Uncensored CMO

Chaka Sobhani is Chief Creative Officer of Leo Burnett London. With 20 years of experience as an award winning director, writer and creative director, she has worked for the biggest broadcasters, brands and agencies worldwide. She hasn’t had a conventional advertising career, having spent over 10 years as a film maker and in television. Chaka was recruited by ITV to set up and ECD their first in-h...

Professor Jenni Romaniuk is the International Director of the world-famous Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and author of Building Distinctive Brand Assets and How Brands Grow Part 2 - revised .  Jenni is a leading expert in brand equity, mental availability, brand health metrics, advertising effectiveness, distinctive assets, word of mouth and the role of loyalty and growth. Through her work at the Ehren...

A return for podcast guest number 1, Richard Shotton, following the launch of his brand new book " The Illusion of Choice: 16½ psychological biases that influence what we buy ". "Every day, people make hundreds of choices. Many of these are commercial: What shampoo to pick? How much to spend on a bottle of wine? Whether to renew a subscription? These choices might appear to be freely made, but psy...

Les Binet and Sarah Carter are planning royalty. Starting out at the iconic BMP, the agency which evolved over time to become adam&eve today, they are the planners behind many famous campaigns. Not least John Lewis which lasted an impressive 14 years. A few years ago their popular myth busting column turned into the well known book ‘ How Not to Plan ’ taking conventional wisdom and turning it...

In this episode I'm joined by Sam Conniff, the author of Be More Pirate , creator of Uncertainty Experts and stand-up comedian. I speak to Sam about what marketers can learn from the pirates (which is a genuinely interesting look back in time), how we can deal with uncertain times and find out what his best joke is in his new hobby, stand-up comedy. To win a copy of Sam's book, you just have to gu...

Nir Eyal is back for the second part of this 2-part Uncensored CMO series. This episode, we talk about the book that made him famous - Hooked - and how you can apply habit-forming techniques to your own marketing work. Some more about Nir: Nir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology , technology, and business. Nir previously taught as a Lecturer in Marketing at the...

Why the AdContrarian decided to end his weekly newsletter The irony of Bob getting an award for best speaker at an AdTech conference A surprising honour from Byron Sharp The freedom that comes from being an independent Bob’s most contrarian ever statement The shocking amount of personal data gather about every person How the marketing industry is complicit in on-line tracking and division in socie...

Nir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology , technology, and business. Nir previously taught as a Lecturer in Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford.  Nir co-founded and sold two tech companies since 2003 and was dubbed by The M.I.T. Technology Review as, “The Prophet of Habit-Forming Technology...

Mark Ritson is back on the Uncensored CMO podcast, and he's more uncensored than ever. This episode brings his ever candid thoughts on the best ads of 2022, who f*cked up and who he's been most impressed by. Strap in for Ritson's Review of 2022. Watch Uncensored CMO on YouTube here. What we covered in this conversation: Biggest marketing cock up of 2022 The 2022 new entry on Mark’s Marketing Bulls...

What does it take to be the CMO of an iconic British high-street retailer, like Boots? Pete Markey shares his valuable wisdom and insights from a career at the very top. What we covered in this episode: The difficult second album making Boots Christmas Ad Rediscovering the joy of Hall & Oates Why Retailers are so good at making Christmas ads Making people feel more festive The importance of es...

As Christmas ad season is in full swing, I speak to the planning and strategy team from McCann Manchester, the agency that created Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot. What we cover in this episode: Why Darren and Jamie bring a life size Kevin’s to meetings The benefit of doing strategy as a pair Convincing a sceptical customer to shop at Aldi for Christmas Taking inspiration from John Lewis the reigning king...

The most returned guest in Uncensored CMO history, Orlando Wood, is back. He made a brief cameo last episode but I wanted to dive deeper into creative styles that work in difficult times and if you should re-use old creative. What we covered in this episode: How Hovis proved the power of wear-in with an almost 5 Star Creative inspiration from an ad that is almost 50 years old How the romantic era...

Storm clouds continue to gather over the global economy. With the latest quarterly UK GDP figures released on November 11 and the US and other parts of the world also bracing for a recession, this special recording of System1’s webinar dives into how brands can navigate tough times. However, tough times also bring opportunity. As the late great F1 driver Ayrton Senna once said, ‘You cannot overtak...

Susan Coghill is the Marketing Director at Tourism Australia and they've got one of the best performing ads on the System1 database, with their new campaign "G'Day". But this wasn't without taking some risks, such as introducing a new brand mascot, getting high profile stars to feature and producing a 9 minute film. Watch the ad here . What we covered in this episode: Why Susan has the best job in...

Sophie is the CEO of The Marketing Society and the author of Superfast: Lead at Speed , in which she offers insight into energy management, purposeful leadership, and keeping pace with breakneck innovation. She is also a passionate advocate of flex work as the future of effective companies, and regularly speaks about innovative approaches to balance business and family life. Her career began at Pr...

Professor Karen Nelson-Field is Founder and CEO of Amplified Intelligence, and Professor of Media Innovation at The University of Adelaide. Karen is a globally acclaimed researcher in media science, is a regular speaker on the major circuits, including Cannes and SXSW, and has secured research funding from some of the world’s largest advertisers. Her first book, Viral Marketing: the science of sha...

Now, a topic in this episode very close to my heart. Why are car ads all so bad? I spoke with Kirsten Stagg from Skoda, who's the UK Marketing Director and has made some pretty good ads herself. In fact, Skoda are responsible for the best ad on the System1 database. We also talk a lot about the move to electric vehicles, the biggest revolution since the combustion engine. How do we get more people...

Leo is the founder of Eden Lab, a new kind of consultancy and venture studio, they don't just advise on how to win in the Net Zero future, they build it with you. He's the former CEO and Chief Strategy Officer of ad agency Grey London, founder of Grey Consulting, speaker, writer and start-up mentor. He believes businesses can help shape the planet for the better. To do that he says we need to inve...

Meghan Farren spent 10 years at KFC UK, spending the last 5 as CMO. What does it take to run a marketing department of one of the biggest consumer brands? What do you do when you run out of chicken as a fast food chicken joint? How do you change your strapline when it involves licking fingers during a global pandemic? And how a strong culture is pivotal for all this creativity to happen. What we c...

Now it's the summer holidays, and that means everybody's taking a well earned break from all their hard work. And that includes the Uncensored CMO, but producer James never wants to let me off an episode, And he said, why before you go away, why don't you just do a quick episode. So, I thought, why not do a little bonus episode? It got me thinking, what subject do I know a little bit about that mi...

Do you think the advertising industry has a problem with age now? In my experience, the majority of marketing departments are run by people under 40. Sometimes the majority, even under 30, and that's reflected in creative agencies as well. I think that's a real problem because if you look at the statistics, people over the age of 55 represent the majority of people in the UK, they have enormous bu...

A double header episode as I speak with JP Castlin and James Hankins on the back of their Cannes 2022 talk, in partnership with WARC, "The Gravity of e-commerce". JP Castlin is an independent consultant who coined the term naturalized strategy-making and created the ABCDE framework. JP has been featured in Marketing Week, The Drum, WARC and more, and he also wrote "Strategy in Polemy". James Hanki...

Today we're joined by David Hieatt, founder of Hiut Denim Co., and The Do Lectures. What we covered in this episode: How to pronounce Hiut and its origins What inspired David to start a jeans company Pitching a business aged 14 Raised by wolves at Saatchi and Saatchi Setting up their first business Howies Surviving without pay for 6 years How it feels to sell your business The impact of having a d...

I've always had a bit of a love, hate relationship with Cannes. It's wonderful that we celebrate creativity with this event, but seeing how the festival rewards a certain type of creativity, particularly short term activation and purpose recently, I'm starting to wonder how effective Cannes Lions winners are in the real world. So who better to talk to about this than Tom Goodwin , who isn't short...

For the 50th episode of Uncensored CMO, I'm live in Cannes to talk about the triple threat to creative effectiveness. Why effectiveness has been declining over the years, how attention has impacted mental availability and what we can do about it. Fresh off the stage at Cannes Lions 2022, Peter Field, Orlando Wood and Karen Nelson-Field talk us through what they're calling Triple Jeopardy. From Pet...