Episode 55
Samuel Monnie & Chris Lawson return with Marketing Transformed

Transcripts:

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Season 5 is here!

 

Across The Pond Season 5 Preview. 

Samuel Monnie & Chris Lawson are back 

with the Marketing Transformed Playlist 

 

SAM:

Welcome to season five (of Across The Pond Marketing Transformed Podcast). It's the preview episode of Across the Pond. I'm Samuel Monnie and Chris Lawson, my co-host is here. Say hi, Chris. 

 

CHRIS:

Hey Sam, how are you? Long time, no speak and all that. Well, apart from five minutes ago, when we were working on the script. 

 

SAM:

Yeah. We've just been busy, busy, busy, and I think the good news for the audience is, we've been working a lot together in the background, “WhatsApping” and Google sheet sharing.

 

CHRIS:

Careful. 

 

SAM:

Exactly. Yeah, sharing Google documents, WhatsApping messaging, communicating, connecting, recording as well. We've got a brand new format that we're really excited about. A great set of guests that we're bringing to you this season and our own take on how we're putting this together.

 

CHRS:

Absolutely. I mean, simply put it's about who we've been listening to at the moment. First of all, how's things Sam? How's the family? How's work?

 

SAM:

Yeah. Starting off saying, thankfully my family, loved ones are safe, well and healthy. And that's been pretty much the case throughout the last few months with the challenges that we've all faced with COVID and getting used to this idea of the never normal. That's a term that Greg Verdino calls it, that we've never really ever been a stable and predictable environment. I think the last year, year and a half has really been reflecting that.  On a professional side as well, the transformation work that I've been doing has really taken off a lot. There's a lot of companies, lots of organizations who are really seeing that marketers and marketing are actually at the forefront of cultural change, business change and that reality that they shouldn't shirk. They should actually lead from the front and be responsible for setting the culture and the marketing skills and technical things like customer journeys, but also more broad based things like roles and responsibilities and working in a way that's future fit and fit for the technology and how you collaborate. So a lot of work in that space, which has been exciting and kept me busy and learning industries; automotive, healthcare, tech companies, have all been clamoring to transform. 

 

DJ or Marketer?

SAM:

The other interesting thing is this idea of storytelling. And I joined a company as co-founder and leading the marketing practice called CI squared.

 

CHIRS:

When was that? That was a while ago now wasn't it?

 

SAM:

Around sort of fall or autumn of 2020, I joined them. It's really thinking about what story you're telling yourself. Is it true? What stories are you telling  the world today? I think we've definitely experienced the barriers and biases that constrain our communication. I've seen it in the last few months and years, but also throughout my career, how miscommunication, misunderstandings and disagreements can be the differences between success and failure at work. 

 

You've got the multi-generational workforce now, which makes things more challenging, but also creates opportunities. But still there's some legacies of hierarchies where, you know, I've been part of hierarchies where senior members haven't valued the opinions of other team members. They've had great information to help us of course correct, but we haven't really listened to them. Ended up launching new products that weren't successful, rejected by customers or ignored by consumers and not only does that impact the P&L (profit and loss) there's a huge impact on productivity, on trust and just overall morale beyond just the P&L and what I've seen and know to be true is that just the ability to listen, and you'll be surprised how critical that is to lead effectively. So a lot of the work I do in the training that we do based on behavioural Economics and neuroscience teaches people how to listen and quiet in the brain and actually listen to others. It's just fascinating how we've been given a brain, but no instruction manual. 

 

So that's exciting, but you ask the question how long I've been there, the irony is I've just  joined a seven year old startup helping to reinvent them. I've met the founding partner , but I've not met any of my other colleagues in-person and we've been working together for well over a year. That for me just sums up this never normal of working in different ways. The way I met the founding partner, I think it taps into one of the things we talked about is planning versus luck. So don't be so certain that you're actually planning what's going on and realize that often things happen serendipitously. We've been working in zoom to actually refine and build a product, which is a communications training we deliver currently virtually, but actually collaborating through Teams and the experience has been testing marketing practice and making it happen, versus theory. Being more entrepreneurial  just means a lot of learning, unlearning and relearning on  a weekly, monthly, daily, hourly basis. It's kept me alive, kept me thriving and also kept me challenged. We're doing the same with the podcast as well. 

 

CHIRS:

Well, it sounds like you're really energized and, and already I can hear the themes that are coming out viral on new seasons guests in what you've just been talking about. The stuff that resonates with me, everyone learned last year, is that we had to change whether that is at home or at work. We all had to adapt. And some of the things that you were just talking about there in terms of like, all the new experiences about how to deal with remote working, not seeing people in person. Creativity, I must admit, I found creativity quite difficult over a zoom call. But my company Moreno Marketing really had to double down on providing people with a quick fire audit to help companies adapt and change whether they were turned around to growth. Because no one had time for the in-depth evaluation of a strategic planning process of old, it's all about that quick-fire assessment, trying to work out what needs to be done and then straight into an action plan and then rinse and repeat, redo, redo, redo. It's been great. I think over the last, I would say sort of nine months, I probably worked with more companies than I've worked with in the last two or three years, which is staggering really. It's also been good to do that with old organizations that have gone on this massive cultural change process sometimes brought on by the pandemic, or sometimes they were on it before, but wanting to create a difference.  As you say those learn, unlearn and then relearn. And I've seen a lot of apps being really, really encouraging, looking at sort of some starters and founders and CEOs  and even private equity houses, try to do things differently. 

 

So it has been fascinating for me to work and I also recognized Sam, which I think was a really important point that I needed help and I wanted to work with people that I wanted to work with. It has been a  really good experience working with some people that I trust that bring some different skills and opening myself up to that sort of collaboration. And of course, talking of families, thankfully  again, mine has been okay. Especially with my sister and brother-in-law working in the frontline in the hospitals.   But also Rosie now is walking and talking like an 18 year old, even when she's not even 18 months yet.

 

One of the things that I'm most proud of, and again, it is a theme that comes up in the podcast, in the next series is about giving something back and also being true to yourself, almost of showing a bit more of yourself. I certainly have learned a lot about myself. I set up IVFDAD last year and something about that was really, really important to me. Rosie was born in January 2020 after a long, and at times torturous fertility journey and at 18 embryos later, she was there, but it's a lonely place for the male partner. Well, the partner is usually male and there isn't much support out there, so I wanted to put my marketing skills to use. I'm feeling slightly blessed that I was one of the lucky ones that came out with a success story which is Rosie and used it to create awareness and created the podcast, IVFDAD. It's a niche community Sam, but the front  page of Apple was  highly noted and recommended' which I was very proud about. Three newspaper and magazine interviews, webinars in South Africa and beyond, and 8,000 downloads and counting. So, I'm very proud of what I'm doing.

 

Without giving too much away, I was touched by one of our guests Minter (Dial). Where he sort of started off and he talked about the fact that actually on this podcast, the most important thing was that one-on-one conversation and everything else was a bonus. I feel the same really that if I can, yeah, help one person, then that's good enough for me. And you know, it's been great to practice what we preach as well.  You know, I'm creating my own influencer led content marketing strategy with a following. I've made sure that it's got a very good core and a strong purpose and just let everything else take care of itself actually.

 

SAM:

Yeah, I love the success that you're having with that.  Again, you know, going through a journey and being a  practitioner, but also rolling up your sleeves and getting into it. So not being a pundit pontificating from the side, but actually something which is very personal and bringing that story to the world and helping others. So it's awesome to see your success and really proud of that. You know, this podcast game is definitely very, very, very enticing because you keep being a creator as well. That's just awesome to see. 

 

CHRIS:

It starts with listening and it also starts with taking inspiration from places of people you wouldn't normally encounter. I guess what we set out to achieve with season five was create a playlist of who we're listening to at the moment, and we've got six, fantastic interviews. They're brilliant, they're really listable, they’re are about 25 minutes. If you've liked what we've done previously, I know you will like our guests and I've already let one name out of the bag, Minter, and we'll come back to that. But, we've got some fantastic names there and we haven't just stopped interviews. Have we Sam?

 

SAM:

No, absolutely. I think the convention, should we say, is that you have an interview and then you move on to the next one, next step, next podcast, and moving on and on and on to the next one. But our guests are  just so compelling it led us to really innovate the format and what we call the 'AfterCast™ ' concept.  It's like an after show or an after party, that's curated by us but we're calling it 'The AfterCast™ '. We actually did spend a lot of time debating  and following up on a number of the themes that we talked about. So each interview that we have with the guest has an AfterCast™. Think of it as a recap or remix, a reflection of the areas that really caught our attention, that we go further and deeper into just like a DJ music producer does. That's how I see myself, that's how we see ourselves as well. 

 

CHRIS:

You do see yourself as a DJ, a music producer Sam don't you? I've often thought that about you too.

 

SAM:

Thank you very much.

 

Meet the guests

CHRIS:

It has taken us a while to get there. Sorry, listeners. But we've got new music, we've got production, thanks to Rowan Bishop, who also did the sound design on IVFDAD for me. What we wanted to do in this throwaway society was try  to create something that would last. So, hopefully this is a valuable piece of content that can be referred back to time and time again. Like I said, six guests: Arjo Ghosh, that's the first one we've got up. Great guy who I met 20 years ago, right there at the advent of digital marketing, anticipated SEO and created a whole business around it, but a really, really interesting backstory. That's one to watch, certainly. Then next up, we've got Yin Rani, who I know Sam has had the pleasure of working with over the years. She is chief executive officer of Milk PEP, that's  a 25 billion pound industry, on behalf of Americas milk company. She has had an incredible journey,  through different marketing fields, so lots to be said there. Then there's Nick Bradley, who I've known since the early 2000; very, very successful entrepreneur. There's a motto around Nick about he burned the boat, he reinvented and reflected on his career paths and very personal events wanted more freedom and took a very different direction.  I'm looking forward to all those three, Sam. 

 

SAM:

Then we've got Amanda Fone and Adrian Walcott. Amanda set up F1 recruitment and it's focused on the marketing communication sector and the values that she's brought, runs throughout her approach to recruitment, which we found really refreshing. You've got Adrian Walcott. He's managing director of brands with values, it's all about working with clients to unlock their unique culture. Both of them are co-founders of BAME2020. This is a social enterprise focusing on encouraging people from diverse, ethnic backgrounds, into marketing and media and comms- that's a great interview, with the AfterCast™ we go a bit deeper there. We've got Minter Dial He's a professional speaker, he's a storyteller, a veteran executive. He had over 16 years at L'Oreal. In his LinkedIn headline, he says he's a keynote speaker, emcee, author, podcast or an elevator. So that's one to definitely listen to. 

 

We've got Allen Adamson and he's co-founder and managing partner of Metaforce. He's a noted industry expert in all disciplines  of branding. He's worked with so many different consumer and corporate businesses, packaged goods, tech, healthcare, financial services, and he's he's well-published and it's going to be a great, great episode with him as well. It's a great season lined up. 

 

CHRIS:

There is indeed. To give you a little bit of a taster, Arjo Ghosh is a touch of a backstory of entrepreneurial success. Yin Rani will very much be about a lifetime student of marketing. Nick Bradley, burning the boat and reinvention. Amanda Fone and Adrian Walcott; people powered marketing. Minter Dial is about serendipity and storytelling.  Allen Adamson is about turning marketing theory into routine disruption. So hopefully those titles wet your appetite. 

 

SAM:

We've got some killer themes there, some great shows. Like we say they're, it's supported by the AfterCast™. So you're going to get a really solid season. 

 

Coming up:

CHRIS:

So this is season five. Over time we've been going back to the archives; Season one was very much about the essentials of marketing digital transformation, whether you're that rising star entrepreneur, experienced professional, to give you those foundations.

 

SAM:

Then we followed season one with Season Two, which is more about getting deeper into marketing transformation. What are your questions that you've got? And we answer those for growth and success. 

 

CHRIS:

Then building on that was Season Three  the modern marketers,  looking at those changing dynamics of marketing and business strategy and what you need to learn unlearn and relearn in that post COVID world.

 

SAM:

As we put all that together, season four was very much about this idea of an agile marketing action plan. We give you the cornerstones, the skills, the mindsets and then the behaviors for modern marketers. So you can actually deliver on modern marketing. So the cornerstones are things like the vision and mission, the brand building insight and playbook. We go to skills, the mindsets of growth, mindset, transformation mindset, and then the leadership behaviors that are still ever relevant. 

 

So now Season Five really gives you that everyday inspiration and that curated selection where we go back and do that AfterCast™to go into it a bit deeper.

 

CHRIS:

Lots to look forward to.  We start off with Arjo Ghosh next week.   As I said, a really, really interesting story. The site will be updated as marketingtransformed.com, or you can find it in the usual places, Apple, Spotify, Google etc. 

 

SAM:

We're glad to be back, really excited and looking forward to the responses and the engagement that we're going to get from this season. We'd love to hear the feedback and hear back from you at marketingtransformedshow@gmail.com . Let's get this show on the road. And so without further ado, have a great week across the pond.