these two hot words from 2021. Probably pretty good to lead us into 22. Yeah. Excellent. Let's

Jeff Clark  14:33  
make a New Year's resolution to be more empathetic and writer agility by 1.2.

Ian Truscott  14:43  
Now, it's not often that I also remember this the structure of this show. So now, do you have a song for us this week?

Jeff Clark  14:53  
I do and it is, unfortunately, or fortunately, we're going way back one of the ways Back machine. Yes. But on the other hand, you know, the the writers of this song were just I mean, they just finished their tour the Rolling Stones, which Yeah, boggles my mind. They're still playing, but satisfaction. I just, you know, it's it's a great song that kind of pokes fun at marketing messages. You know, it's like when I'm driving my car and a man comes on the radio telling me more and more about how use some useless information supposed to fire my imagination. I'm not getting satisfaction. So markers do not fall into that trap. And wisdom of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards Yeah. And

Ian Truscott  15:36  
when you look at the lyrics, there it is a is got to be a classic marketing song is fantastic. So there's always going to be on the show at some point. So we'll play out with Rolling Stones can't get no satisfaction. Well, last week, we had the Beatles. So we're going through some classics here, suggested by Jason fall. So that was, that was pretty cool. We are doing the classics. So that

Jeff Clark  15:56  
pretty soon we'll be going back to Beethoven and Bach

Ian Truscott  16:02  
and Jeff, and when Welcome back to the show, and welcome back to America. And And if people spin the dial on the interwebs tonight, they're gonna find you.

Jeff Clark  16:13  
You're gonna find the Alexa cmo visors as well as leaking that

Ian Truscott  16:18  
spent Thank you very much and we'll see you next week. Sure, absolutely. Thank you, Jeff that was of course I can't get no satisfaction by The Rolling Stones from 1965 are muck about with Jeff but as you will often hear, he's worked with some great companies. And this experience makes him an excellent strategic advisor. If you'd like to chat with Jeff get in touch Hello at Rockstar cmo.com onto our guest we have a doctor in the house. Stan Barnard, MD MBA is an internationally recognised award winning global competition consultant, keynote speaker and best selling author. He is the president of Barnard Associates, LLC, and the creator of the transgender system. A former senior fellow at the Wharton School of Business, Dr. Barnard has been a consultant to leading businesses around the world for nearly four decades, working with more than 150 companies across six continents. His book, which we'll be discussing, in a moment, brands don't win was named the number one business book of 2021 by fire. I hope you enjoy this conversation

Ian Truscott  18:24  
welcome, Stan to Rockstar, CMO, F. M. How are you?

Stan Bernard  18:28  
Doing? Awesome. Great to talk to you as planned. And where am I talking to you from today's day? And Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington DC.

Ian Truscott  18:35  
Nice. I know it quite well, because I used to work down now. I used to live two times in the DC area once. Yeah, once when I first got married many years ago. We live out in Falls Church in Virginia. And I was working in Maryland. And then most recently, I was based down in DC and went and lived at Maryland so did the opposite. Very nice. And I think there's a Capital Grille in Bethesda where a drunk with my boss number

Stan Bernard  19:07  
of popular places.

Jeff Clark  19:09  
Yeah, yeah.

Ian Truscott  19:10  
So when I was doing my research, I was like, Oh, yes, I definitely know prefers that. So ever beautiful part of the world. Thank you very much, Stan for your time. So for people that I mean, now, we've learned a bit about Bethesda but people that don't know you as much as I do. Stan, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Stan Bernard  19:26  
Thanks. Again. Thank you for having me on your podcast. Yeah, I have a pet a circuitous route to becoming a marketer. I actually had planned to become a practising surgeon. My father was a surgeon, went to medical school at Baylor College of Medicine and in my third year did surgery rotation realised you know what, I'm not really that into the surgery aspects. It's the same gallbladder same appendix, you know, again, and so I started doing some Actually competitive strategy consulting while I was in med school, I had never actually read a marketing book never taken a business course of any type, but I just I don't know, it just seemed to come natural to me. So I started working with some local service businesses and, and started doing competitive strategy consulting for them and then realised I really prefer strategy over surgery. Okay, so I went ahead, finished up got my licence as an MD general practitioner and went on then to go to business school at the Wharton School of Business where I got my MBA and marketing and Healthcare Management. Our worked at Bristol Myers Squibb brand company, obviously that many people know for six years, I had six different jobs that gave me you know, totally, totally different perspectives and these different functions I had. And then from there I went to work for at Kearney doing consulting as a principal. And, and then realised I really wanted to have my own business that was much more of an entrepreneurial kind of guy. And I started my firm Barnard associates back in 1999. Yeah, over 20 years, we've been in the business of helping clients when we do that with our Transcender system, which we'll talk about later yet. So in addition to my business, I actually also was a senior fellow at the Wharton School of Business, I started two courses to graduate courses there. I taught marketing for 14 years.

Ian Truscott  21:28  
Wow. Wow. That's impressive. I think you've answered about three of my questions. I was gonna ask about your background there. That's excellent. And I think the first time I mean, we've had marketers on the show from various different backgrounds. Some of them have even started off as marketers. But I think you're the first medical man that started his career there. So that's as interesting for you. So do you practice medicine until now? It's just all marketing?

Stan Bernard  21:55  
No, I don't I don't practice and, you know, but it's but the medical background has helped me immensely and my competitive strategy and marketing work. So I think, first and foremost, it's given me a healthy dose of scepticism. Hey, you know, as physician, we're trained not to make assumptions, you know, you make assumptions and medicine and people can get hurt or even die. So for instance, I was taught do not assume that the diagnosis that some other doctor came up with or the patient comes in with is the correct diagnosis. So it helped me a lot. Like when I was first starting at Bristol Myers Squibb, as a product manager when I first had my job as a product manager 1990, Bristol Myers Squibb. I came in and my marketing team basically said, the advertising agency has our strategy already laid out and then presented to us. And I'm like, wait a minute, I thought were the product managers. What do you mean by this? And they're like, Oh, this is how it works here. And I'm like, Well, I thought we come up with a strategy. And I said, Don't worry, they've already figured out all the brand and all the brand positioning brand, this brand that I'm like, Well, what if we decide not to win with branding? Yeah. And I heard basically, crickets.

Stan Bernard  23:14  
They had the deer in the headlights look like, what Stan? Are you talking about? Don't you realise the only way to compete is with branding? And that was an aha moment for me. Yeah, that's when I realised Oh, my gosh, everybody just assumes the only way to compete in business is with branding. And so that that really set me off on a course to find, quite frankly, a better alternative to competing with branding. And that's how I came up with ultimately my Transcender winning system. Yeah, no. And, yeah, I think that a lot of people make that association that they just think marketing is about brand. And there's so much more to it. And so I think that that gets us on, right on to your book, you recently published brands don't win how Transcenders change the game. And you talk about traditional and transgender brands that you did just then. So what's the difference between what's what makes a transgender brand different? Yeah. So the simple difference between what I call the traditionalist branding model competitive model and the Transcender agenda driven winning system model is that in the trade centre model, it's all about winning, right? If you want to win, then transcend. If you just want to compete, then brand because pretty much everybody will this is playing the brand new game. I mean, virtually every company, whether they're a product technology service, whether it's b2b b2c, you name it around the world, and virtually every company plays the same game. It's like playing brand checkers.

Stan Bernard  25:00  
Right. And you know, it's tough to win in checkers when everybody knows the game so well, yeah. Right. So the biggest difference is that, you know, transcending is all about winning brand is all about competing. But I think the second biggest difference is how these companies go about it. Yeah. Right. So let's look at the traditional brand new model that everybody's familiar with. And I'll make it simple. The way these companies compete is with a product playbook. Classic product playbook. Basically, first of all, they try to win by differentiating their brand, they create a brand, and then they try to differentiate it based on slightly better features or benefits. Mm hmm. Use lots of advertising, promotions, sales reps, etc. It's very much like a military campaign, you try to overwhelm your competition with you know, more resources, you know, more messaging, more advertising, more promotions, more money, etc. And so you have just this constant stream of, you know, again, like a military campaign, just shooting our messages in all different, you know, media outlets, 360, etc. And the other big difference there is, you know, the traditional system, we do a lot of market research to say, you know, how can we make our products slightly better than our competitors? Yeah, right. Well, that is the old model. Right? It's very old at this point. The transmitter system, on the other hand, is all about using the political playbook. Right? Let me explain what I mean by that. If you want to win in the transgender world that we've moved into, so the transgender world you can think of as the round world, in the traditional world as the flat world, transcendent world, you don't try to differentiate your brand. There's simply too many brands on the market, there's too many messages. And you know, the average person gets anywhere from six to 10,000 messages a day promotional messages. And you're now competing with the internet, you're competing with potentially not just a few local or regional products, you're competing with potentially 1000s of products, right? So so you can't win by differentiate your brand, particularly, you only have a slightly better product. So what do you do you basically use a political playbook of your Transcender. By that, I mean, you compete the same way politicians do. Right. So let me explain what I mean by that. Now, take the example from US presidential politics, because it's probably the clearest. Yeah, in presidential elections. Politicians don't lead with the brand. They lead with what they call a campaign agenda or their game. And then they follow with the brand. So for instance, 2008, first term, Senator Obama, lead with a one word campaign agenda, one word change, and change, change, change. If people were inspired by and believed in change, then he was really the only choice. He was the change candidate. He had a different background he had policies were very different, etc, etc. Similarly, in 2016, again, put us on politics, I don't care about politics here. It doesn't 16 Trump could have led with the brand Vote Trump. He was he was a known entity as a real estate developer, and a reality show host. But he didn't. He led also with the campaign agenda forwards make America great again. Then he followed with the idea that if you believed in and were inspired by that agenda, then he was the one to basically make America great again. That was his, his approach. Yeah, right. So that's exactly what the best companies do. Mm hmm. The Amazons, the apples, the peloton the Googles, as well as, you know, even startup companies, smaller startup companies, such as the lip another, so so they use a political playbook. The other big difference is they basically are not trying to have slight differences in their in their brands. They're looking for transcendent differences, right, the difference, right? So they kind of market the trends in different so I'd say those are some of the most important differences. But yeah, in short, it virtually everything Transcenders do is different than traditionalist. And

Ian Truscott  29:15  
I really liked that, that that when you were talking about the political comparison with transgender brands, because it sort of sort of struck on belief, right? So I'm from b2b, marketing background, we often say, you know, why do people buy your products when you're doing an analysis of, you know, somebody's marketing and stuff as a consultant. But now, I think what it kind of inspired me to think about when you when I was reading the book was, you've got to think about why do people believe in you and your products? Right? Why do they believe in that thing that you're saying that you can change? And I think, in my industry, in b2b in a b2b tech predominantly, and you know, the leaders have always been people that have had a very clear vision but they've they've they've talked about almost like that as a political Campaign is not about features and functions, and then other people come along and they try and do the feature function fight. And and it doesn't work because it I mean, you're, you're about the same same age group as me so I can use the Betamax VHS comparison is that people don't win by features and funds and being the better product they win by winning hearts and minds, don't they? And that I think that's that was important about that political idea.

Stan Bernard  30:26  
Absolutely. Um, and again, this is one of the key differences between traditionalist branders and transcendent companies and leaders. The traditionalist basically says, you know, what, we have a slightly better product. And we want you to basically buy into what we're saying, and make a product purchase. They're out to sell you. The transition Transcender says, no, no, we are here to get you to believe in our agenda, not buy in. We're not trying to sell you. We're trying to inspire you. And, and we want to give you we don't want a product purchase. We're not that's not what we're offering. We're offering a transcendent experience. Okay, so this is again, night and day. Because the traditionalist says we're going to do market research. Right? We're going to try to find something slightly better, and then you know, promoted advertising. So the transmitter says, no, no, we don't, we don't care why. And we're gonna basically the most important thing is we first are going to do something that we believe in ourselves yet, and then get you to believe in it so that we inspire you and you basically believe in this transcendent experience we're gonna offer so for instance, peloton. Yeah, peloton didn't go out and ask stationary bike riders? What can you do? You know, what can we do to make a stationary home bike better? They knew that night, the five co founders basically said, You know what, we see that there's a need in the marketplace for something. That is what they called a World Class Home cycling studio. Mm hmm. That was their agenda. Okay. And agenda is again, the game they play. And so that's what they set out to do. So as a result, they weren't just trying to improve the bike which of course, they dramatically improved the bike. Yeah, right. But and their bike as we all know, you know, everything from the carbon frames, the flywheel, etc. There's a magnet better bike, but they didn't stop there. Okay, that would have been a traditionalist branding approach. Oh, let's make it slightly better. No, it went way beyond that. They said, You know what we're gonna do, we're gonna first of all, make this like a home cycling studio experience what they call the peloton experience. We're going to bring in these great instructors from around the world you don't have to go to the local you know place and only get one choice of one instruct, you can choose any instruct you want from around the world. We're gonna bring in the best. Yeah, they've made it a social event, right? Yeah. Okay, you can basically ride with other people, you can compete with them, you can have five them, etc, etc. Right? So they made the experience a social experience. And then of course, they made it for the home. Yeah, right. So so this is an example of a Transcender a peloton versus a traditionalist who's basically trying to build a slightly broader stationary bike.

Ian Truscott  33:34  
Right, right. They redefine the category in which they're competing in base absolute,

Stan Bernard  33:38  
and this is what I call changing the game. Yeah, it changed the game. They weren't out to differentiate their product. Yeah, they want people to believe in their agenda. Yeah. Which is initially was this indoor world class indoor cycling experience. Yeah, in in what happens they have created what I call ad benjelloun skulls. Yeah, it's a portmanteau that is basically refers to these passionate proselytisers then we'll go on until everybody else about peloton. Yeah, if you I don't know if you nobody. Yeah, yeah. You say the word peloton. Yeah, people go off on oh my god, how great the bike is and the experience. You know, I have friend, isn't it? Yeah,

Ian Truscott  34:20  
I don't think a bike. Yeah, I don't even need to mention it. I mean, how do you know that somebody got a peloton, they will tell you

Stan Bernard  34:28  
the trick, in fact, this is a classic example of Transcender. Yeah. If the last quarterly meeting for peloton in front of analysts, they said to the analyst, we're cutting back on advertising promotion. Yeah. And you know, said why? And they said because we have so many of our followers, which some people refer to as the pelo verse, what I refer to as the adventure locals that that are pushing our agenda and therefore helping us inspire people to buy this bike and and also the tread and other, you know, equipment pieces they have now, and, um, that we don't need as much advertising promotion. And so this is again, much more like a political campaign. If you talk to peloton users you would think they could have they could have been the same people that were, you know, supporting Obama in 2008 or 16. The way they feel about the bike is very, very similar. Yeah, it's evangelical. Yeah. What Yeah, the call

Ian Truscott  35:28  
you know supporters do and as to your point, they would never have had that feeling about another sort of stationary bike. You know, it was nuts. Yeah, exactly. Know the different thing. It's a lifestyle thing.

Stan Bernard  35:38  
Right. And these guys in and again, peloton came up, not with a better bite, they came over the transcendent experience. So this is a major difference. The traditionalist base will do market research at Transcenders, do market shaping, right? They specifically do game changing as I refer to it. Yeah. And they use that through this campaign agenda very much like politicians. Yeah.

Ian Truscott  36:02  
And you mentioned that I mean, in your there's so many things in your book, and so many great examples, but you mentioned there, one of your as the four A's, rather than using the four P's adventure liquor, what are the what are the other three days? Yeah, three days?

Stan Bernard  36:15  
Yeah, so most people are familiar with the most marketers are familiar with the four traditional four Ps. I mean, that four P model, product, place promotion, price, dates, all the way back to 1960. So it's over 60 years old. Yeah. And so what I have done in the book is, basically I have what I call the four A's. I mentioned one on evangelicalism and other three include basically access, advantages and awareness. So by access, I refer to the idea that it's no longer about price and trends in the world. It's about access, and it's what values do you bring. So for instance, let's look at Starbucks as an example. Okay, Starbucks, okay. Their coffee is more expensive, right? It's the biggest selling coffee company in the world. And why is that? Well, that's because Starbucks originally started out trying to win by branding. And they tried to the first 16 years, they had the Starbucks name, Starbucks, Nordic Seiren logo, they had the Starbucks cups, and most importantly, they had the Starbucks branded coffee, and they were only adding one store per year, they were not winning. Right, Howard Schultz buys them in 1987, and says, we're going to change the game. No longer about the brand new coffee, we are going to become the third place between home and work in America. That is why you see the stores that are on one side of the highway on the way to work and Starbucks on the direct and the way home from work. It's why they're in transportation hubs, corporate centres, halls, etc. And it's also not only they strategically and conveniently located, but they're much bigger stores. Okay? Come hang out, you know, grab not a cup of coffee like Dunkin Donuts, grab a chair and table or couch. And we are nice music or free Wi Fi our pleasant breezes, etc. Right? Yeah. And so what they did is they are offering even though their coffees more expensive. They basically are offering access to so much more. Yeah, you can go and stay there for you know, 234 hours, yeah, work, meet some friends, hang out, read whatever you want to do. Right? So it says access. And when show started that started in 1987. On next 20 years, they went from adding one store per year to adding 13 150 stores per year for stores per day. And so they have now become far and away the biggest coffee chain in the world with over 31,000 stores across 80 countries. They basically are three times bigger than their biggest competitor Dunkin Donuts. And that's despite the fact that dunkin donuts in the United States actually spends twice as much on advertising promotion. Wow. And Starbucks sells three times more coffee. Wow. Okay, so that's an access. Yeah, Google is another example of access. Yeah, much access to the world's information. And that's the second a third is advantages as a community. You don't want to have one or two advantages. That's what traditionalists do. They'll say, you know, what, are our pickup truck has a bigger towing capacity. Yeah. Or has a larger flatbed? Yeah. So what Yes, as you know, we're gonna have multiple advantages. I call them the s advantages because Tesla has so many advantages for their dollars, right. Yeah. So s advantages starting with savings, right? Yeah. Saving the planet. Yeah, no, by saving obviously gas, and they save on money. These cars actually become less expensive over time. And they have insurance savings, and they have another s which is the software download. So yeah, we will feel like to get a new car every morning. Hey, they have their sales model is totally different. So basically mostly an internet based five minutes or less you get by their car, charging stations, the safety of the cars on and on. They have so many advantages. That's typical Transcender companies, and it's not one or two slight advantages. They have multiple transcendent advantages. Yeah, the fourth day is awareness.

Stan Bernard  40:23  
You know, in any politician, any political election, you need to have an own the airwaves. And we all know Trump only airwaves in 2016. Yet, despite the fact that he spent 1/3 as much PR votes as Hillary Clinton, right. Yeah, he actually, you know, and he did he use social media and Obama had used it, but Trump took it to a whole new level and right. He on the airwaves, at one point in time, he had 50 times the mentioned in online and offline. And media as Hillary Clinton, he owned the airwaves. So this is also what you see with the best. Yeah, yeah. They own the airwaves. I mean, you know, if you look at companies like, you know, a GEICO, yeah. Geico, for those who are not familiar, is a car insurance company in the US that basically was in fifth place in 1999. They said, You know, we have to change the game because State State Farm was the biggest at the time. And they had the largest insurance sales network, which is why they were winning. Geico said, we can't match this sales professional network. When I changed the game. We're going to start advertising, which at the time actually was not done in insurance. Okay. The belief was that insurance was not something you could advertise, as you couldn't see it couldn't feel it couldn't touch it. Geico said, you know, we're gonna start advertising and they basically had a forward campaign agenda, which they still use today. 15 minutes? 15%? Yep. 15 minutes. 15% 15 minutes can save you 15% of more car insurance. Yeah. Well, everybody knows that. Why? Because Because GEICO has been telling us that. Yeah, okay. And you know, it's so easy. A caveman can do it. Yeah. Right. And they broke all the rules of traditional advertising. Mm hmm. In multiple mascots. They had the gecko, they had a caveman here, everything. They ran totally different commercials. The same time. Yeah. That's, again, breaks all the rules, which is typical Transcenders Transcenders, create the rules, and they don't follow the rules. And they create the rules and force their competitors to follow their rules. And so that's why you see all these car insurance companies in United States have spent enormous amount of money trying to do all this advertising to keep up with Geico and they can become close. Yeah, it goes now jumped to number two, they're breathing down state farms neck, despite the fact that they don't offer nearly as many types of insurance as state. All right. All right. Well, yeah, that's awareness. Everybody knows about Geico. Yeah, and

Ian Truscott  42:58  
you know, a couple of them there. I mean, Tesla definitely has the adventure follicles as well. And so you know, they take more of the A boxes, don't know those great brands, and like you say, Geico have been incredibly persistent with that message. And I think as marketers, we tend to come in, especially a CMOS, you come in, and we want to change everything. Whereas, you know, if you if you just keep going and you find something right, you should persist with it. And I think we don't do enough of that.

Stan Bernard  43:25  
And you hit on one of most important points for our podcast today. The traditionalist Brander says, and particularly because they've been encouraged by the advertising agency, change your messages, change everywhere, three months, six months, three years ever to constantly be changing your message, because you don't want to say the same thing. called Brand fatigue. Yeah, right. Yeah. They're wrong. And here's why. Turns out that the best companies, the transmitter, companies, basically come up with a campaign agenda. And keep repeating it over and over and over again. Like make America great again, make America great again, make America change, change, change, right. Yeah. You don't change it. In fact, the best companies keep it going for years. And everybody knows Nikes campaign agenda. It's three words and just do it at they've had the exact same campaign agenda. Since 1987. Wow. Yeah. GEICO has had it for over 20 years. This is a fundamental difference between branding companies and transcending companies. training centres have one agenda they keep using as long as they're winning with that agenda. And they keep using they don't have multiple messages. They also don't customise different messages to different market segments. Look, I was trained at Wharton School of Business and Marketing. Oh, and gotta have different messages and you segment the marketplace and that's not what politicians do. Politicians have one overarching agenda forever. everybody. Yeah. So and they keep with it as long as it's winning. Yeah. Let me ask you this in 2008 or 2016. Do you remember what Hillary Clinton's campaign agenda was? Well,

Ian Truscott  45:11  
no. We were that and so yeah, so it's exciting

Stan Bernard  45:15  
stuff. You don't know it because she had in 2016, for instance, she had seven different campaign slogans. Wow. Every three months, she was changing her campaign slogan. So as a result, nobody really remembers what she stood for. What is her campaign agenda? And so if you don't know what her campaign agenda is, then you're not going to be inspired. And you're not ultimately going to vote for her. Right. Right. So this is why I work with my clients to force them. Campaign agenda that has five words or fewer. Yeah. And let me explain why five words or fewer? Yeah, it's because that's all we can remember. Right? We've used to remember seven plus or minus two chunks of information or digits and our short term memory, and we've lost 43% of our short term memory over the last 20 years, is that true? We've down we're now down to remembering for plus or minus one chunk of information. So if you want anybody to remember your campaign agenda, which is the single most important thing any transgender company does, it has to be five words or fewer. I tell my clients, ideally, four words or fewer. Okay, so that's why these campaign agendas such as Apple think different. Nike, just do it. Yeah. Apple, excuse me, Amazon, customer obsession, two words. And and then of course, we've talked about Starbucks, the third place, they're all four words or fewer.

Ian Truscott  46:42  
I just realised the time there's so much I want to ask you, because the book and I think these campaign things, also, they don't just create adventure articles in your customer base, but with your employees as well. I mean, you then have this sort of standard to bear don't you that you take to market as a group because they're easy for everybody to remember. And your employees get engaged as well. Especially these larger organisations. That's where your influences are that's where your adventure liquors and adventure locals are.

Stan Bernard  47:09  
Yes. You again, in your you're spot on with some of these questions and insights because you just mentioned why. Another reason why train centres when versus traditions comes? Yeah. And that is alignment. Yeah. Okay. They are aligned to that agenda. Yeah. Everybody at Starbucks, from the CEO to the barista to the person cleaning the bathroom knows it's all about the third place. They every single day, they know exactly what they're there to do. Right? Amazon, every single employee from Jeff Bezos down to the person that's delivering your packages today. He knows it's all about customer obsession, customer obsession, customer obsession. 90 has said their executives said just do it became a rallying cry for the can. Yeah, everybody aligned behind it. And a lot of people aren't aware when they came up with that agenda. 1987 To change the game. They were actually losing big time to Reebok. Yeah, Reebok had 45%, North American Sports apparel market share. Nike only had 18%. Right? Because Reebok was the sort of cool brand. Right? And Nike team, the Nike team got together with their advertising agency. And so we have changed the game. And that's when they came up with just do it. The idea is not just about athletes, professional amateur athletes, and you try to be like them. No, no, you be yourself. Just do it. You know, just get off the couch. Whether you're an 80 year old, it's gonna do a marathon or a 15 year old girl is playing field hockey or anything in between. Just do it. Okay, so this is really this alignment concepts. So gives these companies again, a transcendent advantage not a competitive ages, competitive ages or small. Yeah, these companies a transcendent advantage.

Ian Truscott  48:58  
Yeah. Now that's excellent. I'm going to get to my last question now. But just to round off on the book, it's called brands don't win how transgenders change the game. I read a lot of marketing books as you can see behind me I know we're not on video, but you can see I've got and I've very much enjoyed it and I'd recommend other people take a look. So I'm going to get to the final question as we go completely off topic. We have a regular feature the Rockstar CMOS simple output to hell for all the snake obs and overhyped trends that plague this marketing craft we love. What would you throw into the Rockstar, cmo pool? Stan?

Stan Bernard  49:29  
Very simple. Yeah. Do not be brainwashed and not be brainwashed yet. Don't think that the only way to compete is with a 3000 year old approach because branding has been around since the ancient Greek markets they were in Athens where people are saying hey our pottery is with our you know our name on it is better than your pottery the same way we do it today and it's our pans are better than your pans really? Okay. It's three things 1000 years old, it's antiquated. It's ineffective. And basically the idea that people have that branding is the only way to compete. That's not That's not rational. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever, right? I mean, you and I can go on right now. And we can pick from literally 1000s of different shoes online. And we have all choice for shoes, and you go in an ice cream store, you can pick from any number of flavours and textures, and fillings, and etc. And yet, we only have one way to compete. Everybody in the world has to play brand checkers. And so what I will tell people is don't be brainwashed. Break out of the brand jail, shake off the brand cuffs. If you want to win, then transcend.

Ian Truscott  50:48  
I love it. I love it. Thank you very much, Stan. And when the listeners spin the dial on the interwebs, where they're going to find you.

Stan Bernard  50:54  
The best place to start would be at the website brands don't win calm, where they can learn more about the book, they can take a quiz. Are you a traditionalist or Transcender. And then you can also purchase the book as well.

Ian Truscott  51:07  
I love it. Thank you very much, Stan, and I will love to have you back on inside another about four or five questions. I never got to there. But enjoy the rest of the day. Thank you very much for being on the show today.

Stan Bernard  51:19  
Thank you for having me appreciate

Ian Truscott  51:28  
thanks, Dan, we continue to chat after the recording a fascinating man great conversation and you can find him and his book brands don't wind.com and I'll include that link and his contact information in the show notes. Right. It's Friday evening time for our first trip of 2022 to the Rockstar cmo virtual bar to meet my friend and content marketing guru Robert Rose be transported away with a cocktail and a marketing thoughts.

Ian Truscott  52:06  
Good evening robots. I'm gonna welcome you Happy New Year. I'm not going to say What are you drinking? Happy New Year. Welcome back to the Rockstar.

Robert Rose  52:15  
Happy New Year. I see you have festooned the bar with all kinds of wonderful noisemakers here

Robert Rose  52:32  
wonderful, so

Ian Truscott  52:34  
the crowd just right.

Robert Rose  52:36  
Well, that's true as well. But if we can, you know, make ourselves heard above the din of the parties that are going on here in the bar. Happy New Year to you my friend. It's It's uh, it's nice to be here in 2022. And, and you know, I think I think all I think it's gonna be a great year ahead of us. I really do.

Ian Truscott  52:57  
Yeah, yeah, I'm, I think everybody's feeling positive about 2020 t so I think we should join with that as well. And I and I will plug your predictions, podcasts that you did on this old marketing some really good stuff in there as well about some positivity for this year. So I think that's great. But, but in the meantime, my friend, what do you drink?

Robert Rose  53:19  
Ah, well, you know, it is a it is a new year. And, you know, let's just put it this way over the holiday break. I discovered many new cocktails. It was, it was it was nice to sort of be able to go on a bit of a tour as it were, and not have any worries about actually having to be productive or anything. But what I do have for you tonight, is something fun, it's a very wonderful sort of, there's there's you know, I wanted to bring in a little bit of British sentiment as well as the idea of what we talk a lot about in terms of the cocktails we have as well as the fact that it is the winter in the dead of winter here. And so I have what I'm calling the MAR T knee which is so it's Mar tea a and I so it's the MAR tea which I did a little experimentation over the break and infused one of my favourite gins with Earl Grey tea. Which of course as you know if you're a fan of Earl Grey tea is got that bit of a nice taste to it as a little bit of bitterness to the gin which is just right. And then you mix that in with a little lemon juice. Simple syrup if you like you know I'm not a big fan of the added sugars but you want a little simple syrup in there to make things a little sweeter fine. And, but but basically just a martini that is made with a little bit of lemon juice and a little bit of tea infused gin. And adding I liked where I like to add the sugar is just put a little bit of a sugar rim around it, you know, so whether you use a burnt sugar or stevia or actual sugar doesn't matter just that gives it the little bit of sweetness that it that it needs.

Ian Truscott  55:22  
I love that and that's that that particular glass of liquor sounds more English than I am. Yes, I believe I haven't tried one of those

Robert Rose  55:31  
is about as English as it gets. Right there. Earl Grey gin and you know, and and a nice Gen, find yourself a nice Gen and you have found yourself in those Gen typically. And a good English Gen would be good for that. And then of course, you know, the little lemon goes with your tea as well as the Martini, and then a bit of a sugar rim for the sweetness, which you can of course have at high tea instead of regular tea. And the way you go.

Ian Truscott  56:00  
It sounds fantastic. I did actually try to make one of your cocktails, the whiskey Salah that you did a few weeks ago on Facebook or whiskey sour. Then I was like, wow, this is sour. And I And because we discussed the fact that we're not that keen on the simplest syrup or the the sugars. I'd completely missed out sugar. Like whoa. I think that's right. Yeah,

Robert Rose  56:21  
you definitely need to add a little sweetness to it. It's just I'm not I don't like simple syrup. It's just it's one of those things. That's a personal choice for me. I just don't like it because it's so you know, just, it gives a bad mouthfeel for me.

Ian Truscott  56:35  
All right, well, I'm gonna give it I'm gonna try making the drink that you've suggested. Slightly different bar this year for 2022 You'll be pleased to hear I've completely restocked it up as you know, because I made your favourite drink in our last show together. Which was well, we'll reveal it in a moment. So um, you said you put some gin in? That's right.

Robert Rose  56:58  
Yes, quite a bit of juice, actually. Alright, so

Ian Truscott  57:00  
I wanted the better I

Robert Rose  57:01  
find the more

Ian Truscott  57:02  
the better. There we go. Put some gin I put some gin in a cup with some ice might give a clue as to what I'm a shaker. But I'm not saying

Robert Rose  57:16  
a cup can be a shaker. But

Ian Truscott  57:19  
now I don't weirdly enough normally sitting on my desktop all the time is a cup of tea. But I don't happen to have any tea on my desk at the moment. But I do have to remember I had to buy a whole bottle of Vermouth.

Robert Rose  57:33  
Yes, you still have that? You still have that bottle around? Well, it looks like your your bar is now fully stocked. Yeah, I tried to monic vermouth in gin. Yeah. options before you are just absolutely wide.

Ian Truscott  57:48  
I'm gonna splash a little bit of that in there. I remember your father saying that. You should just introduce it like just wave it around. Yeah, not really wave the

Robert Rose  57:56  
bottle of Vermouth over the gin and say that's enough.

Ian Truscott  58:00  
All right, well, I'm as you can hear there enough to make it really really cold with the ice. And I should get my CV thing. So it's a whole different thing. Making a gin and tonic is way easier than this. Pour that into my cocktail blah. And I have also made a martini. Let me try that oh let's see if I'm what's we calling that

Robert Rose  58:35  
out work? I'm calling it the Mr. T knee? Yeah.

Ian Truscott  58:40  
That is very good. I can't quite pick up the T in it though. So but

Robert Rose  58:45  
no, if you don't put any in it'd be hard to pick it up. Yeah. That is

Ian Truscott  58:51  
a new for 2022 I think I could drink nice every week.

Robert Rose  58:56  
I think you probably will.

Ian Truscott  59:00  
And where will we be sipping these classy martinis my friend Well,

Robert Rose  59:06  
you know not to put too fine a point on it. But I think let's get this locale out of the way as the first one of the new year because it's appropriate given the state of the world and where we are with the pandemic and everything. I think this one you and I are going to share over a zoom.

Robert Rose  59:26  
And I think we'll be home. I'll be home in my home and you'll be home and your home will enjoy this wonderful cocktail virtually as we look at each other and have a nice discussion in front of our maybe we'll put up a virtual fireplace or something to make things cosy but yeah, it's it's it's it's it's a little crazy right now and I'm hopeful that it'll die down but I think for the moment we'll we'll stay remote. Right? Well, I think it's interesting because I started this is a lockdown project. And the idea was us to transport ourselves away from the city.

Ian Truscott  1:00:00  
But you're right. It's an inevitability at the moment. And so yes, we will have these over zoom. What I'm concerned about is, is whether I'm drinking first thing in the morning, or you're drinking?

Robert Rose  1:00:16  
Well, you know, it's it's five o'clock somewhere as

Ian Truscott  1:00:21  
it is in day, isn't it? Or if you've got completely loose morals like we English, do we always say it's new? Yes.

Robert Rose  1:00:29  
Yes, I am nothing but pliable. Absolutely.

Ian Truscott  1:00:33  
All right. So we're having a good old chat on Zoom. And this sounds great, brutally familiar. So what would we be discussing? My friend?

Robert Rose  1:00:42  
Well, this, you know, it's interesting, because one of the things that came up, just before the break, was I was having many a discussion. You know, we talked on this show about budgets, and how the fourth quarter, everybody sort of realises that the New Year is coming up, and everything needs to change. And so they're racing, trying to finish budgets, and all those kinds of things. But the other thing that I've also found is that the new year also breeds new strategies. And one of the things that I have really seen come out of the certainly come out of the pandemic, and certainly come out of of the, the acceleration of disruptions over the last two years has been this need or want to really get, you know, your you know, what, together when it comes to content strategy, so I was talking with many marketing leaders, many, you know, a handful, you know, half a dozen, let's say, about 2022, and their plans for doing enterprise, you know, an enterprise content strategy, and with no exceptions, everybody went, it seems overwhelming. And, and the interesting thing is, is that when we start getting into it, and I had one lengthy conversation with one VP of marketing in particular, and, you know, today's larger organisations, we know that they're, you know, it's messy, right? You know, it is just a messy, especially in marketing and sales and PR and comms and all those places, it's conflicting agendas and values and priorities and goals. And, you know, it's, it's a wonder that we actually get product out the door in most businesses, right. So you know, and, and so the, the fascinating part of it is, is that when we start thinking about this idea of an enterprise content strategy, at the heart of that is one simple idea, which is we're trying to get organised about the way we communicate. And the internal communication is what's really important there. I mean, I've been quoted as saying, and it's, you know, it's bumper sticker quote, for sure, but it's, you know, 90% of any content strategy has nothing to do with content that you've made. It's all about the communication you have with your internal teams. And this one marketing leader was looking to launch this enterprise content strategy. And the reason that she wanted to launch this content strategy was simply because there was a problem that we've heard all too often, which is different parts of the organisation marketing, sales, customer service, brand, PR comms, none of them wanted to own a particular segment of the customer's experience. And in this case, it was the upselling of new products into the existing customer base. You know, in other words, the customer account team thought it was the marketing problem, marketing thought it was a customer account, Team problem, sales didn't care, they just wanted content done for those customers, because they weren't going to do it. And so, you know, what would ring throughout the halls was, you know, it's a problem. And customers were getting bad information, wrong information, not, you know, conflicting branding, messages, all of those different kinds of things. So everybody was upset about it, but nobody was really doing anything about it. And we interestingly, when they started to dig into that one specific problem, they started, of course, to realise that all of the areas were badly disintegrated. Right, not, you know, not integrated at all in terms of the way they were handling content. So her idea was, we should solve it all. And the challenges and one of the things that I talked to her about and this is where we can start our conversation is when we think about this, the easiest thing that initially and this was her, you know, take on this as well as that. So because it feels overwhelming, we often go Okay, well let's look at content and let's look at its lifecycle, create, manage, you know, activate measure in the simplest sense, and we think great, let's get company wide an organisation around create, or let's get company wide an organisation around activation or management and

Robert Rose  1:05:00  
That's not the easiest way to go. And what I was trying to tell her was, instead of looking at it that way, which is a very team based approach, right, looking at, oh, let's organise and get processed in the Create team, or the, you know, the channel managers or the marketing teams who are promoting that content, or whatever it is, and really get so solidified there, across all of the customers journey, which feels overwhelming. Let's instead look at the entire lifecycle, but it only one specific part of that customer's journey, and in their case, the cross sell and upsell to existing customers. And what that does is that it does a couple of things. One is is that it? Yes, it does, it is siloed.

Robert Rose  1:05:45  
And, you know, and it does look that way initially, but what you're doing is you're slowly removing dysfunction from the organisation. In other words, you can start there, and then you can go up or down based on, you know, what you want to do and start to expand across the customer journey. So instead of looking at it in that sort of create, manage, activate, measure, etc, siloed way, look at it from the customer's journey and solve the entire lifecycle, and start to expand from there. And that can feel a little less overwhelming, and it can actually manage your scalability a lot better. And she felt a lot better about it. And it has launched since launched an initiative to do exactly that.

Ian Truscott  1:06:27  
Yeah, that sounds great. Because also, it's very targeted on a commercial objective as well, isn't it? And so that gets that gets a lot of buy in and attention from around the business.

Robert Rose  1:06:39  
Yeah, yeah, it helps because it's immediately, it immediately centre needs to be content for that part of the journey. And someone needs to actually manage and people need to, you know, whether you do it in a racy type of operation, or how you assign responsibility for it, there needs to be names and boxes of people who actually do that. But you think about the entire process, because let's face it, the Create part of content could be much different and probably is much different at the brand level than it is at the customer service level. Right. So let's acknowledge that those, those differences are probably there. And instead of trying to fit everything into one square peg to say, no, no, this is the way the Create process should be everywhere. No, let's acknowledge that the Create process at different parts of the journey is probably different. But let's solve for each individual area of the customers journey and acknowledge those differences. And just, you know, and instead of having no process, yeah, okay, is it suboptimal to have 12 processes, probably. But it's better than having no processes, and it won't be easier to actually implement. But do

Ian Truscott  1:07:59  
you think also what she's finding is because it's tangible and easy to buy, and everybody can get engaged, and they can design that process, that actually becomes the framework for the other parts of the customer journey, and they're just tweaking rather than creating a new process. So at least they've made a start, right. Whereas I think sometimes when you're trying to build process for a broader thing, you're in this matter, it doesn't matter what the project is, right? You're you're trying to manage all these different edge cases that come in, and what ifs, and all that kind of stuff. Whereas if you're a bit more focused, then you're just adapting, and that's a bit easier.

Robert Rose  1:08:32  
That's right, that's, that's the idea is that it is it is an easier way to manage things, ultimately, and start to put in some level of new governance, new process news content strategy, because what you're doing then is you're looking at one, now it there, it does come with its own sort of set of complications as well, which is, it's never as clean as that, right? It's never, you know, it's never as clean as like, you can only focus on this particular channel for this particular part of the customer's experience. Because it's usually cross channel and it's usually, you know, we're talking about the email, you know, so you do have to get multiple teams involved and all those kinds of things. But it's manageable. And the idea here is, is that you're actually acknowledging that you're going to leave some level of dysfunction as you go and test this area, which quite frankly, because it's hurting so much, you know, it's probably the the the worst part of what you're doing is, you know, you can't you can't mess it up right. So you go in there and you work out all the bugs, etc, etc. So that's yes.

Ian Truscott  1:09:40  
Yeah. And so when you say you can't mess up there, you're saying that they already identified a pain in terms of the the current content for existing customers and retention and all that kind of stuff already pour. So if ever run it and they don't quite hit, were they the enemy being the enemy of perfect the enemy of good being perfect Whatever. I don't know why I've got that wrong, it's probably this martini, but but they, they at least they improve it because they know that there's a there's a there's a problem there, right and they've got that head, they've got that space then to not be perfect and hit it out of the park immediately. But they've made an improvement. Is that what you're saying about that? That's exactly it. That's exactly, yeah, yeah. And did they choose that? I mean, if we were giving advice to other people taking this approach is that what you would do is that we work with the stakeholders and see where the pain is, and just go for that. So for some people, it might be top of funnel content, other people, it might be retention content, etc.

Robert Rose  1:10:38  
It's it's definitely, you know, so it's one of the things that I want to make sure that we don't, you know, you know, one of the ways I've I've talked about this is to say, you might not need a unified content approach yet, and the yet is important there, right. So if we can tackle the whole thing, yeah, let's tackle the whole thing. But in a world where, you know, in this particular case, you had basically a lot of teams saying, you know, it's not my problem, it's not my problem, it's not my problem, and trying to solve it across the entire enterprise can be just too much well, solving in one place, then first, it's okay. Right? That's okay. It's not that we don't want to try for the unified content approach if we can get there. But, you know, especially if our business is sized appropriately, or the teams are small, or whatever. But in a complex organisation, it's almost never that easy. And trying to solve it everywhere, can basically be a very, you know, it's, it's, it's really all about sort of deciding how much you want to bite off and chew, and how much change you want to try and implement. And if we're gonna get anywhere, it's like, you know, it's one of the, I guess, the metaphor that I that I go for here is in in terms of function and dysfunction. And in terms of trying to make the entire enterprise functional, I think it's sometimes easier to look at the entire enterprise and just remove bits of dysfunction until you've, you know, until all the remains is the dysfunction that you can live with.

Ian Truscott  1:12:18  
Yeah, but it's but you're building, you're doing that like base. I mean, there's so many analogies in like base camp, when you're climbing or, or, you know, the old time management analogy of eating an elephant, you know, you want to do that in one sitting. If you're still you're still working towards a holistic content strategy for the business. It's just you're chunking it up. And that might be imperfect, but it's gonna it's gonna improve things, right. That's exactly. Cool. Excellent. Well, thank you for that, Robert. And for thoughts like this. I know that you've been tinkering with this particular. What do you call it? The huddle? I don't like to call it your overall mix. But where can other people find these thoughts?

Robert Rose  1:13:04  
You can on the newly tweaked content advisory dotnet? Yes, I did spend some time over the holidays to tweak our little website. And it's done. I'm still in the process of it, actually. So they're, you know, formatting changes a little making it a little more mobile friendly, and all those kinds of things. So but yeah, content advisory dotnet is excellent.

Ian Truscott  1:13:25  
I'll be sure to check out and I recommend it. And when people spin the dial on the interwebs, where they're going to find you.

Robert Rose  1:13:31  
They will find me on the usual suspects. We've got LinkedIn, we've got Twitter. Those are two places. I spend most of my time and then also my newly tweaked little YouTube channel as well. Oh,

Ian Truscott  1:13:44  
must take that. Well. That's excellent. Thank you very much for that. And will I see you in the bar next week?

Robert Rose  1:13:49  
You will indeed Of course. Fantastic.

Ian Truscott  1:13:51  
Let's hope it's a bit quieter next week.

Ian Truscott  1:14:08  
Thank you, Robert. There you go a tip to get our strategic act together. Fabulous advice. And if you want to learn more about Robert, and you missed episode 94 from a couple of weeks ago, have a listen. And that was a fun conversation. So that's a wrap on episode 96. The Rockstar cmo effing Marketing Podcast part of the marketing podcast network, 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 Stan and Robert for sharing their insight. Please follow them say hello and check out all the links we discussed in the show notes, which you can find on your favourite podcast app or Rockstar cmo.fm. You can also find all our previous episodes. So does the world need another ething rocketing podcast? Let us know we are Rockstar cmo on LinkedIn or Twitter and please drop a rating or review in your favourite podcast app. Just keep listening. I'm glad you're here of Miller lineup next week as Jeff will be back Rebecca beastman cmo reputation returns for chat about corporate social responsibility and mother is back in the bar. Looking forward to that. Until then, stay safe and hopeful again, join us here next week on Rockstar cmo F.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai