Confessions of a Marketer

Written by: Mark Reed-Edwards
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  • Summary

  • In each episode of Confessions of a Marketer, Mark Reed-Edwards talked with a marketing leader or thinker about the deepest challenges in our business. Luminaries such as Beth Comstock, Whitney Johnson, Jacques van Niekerk and more shared their wisdom with Mark. With four seasons and more than 200 episodes, the show covered everything across the marketing landscape--from brand to product to privacy, and everything in between. The podcast became a must-listen for marketers around the world and was consistently among the top-rated business and marketing shows. The series concluded in January 2021. This is an archive of all the episodes.
    © 2023 Confessions of a Marketer
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Economics Marketing & Sales Personal Success
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Episodes
  • Insights on the Brink

    Insights on the Brink
    Sep 30 2024
    Mark Reed-Edwards: I'm Mark Reed Edwards. Welcome back to Confessions of a Marketer. Today, I'm joined by Tim Hoskins (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-hoskins-quester/) and Brett Townsend (https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettrtownsend/) of Quester (https://www.quester.com), an insights and strategy company that specializes in human conversation. They've just released a new book called Insights on the Brink: Revitalizing the Market Research and Analytics Industry (https://www.amazon.com/Insights-Brink-Revitalizing-Research-Analytics/dp/B0DC5RD2KX/ref=sr_1_1?crid=17WW5SUWY9CCR&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.MmrMQHBmOQBnW1heHgNoId0OefNIJzm_Xy5NbwQvQOE8l27uML5xepbvi4oyUxOkGY8BIJqoFlJzIsIeDiN3wOCZG8AQVtR98LS4HZQ32BJ6CBfgg8BFvV-A0jb9IHdykdd86IbYxMn16eRXxwrcBY-xEpgdGOl4M5tyHw26TB1RC2ztonh3e2ddOorwLbsz4i4MuFjad6FS5UtuPxjzDsKYypO7hzKvZk3QxSCcRmo.ooAdGxQz8yeF7zkmwIKL1fZdhUhuQoo-1jLqnF9PwNY&dib_tag=se&keywords=insights+on+the+brink&qid=1727387017&sprefix=insights+on+the+brink%2Caps%2C152&sr=8-1). As someone who has worked in and around analysts and market research for a long time, it's a subject near and dear to me. Tim and Brett, it's great to have you here. Brett Townsend: Thanks, Mark. Mark Reed-Edwards: Can you share your backgrounds and how you both ended up at Questor? Tim, maybe we can start with you. Tim Hoskins: I came from the information security space and worked at a startup for several years and then made the jump over to quest or to lead their sales and marketing and about four years into the job, I was grateful to be promoted to president and then acquired the company in 2022. Mark Reed-Edwards: Brett? Brett Townsend: Yeah, I started my career on the agency side and then spent 15 years in corporate insights where I was a client of Quester's for 10 to 12 years, going back to my early days at PepsiCo and Tim and I became good friends over the years of being a client together and always kind of had this conversation, this ongoing conversation, about if I ever wanted to leave corporate, how it would be great to work together. And so we made that happen about two years ago. Mark Reed-Edwards: So, Brett, can you tell me, exactly what Quester does? Brett Townsend: Well, I think we both could definitely take this one, but we are a branding and innovation strategy consulting firm where we work with a number of clients on: How do they build their brands? How do they innovate, properly, more effectively? And we really focus on consumer narratives and what are those stories behind the research that are really driving decision making? And then we layer that in with a number of different things. So it's a very holistic consulting type of view where insights are the backbone of what we do, but we're not a full service agency, so to speak . Insights gives us the tools to help consult our clients on a number of different things, whether it's jobs to be done, demand space work or whatever. But at the heart of it all are these consumer narratives and really helping people tell better brand stories and, and create very meaningful, long lasting innovation. Mark Reed-Edwards: So has it been the dream come true that you thought, leaving corporate life and working at Quester? Brett Townsend: It really has been, you know, I mean, it's been fun to work together with Tim finally, after talking about it all these years and just being back on the agency side, after being on the corporate side for so long, I really have a lot of empathy for what our clients go through and what they face. And so it's really led to great, meaningful conversations where we're really able to help our clients in a way that's very beneficial to them. Mark Reed-Edwards: So Tim, I'd like to ask you about this book that just came out. What prompted you to write it? Tim Hoskins: Well, it all goes back to just a number of conversations that Brett and I had had through the years about the industry and the state of the industry and where it needs to go. And I've had the fortunate opportunity to be a co chair of the Insights Association's largest conference, the Corporate Researchers Conference. And one day I called Brett and I said, "Hey, you should be a keynote and take all of the things that you believe in your heart and that we've talked about and get up on stage in front of hundreds of people and just kind of have a drop the mic moment." And so that's where it started. And I think that Brett received a lot of accolades and feedback. And it was some of those attendees in the room who said, "you should put this into a book." And when he joined Questor, he started talking to me about it and I said, Why not? Let's do it. And about halfway through the writing process, Brett called me up and he said, "Hey, I'd love for us to write this together." And to not only bring together his client side experience, but also my agency experience. And so he wrote the first draft and we sat in a room for three straight days with a colleague of ours and we went back and forth and rewriting ...
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    22 mins
  • How To Love Your Customers So They Love You Back

    How To Love Your Customers So They Love You Back
    Jul 2 2024
    I'm Mark Reed Edwards. Welcome back to Confessions of a Marketer. This week, we have Ben Afia, who describes himself as a consultant, speaker, and author who's had his fill of cold corporate organizations treating their employees and customers like robots. So his mission is to make businesses more human. And to that end, he has a new book out called The Human Business: How to Love Your Customers So They Love You Back (https://benafia.com/book). I've known Ben probably for about 15 years. We've worked together and he's been on this podcast a number of times. Transcript Ben, it's great to have you back. Ben Afia: Thank you very much for having me on, Mark. It's a pleasure. Mark Reed-Edwards: For those people out in the audience who don't know you, could you just sketch out your career history and how you came to write this book that I'm holding in my hands? Ben Afia: So I started specializing in language at Boots, the chemist in the UK. In that role, I was working in brand strategy. And looking in particular at the voice of the brand and managing copywriting across the business. But I got made redundant about 20 years ago, decided it was time to go solo with a new baby on the way and about to move house, it was the perfect time to start a business. And so it turned out to be so my Boots colleagues went off to various places and encouraged me into companies like Eon, Barclays, Legal and General, and so my freelance career went from there. And I started as a copywriter specializing in brand tone of voice. But clients very quickly were asking me to extend that. So we were looking at the language and this is the language that people might be using in the marketing team, writing communications, but also the language in customer service and throughout the business, indeed. And so we were asked to train people in writing skills, but also in spoken empathy skills. So when the contact center people are on the phone with customers, they are speaking and then confirming things in writing. So that started to extend the work that we were doing. And very quickly, I realized that really what we were doing was change. So I started looking, this is probably 15, 16 years ago when we first worked together, probably thinking about how do we help this change to stick? How do we get the right behaviors throughout an organization? And for me, the change really stems from the brand, from the brand strategy, your vision, purpose, values, behaviors. It's all an extension of the behavior on the front line. So that all of these things join up. And I ended up realizing that really I was working on three things. I was looking at the culture or the employee experience. I was looking at the brand or the brand strategy. And I was also looking at the customer experience. So that's what I ended up trying to pull together in my book because I just needed to organize that thinking in a way that might make sense to the companies that I was working with. And the insight that had come to me was that. Unless you align your culture and your brand, you can't possibly give the experience to customers that you hope. Or that they hope to receive because you end up promising through your marketing, things that you can't deliver through your service. And the only way to join those up is to align culture and brand. Mark Reed-Edwards: And there's nothing more disappointing than to see some kind of marketing campaign that says, you know, our store is a great place to visit. And you go there and there's a disconnect between what you see in their marketing and what you experience. And so what you do is you kind of connect those two. Ben Afia: Totally. A few years ago, I was running a workshop. I had 40 customer service people and the company, who will remain nameless for the moment, had just launched their new brand strategy. So they had a new strapline, a new campaign, and this had gone public. So I had 40 people in customer service in this workshop. And I said, what do you think of your exciting new strategy? 40 faces just looked at me blankly. Nobody bothered to brief them. And this is the disconnect I'm talking about. You know, if you're going to send messages out to your customers, the first people they're going to talk to in your stores, in customer service, they need to know all about it. They need to be briefed. They need to be trained. They need to be ready to deliver that service, to deliver that promise. Mark Reed-Edwards: Many companies think of the brand as just a visual thing, right? So, we redesigned the website, we have a new logo. And maybe a new strap line or something, and maybe some new brand language, but that's kind of where it ends. And it's a top down procedure. I know when you and I worked together, I think about 15 years ago, that project, the verbal identity, tone of voice, rose out of us doing a revamp of the way the company looked. And it became really evident that we needed to not just put a lick of paint on things, but to ...
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    35 mins
  • Add the Bravery Trick to Your Marketing Toolkit

    Add the Bravery Trick to Your Marketing Toolkit
    Jun 11 2024
    Mark Reed-Edwards: My guest on Confessions of a Marketer today is Ed Evarts—author of The Bravery Trick: Four Ways to Say Hard Things. The book has been praised by scholar Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School as untangling the behavior of bravery in ways that allow us to move forward. The Bravery Trick (https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Ed-Evarts/dp/1734500441) is available on Amazon. Ed is the founder and president of Excellius Leadership Development, which focuses on helping its clients build awareness of how others experience them in the workplace so they can manage that experience effectively. He’s written two other books and is host of the Be Brave at Work podcast. If you're wondering what bravery has to do with marketing, well, everything, really. So be brave and keep listening. I've also known Ed for longer than I'd care to admit, but it's great to have him here. Ed, welcome. Ed Evarts: Thank you, Mark. I think we met when we were toddlers, or at least. Mark Reed-Edwards: Yeah, preschool. Yeah. But anyway, we won't go into that. Could you tell me a bit about your career and what led you to found Excellius? Ed Evarts: So I spent a number of years post college working in retail and worked for a number of local New England retailers, Jordan Marsh, Filene's and Lechmere, who are all gone. I left retailing in 1998 and began working at a records management company called Iron Mountain. I was at Iron Mountain for almost 10 years. I got laid off from Iron Mountain in 2008 and was at a juncture in my life where I really didn't want to work for a company any longer. And so I spent that summer networking and talking with people about how to start your own business, which for somebody who had been employed with others for my whole career, I had no idea how to start my own business and what to focus on. So I did that that summer. And then in the fall of 2008, decided to open up my own practice, which at first I called Evart's Coaching because I wanted people to know who I was and what I was doing. And then two to three years later converted it to Excellius Leadership Development. Mark Reed-Edwards: It's funny how layoffs can have a catalytic effect on your life, not just economically, but sometimes success can come out of the hardest points in your life. Ed Evarts: Well, I have built a new relationship with the person who laid me off at iron mountain. And just to tell that story quickly: my performance review was late and this boss called me and said, "Ed, I'm ready to give you your performance review. Can you come to my office at four o'clock today?" And I said, "Sure." So I was excited to get my performance review. I went into her office and I sat down and she said, "In reality, Ed, I'm not here to give you your performance review. I'm here to let you know that we've made a decision to eliminate your role at the company." So for that day and for a few years following it, it was the worst day of my professional career. And I can say with all honesty, Mark, 16 years later, it was the best day of my professional career because they kicked me out and I had to make some decisions, which I was not anticipating needing to make. And it just opened up a whole slew of opportunities. And I joke, I think today I'd still be at Iron Mountain if I didn't get kicked out. And so to your point, it was you know, a great, great opportunity that at first felt horrible. Mark Reed-Edwards: I have a similar story, which we won't go into, because this is all about you, Ed. So, I'd love you to share the story about your podcast, Be Brave at Work. Ed Evarts: So I would say about five years ago, I had coffee with a colleague that I worked with at Lechmere, I think 20 years previously. And so when I left Lechmere, this person and I did not stay in contact at all. And then when I left Iron Mountain in 2008, we began connecting virtually. And so said hi on LinkedIn and checked in on LinkedIn. And I think about 10 years after that, he said, let's go get a coffee, let's catch up and hear what's going on in our careers. So we met for a cup of coffee at the proverbial Starbucks in Waltham and we were updating each other on our careers. And he told me he was starting a podcast production company. And I said something innocent, like, "Wow, I've always wanted to start a podcast." And he said, "Gee, Ed, what would it be on?" And I said, I really believe without missing a beat, "I think I'd want to talk about being brave at work." And so that wonderful colleague who I met and who sparked this idea of being brave at work is none other than the great Mark Reed-Edwards. Mark Reed-Edwards: No, that's me? Ed Evarts: That's you. Mark Reed-Edwards: That was a really interesting conversation that we had, because it was, quite innocently, it was just a couple of people who hadn't seen each other in 20 something years, just grabbing coffee and updating them. And it shows the value of meeting face to face and just having conversations with no pretext and...
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    18 mins

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