#97 - The We Need Education, We Don't Need No Top 10's and Catfishing for a Cocktail Episode

This transcript was automatically generated by a machine, and as it becomes sentient it may have its own ideas of what we said....

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

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Jeff Clark  0:00  
Want to squeeze out the bottom?

Ian Truscott  0:03  
But then there's only two of you left. So you went in the top

Ian Truscott  0:18  
Hello and welcome to episode 97 of Rockstar CMO, F m, the M is a marketing and F as well. As you're probably wondering, does the world need another effing Marketing podcast? I'm your host Ian Truscott. And this weekly podcast serves as my excuse to chat with 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 picked up along the way. Come say hello, we are Rockstar cmo on Twitter and LinkedIn, and a proud member of the Marketing Podcast Network. This episode was recorded on Friday the 14th of January. I hope you've had a good week and you are well safe and staying the same as you feel you need to be. This week, Jeff cart take this regular seat and we discussed marketing education. Sadly, my guest was unwell. So I'll go solo with a thought before we wind down the week with Robert Rose and the Rockstar cmo for sure.

Ian Truscott  1:19  
But first, we need to pay the bar tab. I'll be back in a moment.

Ian Truscott  1:37  
Right on to our first segment, my Cham Jeff Clark is a former research director at siriusdecisions. Forrester, and is now principal strategic advisory at Rockstar cmo and educated man, is that important from

Ian Truscott  1:54  
Jeff to Rockstar, cmo FM How are you my friend?

Jeff Clark  1:57  
I am doing well. It's we're in the thick of winter here in New England. And it's sunny but cold in the single digits Fahrenheit wise. And I don't know after being in Norway for almost a month. This seems pretty normal. feels about right. Yeah, I

Ian Truscott  2:17  
remember when when we were living over there. In fact, Facebook remind me the other day it showed me because I take a photo of my dashboard of my car when I was when I was living there. I think I was either your way, Massachusetts because we had an office up there or down down in Connecticut. And it was showing minus 12 degrees centigrade. And I can't do the math to know what that is. In fact, I remember at the time thinking fucky. And we had that really cold winter and it was weeks and weeks. And we couldn't leave the house without boots on. And I remember being overjoyed. I could put a pair of sneakers on in sometime in March or something I know.

Jeff Clark  2:51  
Absolutely. Yeah. It's a Yeah. It takes a while getting used to but again, as I said, yeah, we've just been in Norway, where it's like we did wear boots every day we work on our boots, we you know, it's just went outside. Yeah, you know, multiple layers of clothing. It's just we love it. You do it. The

Ian Truscott  3:10  
funny thing is for us coming from here in the UK where it's no sometimes, but we don't get the predictable snow. And so the first time when you get this really nice snowfall and it's bright blue. And it's all of that picture is no the first time you like this is amazing. Week Six. Even the kids are getting bored. Right and you're shovelling the drive out again, it's but but you can't complain about the weather air. But I must complain about the weather being English. And just to point out that we've sorted out and sorted the weather out.

Jeff Clark  3:44  
Well, I've been I've spent a lot of time in England and believe me, there's plenty to complain about.

Ian Truscott  3:52  
That's true. All right. So onto the topic for this weekend, some we've actually been doing some conversations outside pressing record and just recording random chats. And we've been talking about marketing Education recently, it comes up a lot actually on the podcast and on and on the various interweb thingies that we keep an eye on. And as part of our conversation, we I was surprised by how everything in marketing that is old seems to be new again. Somebody like proclaims, it's the it's a new thing. And you know, those of us have been around for a bit like, this is just like this other thing that we're pretty sure there's a book about this is 20 years old. So folks in marketing, discovering these things for the first time and sharing them as if they're new because they're new to them because we don't have that classic education. Unlike other professions where there's a standard curriculum, that's the basis for learning the trade. Absolutely. Let's say you, Jeff,

Jeff Clark  4:50  
absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Of course, one of the things we've we've also talked about is that you know, we both came from very different backgrounds. I mean I didn't take Mark, I took economics, you know, I think you were you were coming up through, you know, technology in it. And, you know, frankly, that's the I mean, a lot of people in our marketing because they, you know, they have come from other disciplines. And then it's like, I don't know, you know, maybe it's their communication skills. For me, it was writing, it's like I didn't, you know, I was working in a sales job didn't really like that just kind of gravitated over to marketing. And it was my writing skills that actually got me, you know, good, good marketing jobs down the road. So it's, but you're right, it's like, there, there are so many basics to marketing well, and yet, they're not really, I mean, certainly, they're taught in some places, but but either they're not taught in a way that is, you know, practical, or you know, what you're gonna do on the job, or it's just that the people that get into marketing get, you know, they, they come from these, these different disciplines. And so they've got to learn, you know, you know, people coming from the product technology side, they got to learn, you know, like branding brand, that's all a bunch of bull, you know, yeah. You know, or the brand people are, like, who cares about what the product does? Yeah, we need to talk to the customer. And give them our value proposition. So and then it's Yeah, I think it's a, it's a problem. I think it's particularly a problem for CMOS marketing leaders that are trying to develop a culture and getting people on the same page within an organisation. And, you know, they may come up with their own sort of, like, you know, planning or their go to market strategy or something like that. And if everybody is scratching their head, because they don't understand the principles behind why you did that, or you didn't do it, right, because you've never had any marketing training. Yeah. Then then it just doesn't it doesn't click with people. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, you could say something similar for sales. But there's, you know, there's just a tonne of sales, education curriculum out there. And, and in marketing, there's, you know, there's resources out there, but I don't think it's it's been really ingrained in marketing leaders to understand skill sets, and then, you know, kind of bring people up to a common skill set.

Ian Truscott  7:25  
Yeah, I mean, I was thinking that the same actually about sales. And by the way, you know, yeah, I came up through technical route, but let's be honest and whisper I left school when I was 17. Formal education kind

Jeff Clark  7:40  
of not really, you're one of those. You're one of those Einstein like Bill Gates, you know, yeah, this is getting in my way.

Ian Truscott  7:50  
No, I just worked really hard for a million years to get through. But the, the but I mean, I was I was studying computer science and art. So I think the marketing thing for me was that creativeness and that latent creativeness that I have that was latent while I was doing the the technical roots, as you've described. So yeah, I think I think the thing, but the interesting thing you were saying there about sales, I think the difference about sales is I think that marketing and sales have been thought of in the same way in or not professions or skills in that same way. Whereas I think sales kind of you don't need, you know, is a simpler is a simpler craft, than marketing these days marketing. And I

Jeff Clark  8:35  
hate to get my comments from now.

Ian Truscott  8:39  
I don't want to offend salespeople, because I've worked with some amazing salespeople, and I've worked with some people that are just, you know, people. And there is a definite art and craft to good salespeople no doubt about that, but they don't. But I think these days marketing seems to have got so, so much more complex. Or maybe it isn't, maybe we're just making marketing really complicated. It's actually quite simple. But it seems to got more complex that actually, that we all needed a base understanding of the basics right? To communicate with each other and to understand and then what's craft is all about, I guess,

Jeff Clark  9:21  
it kind of think I think the thing is that the complexity in marketing has has really been in the channels in which you're communicating to people so there's more channels, you know, and we could say all the old channels like a direct mail or trade show or dead but in fact, they're not necessarily dead they just kind of like move aside and they're like, one piece in a bigger palette of, of ways to connect to to two potential clients and to existing

Ian Truscott  9:51  
customers, if I just pulls you on now, I also think that we think we need to reinvent marketing every time there's a new channel which is

Jeff Clark  9:59  
ridiculous. Yeah, exactly, because it's the bulk of the focus becomes and I think and, and partly because of the lack of education, the focus of so many marketers is on the tactics themselves, you know, how did I run a good event? You know, did I create a good email, did it get open did it, you know, got a webpage that's engaging people and, and, and yet some of the issues that you may have with the ability for those tactics to work, maybe not the tactic or the execution itself, it may be, you know, you don't understand the message that's going to connect to the customer, or you're connecting in the wrong part of a buying process, or, or your brand is all over the place. And, you know, and you're confusing customers with the, you know, dozen different products you've got. And and so that's where, you know, having some sort of common construct is, it's helpful. And I know, you know, when I come up through marketing, and I'd have a, you know, boss, or somebody say, Well, you know, about the three P's of marketing, or you know, about Aida, and I was like, Well, I, you know, I eat is a isn't that an opera from? From Verity? Oh, no, it's awareness, interest, desire and action. It's like, okay, yeah, I get that. That's, I mean, I, there's nothing wrong with that. But it's like, it's like, if you asked how many, if you asked 100 markers out there, what I eat it was, I think more of them might say the recognise it as an opera. Yeah, I understand what the acronym means. Well, the other thing is,

Ian Truscott  11:40  
I mean, if you quote the four P's or however many ways, you just said three, so there's 457, the heart the roughly the several piece, but some piece, then a lot of marketers will tell you that that old fashion, yeah, and what are you talking about granddad? You know, I mean, it's now the, you know, the latest acronym that they've just learned about from, from, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk, or somebody

Jeff Clark  12:05  
will translate into the four R's. And if you if you analyse it, you realise, or if you take a buying cycle, so you take the Aida, awareness, interest, desire, action, it's like, so if you take a buying cycle, and certainly when I was at, Forrester serious decisions, if we had developed your own buying cycle, things roughly mapped in your there were six stages. Yeah, they roughly map into that. And then if you if you take any sales methodology, and they talk about the selling cycle, it's like, oh, well, you know, there's a, there's a selling cycle that's got it, you know, it's got to overlap with the buying cycle, or se, you know, they work collaboratively because there's, you know, those two forces working together. And so, you know, we could, you know, we could argue to blur face about it, no, this is the new way, this is the old way, whatever. But it's like, you know, the, again, the CMO has got to say, Okay, we need to come up with a common nomenclature for how we think about buying what we think about the roles of marketing within within that that cycle. And as you as you lay it out, then then marketers, you know, everyone on the team sees the role of brand, they see the role of market research, understanding customers understanding competition, they understand the role of, of, you know, engaging in communications, the channels plus the messages. And they understand that a lot of there's a lot of things that they could do that happen later in a buying cycle. I mean, I think, you know, what your my experience of working with clients at Forrester series decisions, it's so many people would focus on filling the top of the funnel. Yeah, another another construct is the the lead funnel? Yeah, it's like they focus on filling the top. And they don't realise that it's like the problem is not at the top, you gain all of this initial interest. The problem is you can move people down, or if people get into a selling or you know, buying and selling situation where they're actually interacting with your sales team. You have no answer for them there. Yeah. Well, there's

Ian Truscott  14:15  
a couple of things that that Well, the first thing I should point out is, this is just the opening of us starting a series about boxing education or miniseries, not sure how many weeks we're going to talk about this, but based on the first 12 minutes of this conversation. I think 22 could be the year of mastering education for this podcast, let's say on that base. And the second thing on that funnel thing and we've referred off education now, I think the problem is, is because people have in their head, a funnel, and the assumption that when you put things in the top of it, it will come out the bottom right? Yes, they all need a

Jeff Clark  14:49  
leader leak out the side so it's dead or it goes down the funnel. Yeah,

Ian Truscott  14:53  
yeah, funnel. A funnel is not a funnel, is it? It's a

Jeff Clark  14:57  
silo and want to go for the flow. If I was a buyer, I wouldn't want to have to squeeze out the bottom

Ian Truscott  15:04  
line is I need to have your left. So your key went in the top. It's like, yeah, it's like that Korean series, its name has just escaped me where they all

Jeff Clark  15:16  
squid game squid games.

Ian Truscott  15:18  
You see, we're down with the cool kids

Jeff Clark  15:23  
all the way like squids, so I don't, I don't like, anyway.

Ian Truscott  15:28  
And well, I mean, how many squids have been killed in the pursuit of our perfect perfection?

Jeff Clark  15:38  
I'm not sure where you're going there but

Ian Truscott  15:41  
there was a pause there as I thought about what I was saying. So, back to marketing education. So where should we start with that for this particular? So what are the key things do you think that would form? Should we start with what would form the basis of mass education? So we talked about the five P's or use actually said three P's, I said four P's, there are some,

Jeff Clark  16:04  
there are five price product price promotion place, and people. Yeah.

Ian Truscott  16:10  
And then we've talked about ADA, are those do you think those are still the kind of core tenants of web marketing education system?

Jeff Clark  16:20  
You know, it is? That is a really good question. Because I think that, you know, again, you've got you got the knee jerk reaction that's like, oh, yeah, okay. The other five Ps, somebody mentioned that to me, you know, it was, you know, I can't remember what it was birth, you know, the 60s or something like a Harvard Business School, some guy came up with something like this, and it was hot for a while. And, and, I mean, I think that that, you know, you're, you're raising a good question, question about what you would base education on, because I think part of it is there's the functional perspective. So in your team, you're gonna have people that focus on brand positioning, you're gonna have people that just do communications, yeah, you know, your people that do market research, and people that manage data and understand how, how managing data around, you know, context, the interactions, etc. You know, and then there's the, the channels themselves, the technology behind those channels, and then there's just things like good project management skills are just like that, you know, that are absolutely necessary in almost all of the functions within marketing. And, and so, you know, so there, I think it's like, you, you need to take something like the buying cycle. Yeah. Which, which, again, the IE to is a is a is a rough approximation for buying cycle, take something like a buy buying cycle as being your basis for what are this the, you know, if you start if you put the buying cycle against your functions and say, what are the skills I need at each of those areas? And what's my, what am I trying to do to actually get people from where they are today in their skills to, to where they need to be to understand how to move people through move through a buying cycle?

Ian Truscott  18:18  
Yeah. So that's an interesting view. So you're saying that we basically take a customer centric view to the skills of our folks in our marketing teams. And also, I thought that was interesting what you were saying there as well about the fact that we have all these different needs and functions and skills that are needed in the marketing team. Now there isn't really, it's not like being an accountant, where I suppose you could be a specialist kind of accounting for a tax accountant. But broadly, similars,

Jeff Clark  18:46  
there's accountants, one accounting one on one. And, you know, it's like you, there is a

Ian Truscott  18:52  
protocol, if you hire an accountant, they're gonna there's some, there's some things about accountancy that I can't think of right now about keeping the books, which is the core of accountancy, whereas marketing now is not, you couldn't say, this is marketing, right? Because marketing for so long has been defined as branding and positioning and all those soft skills and all that kind of stuff. But now you're absolutely right market research, and that data science is now part of a part of marketing. I think there's a huge I mean, we talk about technology all the time on the show, and that and that requires a specific sale. I mean, I've seen so many times where people have truly not understood the technology that's beneath them and just have a little crib sheet and skating through and doing the best they can or the opposite, where people have options to do things because the technology allows them to do them. And they've outsourced their marketing brain to the tech. So having those skills is really important. And of course, we're all project managers as well and that's a skill in itself.

Jeff Clark  19:55  
Well, an understanding of marketing is, I guess is one thing is always was a thing that irritated me is that marketing is all processes. And yet, if you start talking about process in a marketing team, they're like, oh my god, you know, I just wanna I just want to look, you know, I want to talk to the ad agency and review creative process. Crap is, yeah, is bogging me down. So if

Ian Truscott  20:20  
that's something that Robert Rose says in, in the cocktails, it's apparent a couple of times, I think he's mentioned this is, if you wander around with the latest designs for the new website, or the new brand, you'll get a room full of people really interested. But if you wander around with the process, your contents church, yes, you'll be in a meeting.

Jeff Clark  20:40  
That's exactly right. You'll have the marketing ops guy, or the content ops person who's like, that, this is really exciting. He has no friends.

Ian Truscott  20:52  
Yet, so we have to cover those skills. So we're having we're coming. Blimey, we're coming up to 20 minutes already? And so where are we going to go with this series? Jeff?

Jeff Clark  21:01  
I think we're we're going to go is we're going to dig into our, our library of models and start to come up with some, I mean, I think, you know, you know, again, it would be important, I think, to touch on the importance of, you know, we could take take, you know, a couple of key things like brand like market research and understanding positioning and, you know, process or whatever, just take those and kind of dig into them about what's what's important to understand there. And then maybe sites have resources that people can go to cuz that's the other thing is, it's not like there aren't resources out there, where I worked at Forrester, Gartner, digital marketing, to content markets, I mean, they they are all these places where you can, you can find information that can be used as training tools. The problem is that because some university or community college hasn't really done its due diligence to create good curriculum around marketing, it could be offending somebody out there is that you kind of have come up with it yourself. Yeah. And and again, I think for a CMO who wants to get everybody on the same page, it's absolutely necessary. Well, constant

Ian Truscott  22:14  
learning is I mean, I'm, whenever I talk absolute is either on my team or or I'm, or I'm trying to, you know, mentor somebody or whatever, it's always about constant. You don't you just don't know, marketing. I don't think wherever you are in your career, I think you've always got to be constantly learning. And that's true.

Jeff Clark  22:32  
That is true. And I mean, that, as we were talking about salespeople, I mean, they can be very reluctant to learn new sales methodologies and stuff like that. But you there again, that's a that's a career that if you're not constantly learning, you're, yeah, you're gonna lose your edge.

Ian Truscott  22:47  
Yeah. And we started the conversation with that, I think the difference with sales is the success is incredibly easy to define. Right? That is very true. Oh, you didn't sell anything. Whereas I think that in marketing, despite the advances in data and attribution error obsession with it, it's still not, you can't say that a piece of brand work that you did has worked or hasn't worked to any kind of level of accuracy that you can when you sell a thing?

Jeff Clark  23:19  
Absolutely. Well, and it's, you know, and so if you do improve the brand awareness or the reputation of the organisation, or whatever brand quality you're going after, it's like, who did that? Who, who actually move that needle? And, and by the time you find out that the needle has moved, the person has probably moved on to another company or and you know, it just it attribution is very, is very difficult. So, it is this Yeah, this becomes, yeah, probably for marketers.

Ian Truscott  23:51  
Yeah. Plus the fractured nature of our marketing teams. I mean, if you don't have great branding, your PPC is not going to work. Because when somebody sees your name listed on page one of Google, it doesn't matter how near the top you are, they never heard of you and don't trust you. They're not going to click on your link anyway. So anyway, that's me going down a little bit of a rabbit hole there. So the next thing on our agenda, so that was that setting up what we're going to talk about, so we'll start to cover some of that off, and maybe this library of marketing bits I've got behind me, I can just pluck one out. If it wasn't, if it wasn't for all of the different marketing models, there will be no marketing books. The proposition last week with Stan Bernard, I was thinking some of the ideas he had, I was thinking, wow, this is like Theodore Levitt and the marketing myopia. And it's about understanding what market you really are. And he's talking about peloton, all this kind of stuff. I think that's, I mean, when's that from? That's, um, you know, many, many years ago. So,

Jeff Clark  24:51  
there's something about good marketers that can write books is that they're good marketers. So they're looking they're looking for why they're Philosophy is different and better than the last one that they've nicked.

Ian Truscott  25:06  
Alright, so we're going to talk about some marketing philosophies and also how how we think people should get their marketing education. But the I do need to remember the format of the show. And the next thing is, we need to you need to give us a track for this particular track

Jeff Clark  25:24  
to go out on well, you know, so when, you know, so I hate to show my age, but you know, when I think of education, I think of the song from Pink Floyd. Yeah, you know, we don't need no education. And the thing was, I never really, I mean, I love the guitar parts. But the the theme of it I never really liked and I and I, I was, I was encouraged that this was actually a lie. When I was in the UK once I was watched the news and David Gilmore, who was guitar player, lead singer, Pink Floyd, his son had got kicked out of a prestigious private school for taking LSD and doing all kinds of weird things. And like, so the guy who said, We don't need no education sent his son to an elite private school. There you go.

Ian Truscott  26:18  
That's a perfect story for this particular line of thought, isn't it about whether we do need education,

Jeff Clark  26:26  
but since we do need an education, we need to think about how sometimes we may put the teachers in an uncomfortable situation. So I thought we would pick the police's don't stand so close to me.

Ian Truscott  26:39  
Well, another classic Good lord. I mean, last week, week before it was the Beatles last week, who did we get the Rolling Stone stones? I know now the police, we're rolling through the decades, right? In every day, by the end of this year, we might be up to hip hop.

Jeff Clark  26:55  
All right. I will start consulting my kids before I nominated music

Ian Truscott  27:04  
whenever you have a break, and I pay something weird. All right. So we'll play out with don't stance that closely by the police, which is I'll find out the year when I do the head is like 982 83

Ian Truscott  27:19  
Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much. And I shall see you next week. And we'll carry on talking about marketing education. Thank you, Jess. I see. Awesome. Cheers, buddy.

Jeff Clark  27:26  
Adios. Bye bye

Unknown Speaker  27:32  
young teach the subject of school girl. She was so bad, knows what she wants to be inside. There's no she's so close

Ian Truscott  28:17  
by you, Jeff. And that was the police don't stand so close to me from 1980. Of course, if you'd like to chat with Jeff on any of the topics we cover, get in touch. We're Hello Rockstar cmo.com on email, and I'll include all his links in the show notes. As I mentioned, my guest this week was taken on well at the last minute the risk of creating a weekly show just in time, but more importantly, Rebecca, if you're listening, get well soon, so it's time for my solo.

Ian Truscott  28:52  
The unfortunate absence of a guest gives me the opportunity to share a thought for the week. And this week. I'm inspired by the content corner newsletter from a friend of the show Dennis Chow, who has been a guest and whose name crops up quite regularly here. Dennis is a b2b marketing consultant. His agency attention retention organises the Bay Area content meetup and you can find him on Twitter at D Shao DSH. IO. And I'll include his links in the show notes. Anyway, in his latest email, he talks about the crop of top 10 article posts we always see as the year turns specifically, he asked the question the top 10 most popular posts of 2021. Is that really serving your audience? Or is it more serving you? He goes on to make a great point that he'd rather read a new original piece of content and a rehash of what's gone on before and suggests an excellent alternative approach to engage readers. I'll include a link in the show notes so you can read the rest it's quite good idea. But of course from a content marketing perspective, these roundup articles take a lot of boxes we are supposed to repurpose and remix our content, but I agree. It is all a bit self serving publish the most popular articles and guess what? They become more popular. Better to find a better metric of your content and popularity discover relevancy and engagement and share something great from your longtail that it's highly relevant, but maybe didn't catch the wave of fickle audience attention and share that. Anyway back to Dennis's point I read this and I was thinking, it's another one of those marketing activities that we should file under annoying, but it works. If you're a regular listener, you'll know I asked my guests to chuck something into the Rockstar CMOS room call our portal to hell for all the bullshit snake oil and overhyped trends. And it's full of those things that are annoying, but work like remarketing, for example, that we chucked in in one form or another half a dozen times. I should confess that when Rockstar CMOS a monthly web publication before the podcast, we would regularly publish the top 10 articles based on the vanity stats. And by some metric, they worked in engaging the authors as well as the audience. And if a chat with Jason falls and fall into my lap at the end of last year, I suspect I would round it off the year of this podcast with a RoundUp episode. I know Dennis was not calling me out specifically, of course, we might be called Rockstar CMO. But we're not that narcissistic. But it made me think as I think this points to a bigger issue for us marketers when something works, especially when it's easy, we stopped thinking about it, it becomes one of the things we just do. We see everyone else doing it. And it becomes a thing. The roundup at the end of the year is just a thing. How many of our activities do we do just because that's what marketers do. Or maybe what other marketers do, rather than what the business or the audience really needs? Do we need that weekly blog or podcast or wherever it is, I listened to a fascinating conversation on the renegade Marketing Podcast between Drew nizer and the CMO of a heating controls company 75 F. David Kirner, in which he killed all of that, as he tries to cut through in a market where they compete with some massive companies well funded with their advertising. And it has had no detriment to his marketing mission. Anyway, Dennis makes a great point about those annual Top 10 articles that I think we can apply to a lot of what we do, stop and think about it, do something slightly different. And even if it seems to us that it works, is it really serving?

Ian Truscott  32:09  
That's my fault for the week. Let me know what you think. Thanks, Dennis for the inspiration. And listeners take a look what Dennis does. As I said, I'll include all his links in the show notes, right? It's Friday evening, time to wind down in the Rockstar cmo virtual bar with my friend and content marketing guru, Robert Rose to be transported away with a cocktail and a marketing.

Ian Truscott  32:42  
Good evening robots. What do you think?

Robert Rose  32:44  
Ah, hello, my friend. It is good to see you in the bar. Yeah, quiet. I think this week, you'll be pleased to hear that. I think as always, it's always pleased to hear how quiet it is. And, in fact, in the bar. You know, so I have something fun for us this week to drink. I was thinking you know, so it's a whiskey drink. But you know, as as things are, and I think knowing you as I do, I think you'll agree. Bacon makes everything better.

Ian Truscott  33:21  
I certainly does.

Robert Rose  33:22  
And so I discovered this cocktail by quite by accident. And but you know, and we've actually made a version of this cocktail before on the show, which is a whiskey ginger. Which is you know, again, your favourite way to get to ginger ale de m if you really want to get you know completely you know, DIY about it, you can certainly do that I just go with a, you know, a fancy brand of ginger ale that I quite like, mixed in with whiskey, you know, a good whiskey you don't have to make it a super fancy whiskey here because obviously you're putting ginger ale in it. A little bit of lime. And then here's the kicker. So that lime the ginger ale, the whiskey make sort of the drink drink. And then either on the side or if you get really fancy you can spear a toothpick through it and make it you know, within the a garnish. Bacon, right? Oh, crispy bacon. I am telling you that is a that is a treat. All treats. It is lovely. So I'm calling it the whiskey ginger pig. Because you're gonna have some crispy bacon there with your whiskey and ginger ale and it's just a lovely cocktail.

Ian Truscott  34:38  
Well, you know, the other week we were talking about owning and domain names. I actually own bacon content, because I always thought that I know I create my agency I would call it making content. So yeah, that's what this show should be called. And not Rockstar cmo maybe. Alright, so I'm gonna attempt to make that with the limited resources I have available on my desktop I have I have what kind of whiskey was it like a bourbon or?

Robert Rose  35:05  
No just I mean really any whiskey you like I mean I you know for whiskey ginger, you know I'm gonna go with a nice nice Rye is always lovely you know bourbon works too if you want bourbon as

Ian Truscott  35:18  
well. Um, well, I think you know the extent of my desktop, and I'm gonna go for gin.

Robert Rose  35:26  
Ah, there you go.

Ian Truscott  35:27  
I got some Hendrix Gen

Robert Rose  35:28  
here as I always say the most English of whiskies. Yeah, absolutely. Yes.

Ian Truscott  35:32  
And did you put ice in there?

Robert Rose  35:34  
I did actually. Yes, it's it's a nice cocktail. The actual liquid part of the cocktail is not what makes it magical. It's It's alright, adding your little side sidecar there.

Ian Truscott  35:46  
I probably start with the listeners that are dropping ice into this into this cocktail shaker. So I'm getting so I've dropped some ice now put some put some of that gene in. And then what is it that you put in as your mixer? If

Robert Rose  35:59  
that was ginger ale yeah that was a that was that was a little ginger ale and get to that however you like you know some people are very very very you know have a connoisseur for ginger ale and want to make it on their own and you know with soda and ginger and actually you know all that but I just you know, a good ginger ale is is a good ginger ale is actually difficult to find but when you find one do you stay with it?

Ian Truscott  36:23  
And if you couldn't find one would Martini extra drive for moose do? Yes, I

Robert Rose  36:30  
suppose it would I suppose it would if you took out the ginger, the ale, the bubbles and everything else and I write cream. Yeah.

Ian Truscott  36:38  
I'm going to drop a little bit of that. And then I'm going to stir it up. Make sure that that's really really cold is it is it a really culturing?

Robert Rose  36:50  
It's yeah, it's a chills

Ian Truscott  36:51  
right? Yeah, I think staring I think my sound effect. These aren't sound effects. This is real is probably not the way you're supposed to professional podcast. But I've got that nice and cold. I'm just gonna pull that into my cocktail glasses. You can hear there we go. Drink. Right, take a sip. Oh, that's very good. Well, but very, very warming. Um, oh, I forgot about the bacon. I really don't have any bacon around it. Can you imagine if you put bacon into the last week string? That would be the most English thing ever when l Great. A mighty?

Robert Rose  37:31  
Yes. Well, there is that there? I mean, you have heard of the bacon Martini there? They do definitely have them. Yes, of course they do have them.

Ian Truscott  37:39  
Wow, I'm gonna have to try one of those. And what are we calling this rubbish?

Robert Rose  37:43  
I'm calling it the whiskey ginger pig.

Ian Truscott  37:46  
Oh, that's delicious. I could probably for 2020 To drink one of these every single week,

Robert Rose  37:51  
I think

Ian Truscott  37:54  
we should have, we should celebrate the death of the gin and tonic joke shouldn't mean last year but we're now on screen.

Robert Rose  38:00  
I think we I think all you've done is change the setup, my friend. I think the punch line remains.

Ian Truscott  38:09  
Alright, so we're drinking these, these, these wonderful drinks? Where are you going to transport us to this week?

Robert Rose  38:18  
Well, I think we have to make our way back to Copenhagen. Because I miss it very dearly. And that, you know, I have sort of this, you know, sort of now Pavlovian Association in my head with Copenhagen and great cocktails. And I told the story before on the show about my you know, my, my trip to the bars there and my my true appreciation of some of the fanciest cocktails I've ever had had been in that city. So but it feels like the right time of year it to get there. And I'm you know, I have every confidence that it's grey and windy and rainy and cold but it doesn't matter because we can ensconce ourselves in some wonderful little bar somewhere and, and just cosy up with one of these whisker ginger pigs.

Ian Truscott  39:08  
I love it. And probably you mean, I think serendipity is that you've chosen a cocktail, which has a link to Denmark in the in terms of they are very, very make very good bacon.

Robert Rose  39:23  
I'm sure they do. I did not know that. Yeah. But that's serendipity about

Ian Truscott  39:32  
so that's wonderful. So I'm so between we're enjoying their delicacies in their cosy little barn eating their bacon. What would we be discussing? Well,

Robert Rose  39:43  
you know, it was something that I've been, this is something that was a while back that I was given some thought to because it actually came up again, very recently for me, you're familiar with the term catfishing? Yes, yes. Yes. So For those in the audience that may not be aware, so catfishing has, I mean, it's other than the obvious where you're fishing for catfish like literal. App phishing itself has become a bit of a verb over time, and it and it ostensibly means that you're presenting false information to someone to make believe that you're someone else, and usually used in the context of dating. And so if you get catfished, someone has presented themselves as something that they're not. And you've suddenly discovered that, you know, that's not this person. And there you go. And interesting thing is, is that it's actually I see it in business, right? There's this fascinating thing, when and and what I find is, is that in many cases, marketers, and very often, content marketing practitioners are catfishing themselves. And, and what I mean by that is, is that, so this came up just last week, because we're in that season of planning and making big goals for the year and all that kind of stuff. And it was this b2b financial services company, and the content marketing director there, they were really, really frustrated, because they had turned in this, you know, this great plan, and had slowly over the course of the last year, so meaning 2021, literally, the reputation that their group had was the the department that makes PowerPoints, which is sad when you think about it. And what had the plan that he had put in to place and sort of submitted to his boss and submitted to everything was that his team was going to be, you know, the brand storytelling machine. And, you know, they were going to create these amazing, you know, content, stories and moving thought leadership pieces. And basically, they had devolved over the course of 12 months into basically creating this sales materials, PowerPoints for the organisation. And his boss, when he had seen this new plan for 2022 was like, Hey, you're catfishing me, right? Because, you know, you didn't do what you did said you were gonna do last year, you turned into the department of PowerPoints. And basically, he was like, I, you know, he was unable to communicate this, because what had happened was, he can say he wants to do one thing. But given the fact that he had basically, you know, over time, been pressured by different groups of the business, sales and brand, and you know, and basically, his boss hadn't stood up for him to say no to these things. In other words, he wasn't allowed to say no, to all these requests, and he was good at it, he was never sort of able to turn the tide, you know, or shut off the spigot or, you know, whatever metaphor you like, of all these requests. And so, by the end of it, that's the reputation, you get the reputation of what you were doing. And ultimately, his boss had a different impression. And so when it comes time to say, hey, it's time for a new plan, he's like, Well, why are you giving me a new plan, because you didn't do what you said you were gonna do last year. And that is a real thing that I'm seeing more and more of, which is, you know, we plan to do one thing, but the business plans for us to do quite another and we end up catfishing ourselves to our boss, or to our audiences, or to our colleagues, or whoever it is. And, you know, we always, you know, in our research that we do every year, where, you know, my research that we do with Content Marketing Institute, we always look at this sort of, okay, what's the what are the most successful, you know, marketers, content marketers doing that the least successful or are not or are doing, and it always comes down to the plan, right? Could putting together a documented content marketing strategy, but the key there is that it's sticking to the plan, right? It's executing against the plan. It's not just the documentation of the plan, it's actually matching the actions to the words and the things that you're doing. And, and not catfishing yourself. And so thinking that through, and either a getting your boss behind you so that you can actually clear that and be able to say no to things, or to actually sticking to it yourself and saying no actually doing do is really super important.

Ian Truscott  44:27  
And that's, that is so important. And I think I think we forget sometimes that colleagues only know you for what you're doing. They don't know you for what you're capable of, or what you've done in the past or any of that stuff. So you may have this view of yourself helping somebody out with PowerPoints, even though your skills lies elsewhere. And there find that really useful but now you're the PowerPoint guy.

Robert Rose  44:52  
Exactly. It's that internal branding. Yeah, of yourself is really important. Really good friend of mine. In a former client, he I love this quote of his and I've sort of completely stolen it is, you know, in, in bigger business, this is really true in bigger businesses less than Yes, smaller businesses, but in bigger business as he said, it's not what you do. It's what they think you do. Yeah. And, and and it's so true, right? It doesn't matter what you really do in the business, it's what people believe you do in the business, because that's where they're going to come for you. And that's how they perceive you. Yeah, I've

Ian Truscott  45:29  
always had that quote, in my mind, I think you must have tweeted it or written about it a few years ago, because I have Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've had that, in my mind, as I think that, and I've had experience of it is that, you know, people start to depend on you for doing things that really you weren't, isn't part of like you say, your plan. And so you need to be pretty strict about executing against what you believe needs to get done. And that's tough. I mean, it's Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's so much easier, incredibly difficult. Yeah, I mean, it's so much easier a lot of time is if if you find that you're useful to somebody, then everybody's happy, right? You're doing something, it's useful, everybody's jolly, there's no friction, but then comes a time where you've got to stand up for yourself and deliver the thing you want to do. That's, that's the hard thing, isn't it? That's when you live in, you've got to, you've got you've got to create some friction.

Robert Rose  46:23  
Yeah, it's right is you've got to you, you've either got, you know, the most important thing is to, you know, there's two pieces to that, right, there's one don't submit a plan that you can't confidently execute. You know, because one of the things that I find that happens a lot in corporate marketing planning is, we, we, we submit the plan, we think we'll pass rather than you do. And, and that is one thing, right? Which is saying, Hey, listen, let's not set ourselves up for failure by submitting things that we know that you know, in other words, not trying to game the system, to say, Ah, this is what's gonna pass, but we will never deliver against and it'll be okay. Because we can always blame it with, you know, for some other reason. But the second thing is, is to, you know, once you've submitted a plan that you want to do to then make sure that you've identified the roadblocks and the and the big rocks in the middle of the road that you're going to have to get around in order to execute against it. And one of those things might be, you're gonna have to switch how you're perceived in the organisation to something other than being an on demand content, you know, vending

Ian Truscott  47:28  
machine. Yeah. And we talk about that so many times, don't worry about being Yeah, exactly about content vending machine. What? I'm really curious, how did that conversation end up? And did he just resubmit another plan, which was I'm gonna build 12 PowerPoints a week for the rest of my life.

Robert Rose  47:44  
What it what it spurred into was this, you know, to say, this would be a year of transition. Right, you know, in other words, he, you know, basically said, you know, recognised that it was going to take a bit of a phased approach to in order to get out from doing that. And that, you know, the, you know, his, his request for things like, you know, extra budget, and, you know, and an extra people, and, you know, just, you know, more resources, ostensibly, were going to have to be couched in the idea of saying, Okay, you're gonna have to continue to deliver against this, because of this perception for some time. But we can work on, you know, as part of your plan to make a phased approach, and reset the objectives better to start to, you know, really achieve what we're trying to achieve, rather than sort of just becoming the Department of PowerPoints.

Ian Truscott  48:42  
Yeah. And that's really interesting. It's funny, because some of you, I think, well, I mean, obviously, many of your thoughts are connected, but it's just like, the thing that you're talking about, about a rut and a grave, right, is that you can find yourself in a very comfortable position, serving somebody and making them happy, but actually, you know, it's, it's not where you need to be you need to be executed on a tougher plan.

Robert Rose  49:02  
Yeah, well, that's the I mean, you know, I mean, it's like, you know, and again, to two lenses to look on that. One is the fact that, you know, for this particular person, they didn't really realise it. And until it became, you know, a crisis, right. I mean, that's the that's the big Yeah, no, you don't realise you're in that rut, until, you know, it becomes a crisis. And somebody surfaces it for you. Or two, you're very happy in that rut, and you're fine with it. And quite frankly, then somebody calls you out on it and says, you know, you're literally you're catfishing me, and, you know, yeah, you can't do that anymore. Right. Yeah. You know, and so it's, it's, you know, it all of a sudden comes down to whether you were conscious of it or not, right. Yeah. You know, and then in this case, he was not conscious of it. I mean, he was conscious of the fact that he was the Department of PowerPoints and sort of wanted to change that. But at the same time, he was saying, I don't know how to change that.

Ian Truscott  50:00  
Yeah. Wow, that's fascinating and a great story and a great lesson for all of us marketers, I think, because we were in such a broad discipline, and it's often hard, isn't it? You have to meet some resistance in order to drive change. And sometimes it's easier, just do the thing they want you to do. So I think that those wise words make so where would folks find wise words such as this, if they were to scroll through the internet?

Robert Rose  50:24  
Well, you can find it on our our sparkling new site at content advisory dotnet, not redesigned as much as sort of tweaked and made a little more modern and up to date. Yeah, that's our that's that's our little place. Anyway,

Ian Truscott  50:40  
I was I was just there. And you're absolutely right. you've cleaned house a little bit. And when people

Robert Rose  50:46  
basically fixed it.

Ian Truscott  50:51  
Yeah, when people spin the dial on the interwebs, mate, where are they going to find you?

Robert Rose  50:55  
They're going to find me on the typically on, you know, more and more on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is really leaning into business oriented content. And I'm, I'm pleased to spend most of my sort of content creation there. And then of course, Twitter.

Ian Truscott  51:08  
Yeah. Well, that's a great piece about LinkedIn on your show this other thing, which I encourage people to go take a look at listen to as well. So I look forward to that. All right. So are you going to be in the bar next week?

Robert Rose  51:20  
I will indeed.

Ian Truscott  51:22  
See you there. Cheers.

Ian Truscott  51:31  
Thank you, but there you go. Don't catfish yourself. So that's a wrap on episode 97. The Rockstar female effing Marketing Podcast part of the Marketing Podcast Network. Thank you for dropping a diamond, your podcast and you box, our track and jiving along with us. I've been your host Truscott thanks again to Jeff 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 at Rockstar cmo.fm where you can also find all our previous episodes. So terms of the world need another effing Marketing Podcast, let us know we are Rockstar cmo on LinkedIn or Twitter. And please drop a rating or review in your favourite podcast app. Or just keep listening. Glad you're here. Next week, as you heard Jeff will be back. I'm looking forward to chatting with Ted Rubin and John Andrews about their book retail relevancy. And Robert is back in the Rockstar cmo virtual bar.

Ian Truscott  52:36  
Until then, stay safe. I hope you have a great week. And I hope you'll again join us here next week on Rockstar cmo F

Transcribed by https://otter.ai