Embracing Marketing Mistakes
Welcome to the world's number one podcast on Marketing Mistakes by Prohibition PR. This podcast is specifically for senior marketers determined to grow their brands by learning from real-world screw ups.
Each week, join hosts Chris Norton and Will Ockenden, seasoned PR professionals with over 45 years of combined experience, as they candidly explore the marketing failures most marketers would rather forget. Featuring insightful conversations with industry-leading marketing experts and value-packed solo episodes, the show tries to uncover the valuable lessons from genuine marketing disasters and, crucially, the tips and steps you need to take to avoid them.
Chris and Will bring practical experience from founding the award-winning PR agency Prohibition PR, where they have successfully guided top brands to significant growth through PR strategy, social media, media relations, content marketing, and strategic brand-building.
Tune in to turn f*ck ups into progress, mistakes into lessons, and challenges into real-life competitive advantages. Well, we hope so anyway.
Embracing Marketing Mistakes
FAIL: Direct Marketing Taught Me Everything Advertising Couldn't
In this mini series where we take a look back to our guest's mistakes they have shared, we have Patrick Collister's marketing mistake.
Everyone makes mistakes in their marketing careers, but few are willing to discuss them openly. In this refreshingly candid conversation, our guest reveals how a seemingly catastrophic career move - joining a French-owned direct marketing agency as creative director – became an unexpected turning point in their professional journey.
The position seemed promising on paper, but reality proved harsh. Billed at £1,000 per hour, Patrick found themselves in the peculiar position of being too expensive for account directors to utilise in client meetings. "Not a single account director wanted me to go to a single meeting with their clients because I was going to massively damage their numbers," they explain. This structural dysfunction made success impossible, leading to termination after about a year – "a blessed relief to both parties."
What makes this story compelling isn't the failure itself, but the unexpected benefits that followed. This career detour exposed our guest to direct marketing precisely as digital transformation was revolutionising the field, turning what was once dismissively called "folding shit" into the foundation of modern advertising. "If you haven't got a URL and if there isn't a whole series of consumer experiences that comes out of your communication, then you're a bloody idiot," our guest notes, highlighting how direct marketing principles have become fundamental to all effective advertising.
You can listen to Patrick's full episode here
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The podcast is all about embracing marketing mistakes. With your experience that you've got, you must have made a few. What mistakes in marketing have jumped out at you that you've made in your career that you could share with people that they'll find useful?
Patrick Collister:Well, I mean to be honest, chris, I've made all of the normal mistakes of stubbornness, pride and, frankly, stupidity that you could make. I guess I made a terrible mistake at one stage of going into as creative director of a direct marketing agency, and it was a terrible mistake because, first of all, it was owned by the French, and the second thing is that this company had had a very difficult financial history that I knew nothing about. All of the account directors were judged and remunerated on how successfully they ran those accounts and my time was billed out, I think, as a thousand pounds an hour at the time, which meant that not a single account director wanted me to go to a single meeting with their clients because I was going to massively damage their numbers, which meant that I simply wasn't able to do the job. Anyway, after about a year and a bit, I got the sack, which was a blessed relief to both parties. In many ways, it was an enormous mistake joining this company, but, on the other hand, what it did do is that it opened me out. It opened up direct marketing to me just at the time when direct marketing was coming out of being you know what people just respectfully called folding shit but into.
Patrick Collister:As a result of the digital age becoming almost all communication, all advertising you know is know is now direct. I mean, if you haven't got a URL and if there isn't a whole series of consumer experiences that comes out of your communication, then you're a bloody idiot. So I made a terrible mistake. I earned less money, I got fired, I was humiliated and embarrassed, but it was brilliant and I ended up learning so much more and meeting some fantastic people.
Patrick Collister:I mean one of the things I found really fascinating when I ran a top agency I got to know loads of other creative directors and then I went into direct marketing and the creative directors I met in direct marketing were more business-oriented, more thoughtful, had wider interests outside the industry than any of the people I'd come across in advertising. So in many ways that was a blessing in itself and of course, they've all gone on. People like Emma Della Foss, you know, has gone on to be the chief creative officer for Ogilvy and then for Edelman and has now just retired, but you know so many of them. Steve Harrison, with Creative Director, started his own business which he sold to WPP. He's now a writer of books.
