The Push

Everyone thinks they’re a marketer. The CEO has an idea. The finance manager has an idea. Someone's teenage daughter discovered Instagram over the weekend. Suddenly everyone has a revolutionary marketing strategy that will transform the business. In this episode, Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson draws on stories from marketers across Reddit and LinkedIn, to examine why marketing attracts unsoli...

Brand strategy is easily derailed.  All of a sudden, the whole company invites itself into the room, sales invents three new offer names, the CEO wants the brand to feel “premium”, and nobody can accurately explain what the business does. In this solo episode, Jack Ferguson answers brand strategy questions from Reddit that cover a spectrum of issues that arise within companies. He covers: How to s...

Most companies blame execution when growth plateaus. So they start doing more outbound, making better ad creative, creating new landing pages, building sharper sales scripts, and tightening the alignment between sales and marketing. But often, the problem isn’t execution, it's market understanding. In this episode, Jack Ferguson hosts Buyer Researcher Ryan Gibson to help you understand when p...

In Part 3 of this series, the rubber hits the road. After breaking down brand diagnostics and strategy in the previous two episodes, this episode moves into what gets built: brand assets, how to prioritise them, and how they compound (or don’t) over time. Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson is your host. He discusses: Which brand asset is the most important, and why What Asset Hierarchy is and how to t...

A Brand Strategy is often dismissed as ‘fluff’ because it’s poorly defined, inconsistently applied, and confused with tactics, communications, advertising, or visual identity. In Part 2 of this series, we move beyond the theory of brand as a function of memory and why buyers buy to define specific strategic outputs, explain how they’re informed, and model scenarios in which they’re used. This epis...

Most definitions of ‘brand’ focus on what a company produces, like logos, names, and design systems, but fail to explain what brand is, how it drives commercial outcomes, and how it is measured.  In Part 1 of this series, we define brand comprehensively while keeping it accessible to marketers and non-marketers alike. From that foundation, we break down how brand shows up in real buying situations...

Most revenue growth actually comes from rising demand, and brands that recognise early can move to service it. In this episode, Jack Ferguson breaks down where marketers create the most value inside a business: identifying emerging demand and helping organisations innovate to meet it. Drawing on Mats Georgson’s Demand Point Constellation Theory, and using examples from Uber, McDonald’s, Intuit, Sw...

Buyers don’t experience brands as funnels. They encounter them mid-scroll, mid-conversation, mid-doubt, mid-purchase, to name a few examples. So why does marketing still plan as if people move predictably from awareness to purchase? This episode's guest Jelena Veselinovic joins host Jack Ferguson to rally against this phenomenon while drawing on 25+ years of marketing experience, including 18...

In this episode, Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson discusses sonic branding and the new opportunities that are emerging for marketers with AI. Jack recently created a song for his own brand using AI which sparked a bigger conversation about sonic branding, accessibility, and audio ownership. Sound is one of the most underused brand assets available today and smaller brands have more access than ever....

In this episode, Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson hosts Strategic Growth Architect Mats Georgson, former Global Brand Director at Sony Ericsson, to discuss how brands achieve large, sustained growth and how most category-based thinking caps it. Mats was the first marketer to work on Bluetooth, giving him deep, practical insight into rapid global adoption, and years later completed a research project...

In this episode, Jack Ferguson hosts Leigh Anne Cappello, former VP of Marketing for Play-Doh and one of the leaders during its 50th anniversary period, to discuss how scent, memory, and brand DNA combined to create one of the most recognisable brands. From the Play-Doh perfume release to prescience calendars to the penetration of the brand's scent, this episode is an exploration of what it t...

This episode explores disproportionate leverage and how it shows up when immersion is treated as critical brand building work, not a nice-to-have.  Rather than chasing deliverables or premature answers, your hosts examine immersion as a diagnostic imperative, the strength required to defend it, and the consequences of bypassing it. This episode is co-hosted by Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson and Br...

Christmas is often thought of as a seasonal moment. In reality, it’s one of the strongest examples of brand heritage and cultural embedding ever built. This episode analyses Christmas as a brand system. It examines how it formed, how it survived bans, wars, secularisation, and media fragmentation, and why its relevance continues to compound without central ownership, governance, or constant persua...

Most brands try to eliminate waste. This episode explains how this approach is limiting. We break down Positive Wastage, how it shows up in practice, and why it repeatedly drives brand growth, marketing outcomes, and long-term relationships, even when not intentionally planned for. Your co-hosts are: - Brand Strategist - Jack Ferguson . - Brand Identity Designer - Tutai Marongere . In this episode...

Building your own personal brand as a marketer matters more than ever. It helps you stay respected, protect your career options, and operate with more authority in workplaces that often default to tactics over strategy. In this episode, brand strategist Jack Ferguson breaks down how to build a personal profile that strengthens your positioning in the job market. Jack shares: • The meeting where he...

In this episode, host Jack Ferguson breaks down the real drivers of revenue growth by going back to first principles. No tactics worship, just the underlying forces that move product. He talks about: - How 28 retail launches helped him isolate the true impact of tactics - You can grow revenue and still lose market share, and why many brands mistake this for promotional success. - The danger of try...

Two marketers who never planned to be marketers break down exactly how they fell into the industry. One came through science. One came through life coaching. Both arrived here by accident. Jack Ferguson and Ben Reeves are this episode's co-hosts. Listen in to hear: How and why Jack lost money on his very first client How a podcaster launched Ben’s marketing career How different Jack found the...

Every marketer has questioned whether this career’s really for them; especially after getting blamed, burning out, or being abandoned when times get tough. Chanel Clark joins Jack Ferguson and shares stories of being pushed out, made redundant on day one of lockdown, and writing $8 ad copy to survive, before turning it all into The Marketing Club , a 12,000+ strong community that’s kept countless...

Every brand wants to stand out, but few are willing to break the rules to do it. In this episode, Jack dives into the world of rogue brand building, the unconventional, often scrappy ideas that make brands unforgettable. He explores how some of the world’s most unconventional brand strategies broke through. He covers:  • Bumble’s guerrilla campus campaign that turned curiosity into growth  • Red B...

Every marketer has lived through a project that started smoothly and ended sideways. In this episode, co-hosts Jack Ferguson and Ben Reeves discuss scope creep. They share war stories, practical scoping habits, and mindsets that keep you sane when a client says, “Can we just add one more thing?” If you deal with unclear briefs, have underquoted projects before, or work with clients who expect magi...

Most of us remember Play-Doh from childhood, but few of us realise what makes it truly distinctive.  In this episode, Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson explores how a product known for its texture built enduring emotional equity through something far less obvious. He explores: How a brand's strongest assets and true distinctiveness can emerge accidentally, and what that means for you The overloo...

Friends was a hit sitcom released in the 90s, known for its feel-good humour and iconic characters. The show’s success is a sight to behold, maintaining popularity even to this day.  Though not only was it loved by millions, but it's also a case study in superb branding.  In particular, its theme song is the perfect distinctive brand asset.  In this episode we break this down and discuss why....

The Push has hit Episode 50 for Season 3! With 99% of podcasts not making it past Episode 20, we thought this was a great opportunity to stop and reflect. Listen in as your host Jack Ferguson shares 50 lessons from producing 50 episodes!  He covers: Our podcast tech stack How much it costs to produce and promote the podcast every year What the season’s most downloaded episodes are The number of vi...

Marketing careers don’t stall by accident; they stall because the way agencies hire, reward, and manage talent leaves a lot to be desired. This episode is co-hosted by: - Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson  and  - Fractal Marketing Agency Owner Gerard Doyle Here’s what the episode covers: Gerard shares a story of how a prominent brand fired an agency in the midst of a talent shortage, only for it to b...

 With 2 million businesses in Australia and most brands blending into a sea of sameness, is uniqueness even achievable, or worth chasing?  In this solo episode, Jack Ferguson unpacks what the data says about meaningful differentiation (spoiler: only 5–10% of brands get there), explores why most brands blur together, and introduces the idea of “demand point constellations” as a pathway to true bran...