Marketing Therapy Session Introduction

Speaker 1 0:00

We need to ask you about your mistake, richard. So our podcast is a bit of therapy for marketing people out there, so it's quite informal, but we've had everything from people who've made little mistakes. I've shared mine, where I sent a press release out that shouldn't have gone out and got national exposure everywhere. So, too, we've had all sorts of things, like somebody who set up a pet store and named it really complicated and nobody knew how to spell it or find it, so it didn't do very well. We've had all kinds of different mistakes. Obviously you do a lot of testing, so I would imagine you make less mistakes in the world of behavioural science, don't you in your day job behavioral science, don't you in your day job?

Richard's Coca-Cola Client Disaster

Speaker 2 0:48

well, if you're, if you're just testing things you know are going to work for certain, I would argue you're not testing enough. You want to be testing things that might not work. I think it'd be definitely a mistake if you didn't do that, because I would always argue that the odds are massively stacked in your favor because if, as a brand, you test something, it doesn't work, well, you turn it off after a week. Downside is very capped. If you test something and it works, you run it forever so that there's a real imbalance. You know loss is a minimal, upside is infinite. So I think you are testing too little. If everything's working, you'll be testing the most well-known basic principles and you want to be testing some of the either lateral interpretations, those principles or maybe some of the lesser known ideas as well so what have you had?

Speaker 2 1:39

something that's gone spectacularly wrong in in marketing um I well, I mean, if it's a personal mistake, I mean, I think the worst thing I ever did and this is showing my age don't mean it even happens any longer.

Speaker 2 1:53

I remember when I just started in marketing I said I've been about 22 and the key client was coca-cola and we were going on a site tour with them to look at all the posters to make sure they're up properly and look nice and in good positions. And I can remember going out the night before and getting so drunk I woke up like at midday the next day and I was meant to have met the client at nine o'clock. So I think, as things go wrong, I think that was probably the moment where I was most in danger of being fired by the agency I worked with, uh, but luckily my boss took a reasonably relaxed attitude and they kind of met me on, I don't know, the a127 or something pulled over in the label. I picked me up and, uh, I just looked green in the back. Uh, I think I was more a figure of amusement for that's the second um.

Speaker 2 2:44

That's the second similar mistake. We had one a few weeks ago, didn't we along those lines?

Similar Mistakes and Unexpected Wins

Speaker 1 2:50

Yeah, he went out to an awards and they unexpectedly won an awards and he got absolutely leathered at the awards. You know Jager bombs, here we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Forgot he had a pitch at 9am the next morning, oh my God, and then had to go and pitch and lead the pitch Totally hung over.

Speaker 2 3:07

He won it, though, I think, didn't he? Yeah, he can't remember any of the pitch.

Speaker 1 3:11

Maybe that was the peak, he can't remember any of it, but he won it, so yeah.

Speaker 2 3:16

Higher expectations of him, yeah.