That's What I Call Marketing

James MacDonald, Founder of Limelight, joins That’s What I Call Marketing to discuss programmatic advertising, building a global ad tech business, AI and why simplicity still matters for marketers today. This episode explores the journey from Fleet Street advertising sales to modern programmatic technology, through a practical conversation about risk, reinvention, customer focus, remote culture an...

Julia Linehan, Founder and CEO of The Digital Voice, joins That’s What I Call Marketing to discuss Cannes Lions, the changing role of PR, AI search, trusted sources and why amplification matters for marketers today. This episode explores how brands, agencies and marketing leaders need to think about discoverability in a world where search, AI, content and credibility are all changing at pace. In t...

In the latest episode of The Singles , Conor is joined by Ed Parkin and Bella Harrison from Tracksuit to dig into four marketing stories where the headlines only tell part of the story. The episode starts with the FIFA World Cup and what it could mean for soccer in the US. Major League Soccer still has a long way to go versus the NFL, NBA and MLB on awareness, but Tracksuit data shows consideratio...

Jon Evans (Uncensored CMO) on Going Solo: Sponsorship, Podcasting as Networking & Cashflow Reality Conor Byrne chats with Jon Evans (Uncensored CMO) about leaving the CMO track to run his podcast full time, using sponsorship to fund the work and turning “being good at talking” into a career. Jon explains why podcasting is a powerful networking tool—CMOs often decline coffee but say yes to bein...

In this episode of the Cannes Sessions, Conor Byrne takes us through another packed day on the Croisette, starting with the CMOs in the Spotlight session featuring Jill Kramer of Mastercard, Michelle Klein of Westpac, Manuel “Manolo” Arroyo of The Coca-Cola Company, and Suhayl Limbada CMO of KFC India. There were big themes running through the day: how legacy brands stay useful, why marketers need...

Cannes Lions Day 3: Moloco CMO Paul Darcy on AI Disruption, Brand vs Performance + Festival Voices & Award Highlights On day three of the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, host Conor Byrne records The Cannes Sessions in partnership with The Digital Voice and interviews Paul Darcy, CMO of Moloco, fresh off an Adweek panel on how AI and LLM-driven consumer behavior are disrupting digital bran...

Cannes Lions 2026 Day 2: Google’s Paul Limbey on AI Transformation, LinkedIn Creators & Heineken’s Bronze Lion On day two at Cannes Lions 2026 (Tuesday, 23 June), host Conor Byrne recaps a busy schedule at Brand Tech Beach, including an interview with Natasha Wallace to be released later in the summer with The Digital Voice. He doorstops Google’s Paul Limbey, who warns against the “double shif...

Cannes Lions 2026 Day 1: Young Lions Kickoff, AI Takes Over the Croisette & Early Winners On day one of Cannes Lions 2026, host Conor Byrne covers the Young Lions competition as teams prepare for a 24-hour brief, and shares highlights from meetings and sessions across the festival. He recaps a coffee catch-up with Karen Nelson-Field and plans to feature her on the podcast, then reports recurri...

“I will defend brand to the death.” Ty Heath, Global Director of Thought Leadership at LinkedIn and Jury President for the B2B Creative category at Cannes Lions 2026, joins Conor Byrne on That’s What I Call Marketing for a conversation about B2B marketing, brand building, AI search, thought leadership, creativity and the future of buying decisions. Ty has helped shape some of the most influential...

Former Dove CMO Alessandro Manfredi joins That’s What I Call Marketing to discuss Dove Real Beauty, brand fundamentals, AI, creative effectiveness and why marketing may be losing some of its professionalism. Alessandro spent 28 years at Unilever and played a major role in the growth of Dove, one of the most famous examples of long-term brand building in modern marketing. In this conversation, he e...

Tourism marketing often gets reduced to beautiful beaches, drone shots and generic aspiration. Susan Coghill has spent years proving that isn’t enough. In this episode of That’s What I Call Marketing, Conor sits down with the CMO of Tourism Australia to explore how one of the world’s most recognisable destination brands thinks about salience, creativity, distinctive assets and long-term brand buil...

Jessica Jensen is the CMO of LinkedIn, but this conversation goes far beyond platform strategy or social media trends. In this episode of That’s What I Call Marketing, Jessica joins Conor Byrne for a deep conversation about what modern marketing leadership actually looks like inside one of the world’s biggest technology companies. From studying Japanese and living in Tokyo, to starting a business...

Banking is one of the hardest categories in marketing. Trust is fragile. Customer expectations are shaped by every app on their phone, not just other banks. And every interaction has the potential to redefine the relationship. In this episode of That’s What I Call Marketing, Conor Byrne sits down with Laura Lynch, CMO of Bank of Ireland , to explore what it actually means to build a modern banking...

The Singles is back with Tracksuit, taking some of the biggest marketing stories in culture right now and putting them under a bit more pressure using real brand data. Because the interesting part is rarely just the campaign itself. It is what the campaign reveals about the category, the audience, and the way brands are trying to grow. In this episode, Conor Byrne is joined by Ed Parkin and Bella...

We talk about personalisation as if it’s about the person. It isn’t. It’s about prediction.” That line sits at the centre of this conversation with James Taylor, CEO & Founder of A Particular Audience and once you hear it properly, it’s difficult to go back to how most marketing teams currently think about relevance. Because for years, personalisation has been framed as something close to one-...

How Brands Should Really Be Planning Christmas Campaigns What happens when you start planning Christmas… in April? In this episode of That’s What I Call Marketing , Conor Byrne is joined by Pete Markey (former CMO of Boots, Marketing Week Marketer of the Year) and Leanne Tomasevic (Insights Lead at Electric Twin) to explore how brands should approach Christmas advertising — using real-time synthet...

The Singles is back with a new line-up from Tracksuit, looking at the marketing stories everyone is talking about In this episode joined by Bella & Ed we take a look at the data behind three very different moments McDonald’s shifts the conversation away from product and towards Gen Z employees, at a time when confidence in job opportunities for young people is low. It could easily have drifted...

The first Cannes Sessions episode of That’s What I Call Marketing is here and we kick off the series by interviewing three Irish IAPI Young Lions winner teams heading to Cannes: Darragh Spain and Fardosa Flanagan (Young Marketer, 123.ie/Intact Insurance), Ciara and Niamh (Film, Droga5), and Emily and Rhea (Digital, Omnicom Media). They discuss why they entered, how they tackled the 48-hour brief,...

Laura Burkhauser, CEO of Descript, explains the surprising truth about what actually grows a product. Most marketing advice assumes growth comes from better targeting, smarter funnels, or stronger loyalty. Laura sees it differently. In this episode, we get into what actually drives product growth — and why some of the most widely accepted ideas in marketing and SaaS don’t hold up when you look at...

Inside Saatchi & Saatchi. Sit down with the CEO of one of the most iconic agencies in advertising, a name that carries both weight and expectation, to understand how CEO Claire Hollands leads for today. This is a conversation about ambition. Not in the abstract, but in how it shows up in the work, in the culture, and in the relationship between agencies and clients. We get into how Saatchi &am...

In this episode of That’s What I Call Marketing, Conor Byrne speaks with Andrew Tindall, Chief Growth Officer at System1, about his new publication/pdf The Creative Dividend. Built using global Effie case study data and creative testing from over 250,000 respondents, the research explores a simple but uncomfortable truth: most advertising fails to deliver profitable growth. Andrew explains why cre...

Synthetic Research Explained, Understanding AI-Powered Audience Testing for Marketers What is synthetic research and how accurate is it really? In this episode of That’s What I Call Marketing , Conor Byrne sits down with Dr. Ben Warner , former Chief Data Adviser to the UK Prime Minister and co-founder of Electric Twin , to unpack one of the most talked-about developments in modern market research...

What does your CFO actually want to hear from you? In this episode of That’s What I Call Marketing , Conor Byrne sits down with Michael Kaminsky former analytics leader at Harry’s and Founder & CEO of Recast to unpack the real tension between marketing and finance. After Michael’s Harvard Business Review article on the CMO–CFO relationship circulated widely (and resonated strongly with CFOs an...

What does it really take to move from brand marketer to global growth leader? In this episode Conor Byrne sits down with Orla Mitchell for a candid, commercially grounded conversation about leadership, long-term brand building and earning marketing’s seat at the growth table. Orla’s career spans senior roles at Nestlé, Kerry Foods, and Mars, where she led global food and confectionery portfolios i...

Zappi CMO Nataly Kelly joins to talk about the Sizzle, Systems & Sales Impact of The Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is advertising’s biggest stage. $8 million for 30 seconds. Cultural noise at maximum volume. Celebrities everywhere. Music in almost every ad. But once the spectacle fades, one question remains: which ads actually drove impact? In this episode, we unpack the Zappi Super Bowl 2026 rep...