Baiba’s career is varied to say the least. Starting with a bachelor of visual arts at university where she was dissuaded from pursuing a career in this field, to later attempts at breaking the small glass ceiling of male advertising strategists in her native Latvia. After some account management experience at both Ogilvy and Grey group she landed a strategist role at an agency in the Czech Republic, later working at Kantar Millward Brown. During COVID she started a community dedicated to serving fellow strategists around the world - pushing the profession forward. Now she works mostly freelance in between guest lectures at Miami Ad School and a mix of other pursuits from her new base in Berlin. You couldn’t get someone closer to the front line in the advertising agency world who also has a healthy cross functional chunk of experience.   Sometimes referred to as The Mark Pollard of Europe. She specializes in brand strategy and creative strategy.  In this episode you’re going to get a good grounding in the history of strategists, formerly known as account planners. You'll learn where the role came from. Why it is needed. What the role looks like today (for better or for worse). Why you need access to one when working with an agency and all of the good, the bad and the ugly within the modern world of advertising.   But what also leaks out are some very interesting comments about the modern state of the client agency relationship. The problems on both sides and how we can solve them together aligned in the pursuit of better work. You'll learn how to brief better. How to tell an experienced planner from a junior one (or influencer cult follower). You'll learn which strategy frameworks you can use and which ones are overrated. You'll also learn why insights are not essential for good strategy - and much more. As usual, many common myths will be debunked and if you don’t learn something new, you haven’t been listening.  So what are you waiting for?

Brain hurt scale = 3/10. Andres Glusman was experimenting and validating products before the lean startup term was coined. It started in college selling peanuts at baseball games. Progressed to testing ads for the world's first digital agency. He was split testing Winnie the Pooh banner ads manually before ad software existed. Which led to his former agency boss getting him to solve an early traction problem for a startup called Meetup. Lashings of sales hustle and his revolutionary test-and-learn approach helped land Meetup their first round of funding and as they say, the rest is history. But Andres' success was no accident. Raised by a family of scientists and years before behavioral economics even had a name, he combined an early interest in science with psychology and economics. Now, Andres is revered the world over as one of the OG's of the lean startup and experimentation-based product growth method. However, in this episode we challenge the lean startup method as well as the data-driven culture favored by startups the world over. We talk about the importance of context. Using the right approach for the right stage of the business' maturity. Something full of tradeoffs and unavoidable error. But as he says, you need to, '...live with a tonne of error, because the alternative to that error is just more error'. "You want to change behavior. Everyone is trying to get people to behave in a certain way, so understanding behavior first means you're most likely able to, but it [experimentation] can be done wrong and done too much - and I've done both. People got hooked on the sauce." Also, find out which new product Andres is launching this week which will be a potential game-changer for the advertising world So strap yourself in for a ride as we explore the whole dynamic between decision making and political or opinion based decision making. While weaving loads of stories from his career into the mix. There's something in here for everyone no matter how advanced your knowledge. Peanuts....get your peanuts here

Brain hurt scale 7/10. Mike Talor helps us put the last 5 episodes on Marketing Measurement into practical context. Having started a growth agency many years ago and still an active practitioner in the field, there was perhaps no one more appropriate to talk to about this topic.  We've spoke to Elisa Choy about sentiment tracking, Jonathan Rolley about advertising media measurement, Edgar Baum about brand tracking, Michael Kaminsky about MMM and Koen Pauwels about econometrics. But often, what you should do in a perfect world, is very different to the realities of actually implementing these systems within different organizations.  So this episode looks at them all and puts it into context. Political navigation. Firm size and maturity. Different cultures and approaches etc.  We tap into his wisdom at how to go about it.

Don't fear - this isn't an episode about accounting but rather how understanding some financial fundamentals can make you a far better marketer or growth professional. This is the point where marketing professional's career otherwise plateaus. If you've ever had trouble getting initiatives or projects approved, often it's not political. It's just that the business case is weak. So I thought that if we can understand how accountants and finance think - marketing and growth professionals will be able to get more projects they know are valuable to the business, approved. And as you'll find out, both camps think very, very differently. In fact they naturally clash in many core areas from mindset to through to general approach and responsibilities. So who better to speak with than Jason Andrew. He's a CA accountant, corporate finance qualified, business owner and marketer who has personally executed a lot of the marketing for his own businesses. What is accounting? How is it different to Finance? What numbers and metrics should we all understand before pursuing our growth-related projects. What hard lessons did he learn about marketing and growth on his entrepreneurial journey? Vice versa, what hard lessons should growth and marketing people learn about the accounting and finance profession? After this episode you'll see eye to eye and at the very least understand how both disciplines can work better together. 

Is the best path to growth dependent on retaining the customers you already have, or by acquiring new ones? This is a major bane of contention depending on who you talk to, but today we're exploring Anita's side of the argument which is all about churn reduction strategy (a.k.a retention). But in doing so, we talk about so much more, including the pivotal role the sales process plays into this whole debate, as well as customer success, support, brand and marketing.  If you are bleeding customers, this is a must-listen.  If your sales team are hitting quota, and your figures look strong, but customer's don't renew, and CLV is poor, this is a must-listen.  What macro factors play into your figures and how much can you bend those mathematical ratios? There's not much more to say.  Start listening and improve your knowledge of how growth actually works.  Oh and Earl Grey tea is tasty.  But I can't help but think how many people have churned from this podcast now...food for thought

Everyone client-side wants to know which channels or mediums they should be investing in. Because they want the ones which get the most ‘results’ for the lowest cost. Some will trust their vendor or agency to answer this question. But, if they want to know the real answer in a nutshell...well it depends. It depends on many factors. Factors which this episode will reveal - in detail. Jonathan Rolley from Direct Response Media, specializes in a branch of scientific media planning which focuses on customer outcomes (the response). In this interview we’ll uncover the mistakes many brands make (even the biggest ones) and you’ll learn how to choose more wisely when allocating your media budget. Along the way, we also uncover all the dirty, dark secrets of the media world which plague the typical agency client relationship. As well as challenge many myths and widely-held beliefs within the industry. How does human bias play a large role in which channels brands invest in? How do media agency planners hide higher-profit margin media inventory into your plan? How does increasing brand awareness not result in increased sales revenue? What step in the media planning process do most brands skip? What perverse incentives drive agencies to push certain media over others? This is a juicy interview and I ask many questions many are not game to answer. To his credit, Jonathan answers them all. Take the red media pill if you dare and listen to this episode.

How do you do marketing for a tech company? Well we asked someone who's been there since the first tech bubble pop in 2001. We learn how marketing in the tech world has changed over the past 20 years. What's stayed the same and what's changed. What's the latest and greatest and everything else in between. Robin Daniels is the current CMO of Matterport and ex-CMO of WeWork, and he's held senior positions at Box, Vera, Salesforce and more prior. He's experienced the whole gambit of the SaaS world and stems from a solid product marketing background. So we had to find out how he approaches marketing in the modern tech world world. What to do, what not to do and everything in between.  For all references, mentions and trailers related to this episode, visit this page

There's nothing worse than acting on poor advice. Sometimes it can be better to do nothing at all in retrospect. As a business owner, how to you ensure that you're receiving the best quality advice at the time? What are the different options out there and what are their pros and cons? Louise is the founder of The Advisory Board Center, the world's only global body for formalized advisory boards. In this interview she explains why it can be so effective to leverage world-class, independent advisers who work collaboratively to solve complex business problems. Every business right now is looking at ways to maximize the economics within their organisations.We discuss the difference between an advisors and consultants, her success using an advisory board to grow her own company, why the US was obsessed with Australian lemon myrtle during WW2 and even penguins. If you are a business owner, board member, executive or entrepreneur, this is essential listening. For more information about things referenced, mentioned in the episode or trailers go here

Post COVID the online economy is booming but which retailers are being left behind? What new technology is out there to help retailers replicate the in-store experience online? What does retail look like in the future as traditional, globalised production networks are put pressure by economic lock-downs. Shadi Taleb gives us a detailed glimpse into this future. He tells us about the most lucrative new marketing channel that exists but which few marketers are familiar with - mass personalization. His team has created tech which makes this process cost effective, even for the smallest brands in the market. We go through his entrepreneurial journey, how he found a gap in the market and how he views himself as a facilitator in a market that's being put under immense competitive strain.  From his work with major brands such as BigW, Nestle, and Mondelez (owner of Cadbury) through to pioneering world-first, personalized AR experiences. If you’re interested in product marketing, personalization, retail, eCommerce and tech, this is an episode you shouldn't miss. This is his second podcast interview ever, so quite a rare coup for this marketing channel series.  For all references, mentions and trailers, go to this page