Embracing Marketing Mistakes
Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the world’s leading irreverent podcast for senior marketers who are tired of the polished corporate b*llshit.
Join Chris Norton and Will Ockenden, founders of the award-winning Prohibition PR, as they sit down with industry leaders to dissect the career-ending f*ck-ups they’d rather forget. The show moves past any pretty vanity metrics to uncover the brutal, honest truths behind marketing disasters, from £30,000 SEO black holes and completely failed companies, to social media crises that went globally viral for all the wrong reasons.
We don't just celebrate the f*ck-ups; we extract the tactical blueprints you need to avoid them yourself. If you are a business owner, or a CMO looking for a competitive advantage that only comes from real-world experience, this is your weekly masterclass in resilience and strategy.
- Listen for: Raw stories from top brands, ex-McKinsey strategists, and industry disruptors.
- Learn from: The errors that cost thousands and the recoveries that saved careers.
- Get ahead by: Turning other people's nasty disasters into your unfair market advantage.
If you have a story to tell and would like to appear on the show, tell us your biggest marketing mistake and drop us a line.
Embracing Marketing Mistakes
Latest Episodes
EP 107: Award-winning ads stopped driving growth says Steve Harrison
Steve Harrison has spent over 40 years in advertising. He rose to Creative Director at Ogilvy, then founded Harrison Troughton Wunderman, building one of the most awarded direct marketing agencies in the world and winning 18 Cannes Lions.
What Losing a £10K Tape Taught This BBC Journalist
Veteran tech journalist Spencer doesn’t hold back in this refreshingly honest episode filled with media mishaps and marketing missteps. From confidently predicting the iPad would never take off to losing £10,000 worth of BBC footage in a single...
EP 106: Ant Cousins Explains Why Handing Empathy to AI Almost Went Wrong
In this episode of Embracing Marketing Mistakes features Ant Cousins unpacking a moment where trusting AI with empathy nearly caused real harm.Ant Cousins is Vice President of Product at Meltwater and has spent over 25 years working acr...
The Costly Hiring Habit That Nearly Broke Sarah Clay’s Business
Ever hired someone just because you clicked with them? You are not alone. In this candid episode, our guest admits to recruiting based on personality instead of business needs. The result was duplicate roles, major skill gaps, and tough decisio...
How My Coca-Cola Site Tour Ended in Disaster - Richard Shotton
Marketing mistakes happen to everyone, even the so-called experts. We’ve seen everything from press releases that accidentally went viral for the wrong reasons to brand names so complicated even the CEO couldn’t spell them. But there’s somethin...