brandLingual

What does it mean to stay human in a world increasingly shaped by machines? In this episode of brandLingual, Baiba Matisone and Christopher Owens speak with Tracey Follows, futurist, author, and CEO of FutureMade, about the future of identity, strategy, AI, human agency, and the assumptions we need to unlearn if we want to see what is coming next more clearly. Tracey is known for her work on strat...

What if marketers do not need another framework to memorize, but a better place to practice? In this episode, Christopher and Baiba explore why play may be one of the most serious tools we have for learning, unlearning, and building better marketing judgment. Marketing often rewards confidence, fluency, and expert posture. But real growth usually asks for something more uncomfortable: curiosity, h...

Everyone says they want evidence-based marketing. But in most marketing rooms, “evidence” means a dashboard, “strategy” means a deck, “brand” means three different things, and “creativity” gets treated like either magic or decoration. That’s the problem. Not a lack of theory. A failure of translation. In this brandLingual Expert Series episode, Baiba Matisone and Christopher Owens sit down with Pr...

What happens when a marketing team uses the same words but means completely different things? In this episode of brandLingual , Baiba Matisone and Christopher Owens explore one of the industry’s most overlooked problems: marketing language. Words like awareness, mental availability, brand love, loyalty, insight, and differentiation sound familiar, but they often carry very different assumptions de...

You know Ehrenberg-Bass. But how much do you know about Bass? In this episode of brandLingual, Baiba Matisone and Christopher Owens are joined by Ram Rao, Founders Professor of Marketing at the University of Texas at Dallas, long-time collaborator of Frank Bass, and someone who has spent five decades studying how markets actually behave (not how we wish they behaved in a deck). This conversation s...

Most marketers talk about memory as if the brain were a storage box. Say the message enough times. Repeat the brand enough times. Add emotion. Wait for memory. But what if that metaphor is incomplete, or maybe even wrong? In this Expert Series episode of the brandLingual pod, Baiba Matisone and Christopher Owens speak with Edmunds Vanags, clinical psychologist and researcher at the National Center...

What happens when what you know no longer works? In this episode of brandLingual , we sit down with Jelena Veselenovic for a conversation about unlearning, and what it really takes to grow when experience stops being an advantage. After more than two decades leading global marketing across brands like Coca-Cola, Danone, and Jim Beam, Jelena stepped into a completely different world at Miro, a high...

What does it mean to lead when the world is in transition? In this episode of the brandLingual podcast , we sit down with Philip Horvath, leadership thinker, innovation guide, and what he calls a “midwife of the new.” This conversation starts with a simple but uncomfortable truth: We are living between worlds . The old systems no longer work. The new ones haven’t fully arrived. So what does leader...

What if strategy process is actually making the work worse? Most modern marketing leans on structure. Frameworks. Defined steps. Shared language. But what if the very systems designed to improve strategy are quietly holding it back? In this episode of brandLingual , we’re joined by George Shepherd, a globally experienced strategist whose career spans VML, BBH, Saatchi & Saatchi, Diageo, Nike,...

Most marketing debates are tidy. Two sides. Two scripts. Two people defending what they already believed. And nothing really moves. This one doesn’t work that way. In the first episode of the brandLingual Debate Series , Mats Georgson and Christopher Owens take on a familiar, uncomfortable motion: “Brand building is the primary driver of long-term growth. Performance marketing is a supporting tact...

Most marketing research starts with the wrong question: What do people think about our brand? The problem is, most people are not thinking about your brand at all. They’re thinking about deadlines, dinner, energy crashes, the fastest route through the grocery store, and whatever problem they need to solve in the moment. Brands enter later — when a buying situation triggers the category and memory...

Most companies think they’re competing. Mats Georgson thinks they’re shrinking. In Episode 11 of the brandLingual podcast, we sit down with Mats Georgson to explore what marketers must unlearn to drive real business growth. From his early days at Sony Ericsson to decades in consulting and research, Mats shares a hard truth: no amount of creative polish can fix the wrong product, the wrong offer, o...

In Episode 10 of the brandLingual podcast, Baiba Matisone and Christopher Owens sit down with Heidi Hackemer to explore one deceptively simple question: What have you had to unlearn? For Heidi, it starts with the mountaintop. Early in her career, strategy meant going away, thinking hard, and returning with the answer. The genius brief. The big reveal. Over time, that model began to crack. From BBH...

In this episode of the brandLingual podcast , Baiba Matisone and Christopher Owens sit down with strategist Rob Scotland to explore a deceptively simple question: What have you had to unlearn? For Rob, it starts with this: the need to preach. Early in his career, cultural fluency felt like having the answer. But sitting silently in senior leadership meetings changed everything. Listening, not perf...

This episode introduces our guest format and raises the bar. We didn’t want a highlight reel. We wanted a practitioner willing to talk honestly about what had to be unlearned over a long career in advertising. That’s why we invited Paul Feldwick, former global planning director at BMP and author of The Anatomy of Humbug . In this conversation, Paul reflects on what experience forced him to rethink...

Most marketing strategy is still built as if growth happens by persuasion. Pick a segment. Choose a target. Craft a position. Sharpen the message. Convince the buyer. That logic traces back to Kotler, STP, and how many of us were taught to think about strategy. It’s clear. It’s teachable. And it works well inside organizations. But real markets don’t behave that way. In this episode of the brandLi...

Creative briefs are still built for persuasion. Brands grow through memory. In this episode of the brandLingual podcast, Baiba Matisone and Christopher Owens explore how to write a creative brief using evidence-based marketing principles, shifting from persuasion-led strategy to memory-first thinking. Most briefs still follow a familiar pattern: target audience, insight, proposition, reasons to be...

Strategy has a strange contradiction baked into it. We’re expected to sound supremely confident in rooms where no one actually agrees on what the words mean. At the same time, we’re quietly terrified to admit what we don’t know, because asking the “wrong” question can feel like career suicide to some. In this episode of the brandLingual podcast, Baiba Matisone and Christopher Owens talk about the...

Marketing is one of the only industries where someone can say, “We need more love for this brand,” and a room full of adults will nod like that’s a plan. Then, an hour later, we demand scientific certainty from a dashboard. Total whiplash. In Episode 4 of the brandLingual pod, Baiba and Christopher dig into the real issue beneath the buzzwords: our language is broken. And when the language is brok...

Marketing strategy has a language problem. In this episode of the brandLingual podcast, Baiba Matisone and Christopher Owens explore what it means to apply evidence-based marketing in real-world conditions, where pressure, politics, and intuition collide. Most marketers learn through storytelling, positioning, and inherited frameworks. But when those ideas meet how brands actually grow, through me...

Marketing is full of things we had to unlearn. In this episode of the brandLingual podcast, Baiba Matisone and Christopher Owens explore the tension between intuition-led marketing (storytelling, positioning, creativity) and evidence-based marketing (mental availability, distinctive assets, market behavior). Most marketers weren’t trained in marketing science. We learned through experience, framew...

Marketing has a language problem. We’re fluent in stories, metaphors, and instincts. We talk about love, loyalty, funnels, tribes. But when it comes time to explain "why" something worked, or how to repeat it under pressure, the words start to wobble. At the same time, there’s a growing body of evidence about how brands actually grow. Penetration beats loyalty. Availability beats persuasion. Memor...