Adapting Versus Focusing

Will Ockenden 0:00

You spend three decades flying from one opportunity to the next, building everyone else's brand, only to realise you've neglected your own. Today, Mark Terry Lush, founder and shareholder at Make Honey and the Honey Partnership, has worked with more than 150 Chinese and European brands, breaks down how confusing adaptability with focus shaped his career and what it cost. If you've ever felt like you're constantly adapting, always in motion but never landing anywhere solid, or watched your own brand get lost while building others, this episode will help you regain focus and build a career with direction and impact. I'm Chris Norton and this is Embrace and Marketing Mistakes, where senior marketers turn hard lessons into better campaigns to make sharper decisions. Today, Will and I are joined by Mark Terry Lush, PR and marketing leader who's worked with iconic names from Conde Nast to leading Chinese tech brands. Mark spent years flying from project to project, chasing new skills and wild situations, only to realise that adaptability without focus can leave you feeling adrift. We'll break down why it happened, where control slipped, and what Mark does differently now. In this episode, you'll learn how to avoid the trap of endless adaptability, how to build a brand that stands out in a sea of sameness, and what it takes to turn hard-won lessons into a distinctive, successful career. And he also shares a very interesting flying story. Enjoy. Mark Terry Lush, welcome to the show. Hello, good to be here. So, Mark, do you want to just um tell us a little bit about how you got into doing what you're doing today? I'm quite interested to hear your take because I've seen you've worked for various agencies at the beginning. You've had quite a lengthy career. Um, three decades, you've said, which makes my era.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

I was cheating about the actual years.

Will Ockenden 2:04

So, do you want to like just yeah, give us a a bit about where you where you come from and what your expertise is?

SPEAKER_02 2:10

Right. Well, I I started my career working in magazines with National Magazine Company and Condé Nas, and I worked for their distribution company. This is way, way back in the beginning of the 90s. And it was at a time when magazines ruled the earth, and you know, you could get a copy of Vogue, and it was like the size of a telephone book, and and I used to market everything from Vogue and House and Garden to Viz and all the Paul Raymond pornography titles, uh, like and and Bob Gucciani's penthouse and good knows what else. So I had one of the most popular desks in the office. It's the sort of thing that you wouldn't get away with now, and these offices would clearly be raided now, and so they should be. So I was always into the media uh after I left university. I went into PR very, very early on, after doing some editing and some journalism, worked in B2B, working for a lot of media companies in in PR terms, went on to work in consumer PR and ended up working um with some of the luminaries in the PR industry, some of whom are in have been in prison and are now dead, um, some of whom have just sort of retired but you know, inspired things like absolutely fabulous. So I had quite a grounding in the 90s of working with some quite iconic PR people who taught me a lot about you know how to tell and sell a story. And I think the that actually turned me into the person who didn't want to just do PR and just do marketing. I actually sort of wanted to be the story at times, and that led me uh probably to my cost to end up sort of where I've ended up today, as a sort of combination of trying to use my career and use my job to further my own narcissistic endeavors.

Will Ockenden 3:53

Narcissistic endeavors. What you should do is launch a podcast, Mark. That's what you need to do in your announcement. The ultimate.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

I mean, that's that ultimate brings us sort of round to what my biggest mistake is. And in thinking about this show and what is my biggest mistake, it actually is over the last 30 years, it's probably about confusing adaptability with focus and direction. I've spent years trying to sort of keep up with myself, being versatile and throwing myself into wild situations and new skills and new cultures. Um, but ultimately, adaptability just means you don't focus on anything whatsoever. And I think it's a glorious lesson for people. You can have a lot of fun on the way, but one day you wake up three years, three decades into your career, and you're like, hmm, what have I got to show for it? I've been building everybody else's brand for the past 30 years, and I've sort of forgotten about my own.

Will Ockenden 4:45

But you won't you own your own agency, don't you?

SPEAKER_02 4:48

Uh well, with Make Honey, I'm a I'm a shareholder. I founded a group with some wonderful people about 11 years ago called the Honey Partnership. And that was made up of there's about seven of us at the start, and there are now four of the original founders left. And the Honey Partnership started out as a single focus agency. It was a social creative agency, and it was aimed at helping Chinese companies um grow and scale and uh and and and go

From Magazines To PR Legends

SPEAKER_02 5:20

west. Because at the time, and I'm going back 11, 12 years, kind of we were social, but we're not as social as we are now. We kind of leapt into this thing called social creative, and we thought the Chinese are coming. Everybody wants to go to China and sell all their stuff there. And I'd been working in and out of China since the late 80s, and myself and a business partner, we realized that China's coming, he's gonna come and it's gonna eat your lunch. But culture-wise, if you went to China, knowing the language would just be the price of admission, you're never gonna get the culture. Anything you think you know about Chinese business and Chinese culture, just forget it. You you you don't know it, you don't understand it. So we started out with our partner in Shenzhen, and um, we had an agency, we set up a business in in Europe. This single foot focus entity was was helping Chinese technology companies with their brand strategy going west. And that over the years was very successful. I've personally worked with somebody told me yesterday, uh 150 Chinese companies, from startups right the way through to the global leaders in their particular category. I mean, I have worked for some UK companies and European companies as well, but China seems to be my shtick, it seems to be the thing that I'm I've got quite good at over the years. I'm not quite sure, I've forgotten what we were talking about, but they you asked where I came from. So over the years, we had the Honey Partnership, and then people within the agencies started coming up with great ideas. Let's have a focused special agency, a specialist agency in this or that or the other, or whatever. So we ended up with an agency in um in San Francisco that specialised in crowdfunding. We had an agency that specialised in adult entertainment, one that we launched in in uh Amsterdam, which is still going, it's called Hey Honey. It specializes in social creative for lifestyle brands, and uh one or two others along the way. Lots have come and they've gone and they've closed, they've been folded into whatever. In about 2018, after I think it was after Brexit, there's a big crash, and I got a phone call one morning. I think it was at the gym, I got a phone call from a client said, you know, that one million euro project that we promised you. Well, because of Brexit, we can't do it anymore. And I was like, Oh, okay, okay, um, we're gonna need to close down a few things and unfortunately consolidate. And make honey was born. And yes, we've got to the point now. And make honey was born, and I started leading that, and I was really interested in sport and lifestyle and China and technology, and ever since 2018, that's what I've been doing. But I'm still a founder of the Honey Partnership, which is now a group. We have an agency in the UK, Make Honey, we have Hey Honey in Amsterdam and Shenzhen Honey in Shenzhen, and that's where that brings us up to date, that's where we are today. Before that, I ran agencies, and before that, I worked with places like Jackie Cooper, Ketchum, and um a few other places before that, and before that I was in magazines and working in with Viz Magazine and all sorts of stuff in the great heady days of magazines. I love the smell of magazines, I still do.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

I love Viz Magazine as well. I've not read that for a few years.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

Still going, it's amazing. I was looking forward to trying to see whether they still do their Christmas special.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Oh yeah, I've I've got a copy of um Roger's Profanosaurus on my desk at work, actually, which I must admit is a is a is a good read. Does HR know that you've got that on your desk? Uh I am HR, so it's fine. Who polices the police? Um so look taking a Chinese brand then and and bringing it into the UK market then. So I mean, talk to us about that. Give us give it talk us through a a time you've you you've sort of done that. I mean, do you fundamentally have to change and adapt the brand then? And and kind of what you know what big question, but you know, how how different is it is a brand that's popular in China bringing it here? Do you have to break it down and build it back up again? Or or are there elements that will resonate with UK markets?

SPEAKER_02 9:15

Yes and no. There are some products that are on sale in China that are on sale here, and they're almost exact they're exactly the same. And then there are products, take a smartphone, there's a reason why a smartphone might be somewhat different, or you might get a different flagship in China than you do over here. So um the tech companies are very good at understanding what it is that they can uh put on sale in the US or Europe, you know, various different uh reasons why CE marks, this, that, and the other certifications, uh, and IP and whatnot. Um, but fundamentally, if you're selling in China, you're selling to a very different culture,

Founding Honey And Going West

SPEAKER_02 9:50

and you've got a very, very big audience, and there are different platforms and there are different tools. And the way that Chinese uh business culture is, you know, if you throw enough out, then you know, some of it sticks. And over here, it's much, much more nuanced. The fact that uh, of course, we have however many nations in Europe, however many languages, however many cultures it's, and then you take the US, and the US is made up of very different cultures, east, west, north, south. So if a client comes to us and says we want to launch a product, a smartwatch, a smartphone, uh, a robot, I don't know, some piece of smart tech, an EV or whatever it is, then in the early days, it's very much they would come to us and say we want to launch in Europe. And you're like, Oh, that's nice. Which market? All of them. Okay, what's your budget? Well, our budget is X, and it's like, well, that'll do you for one market. You know, how are we going to now turn that into something which is going to work in in about six or seven or eight different languages? And the US as well. And it's like, well, you know, that was overcoming the challenges of a lack of understanding about our geography and our culture was one of the biggest hurdles. And then there was the hurdle of, well, this is how we do it in China. And you know, you're you're then faced with, okay, I understand that, but this is how it's done over here. And sometimes you're faced with um individuals, whether it was a senior marketing person or not, who couldn't quite get that it has to be different. And as an example, you're both experienced in PR. You know, PR here, we go to a journalist, the journalist is the gatekeeper. If they're interested in our story, they'll write about it. And you position the story in whatever way you give them the right materials and assets that they need, if it's a piece of tech or whatever, and then you know, Bob's your uncle, you might get a review. Um, over there, it's very much it's expected that if your press release goes out or your story goes out, it's written about and it's written about potentially positively. So you overcome, and I have that at the moment with a client right now who has launched some products at EFA and at CES earlier this year. Um, they've been written about as these products are coming, and now they don't want the products to be sent out for review because they're worried about getting a negative review. They're worried about somebody not writing about it as in in a popular sense. So that's a very, very difficult conversation because you're trying to teach them the culture of this is how journalism works or how media works in this country, this country, this country. And again, there are nuances in the way that the US works, the German market works, or the French market. Not all media markets are the same. So you're trying to get them to understand how that is, but at the same time, it might be that they're mid-management, lower down, and maybe they've got a boss who's saying to them, This is what we want. You were supposed to get a KPI of X, you've delivered Y, that does not compute, that is a fail. And then you'll get into the realms of, well, there's a penalty. We're not going to pay you ever all the amount that we originally said we would. And contracts aside, we all love a good contract, the scope of work, terms and conditions, and sometimes you end up having a battle after the effect on what is reasonable or unreasonable. That's a huge sweeping generalization. It does happen all of the time. There's been a huge acceleration in the maturity of uh for marketing and PR within uh the sort of the Chinese companies that we work for. I I would say this that I think some of the most incredible brands that I work for, and those that have the most rigour and the most discipline and the most focus, particularly when it comes to return on investment, are the Chinese clients. And I figure that if I could work with any Chinese client, whether that's a HQ level or a regional or even a local level, then I can pretty much work with anybody. It's it's very, very difficult, it can be very frustrating, but equally, when it goes well, it can be incredibly rewarding. And I had some of my best and biggest case studies and successes are all down to working with uh Chinese tech companies.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Fascinating. Fascinating. Um we like a um we like a good kind of soapbox issue here on the show. And when we were doing our kind of pre um show research, there's there's a there's an issue you talk about a lot, which which we'd like to kind of dive into. And it's this idea of kind of um, and and I'm interested actually if this is a global issue, but you talk a lot a lot about this this sea of sameness when it comes to brands, um, and the fact that um, you know, really to kind of cut through um we need you I think you refer to refer to unique selling personalities. So is that a global issue, this sea of sameness, or is it something the UK's particularly um yeah you know affected by? And and talk to us about what what what this is.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Well, number one, it's it's always been with us. There are brands that uh there are lots and lots of Me Too brands. Lots, I mean you've only got to look on Amazon. If you're looking for on a power bank, if you're looking for anything on Amazon, you'll get a sea of lots of products which are very, very similar, the same. Um so you get a sea of sameness when it comes to the products, but then where is the distinctiveness that makes it stand out? Is that down to its reviews? Is that down to its emotional appeal, a pull on social media, some kind of PR story that connects you with it? The sea of sameness, if you think about um agriculture, you know, if you sow one crop, then you get a monoculture. And I think we're because of largely because of the acceleration of AI and people trying to adapt to tools and playing with various tools, that we're ending up with a monoculture in marketing. We're ending up with the fact that every LLM that you use, whether it's ChatGPT or Gemini or Perplexity or whatever it is, they've all been trained on everything that has come before it. So, therefore, how can anything be original? Therefore, how can anything be distinctive? And if you're trying to train an LLM on everybody's personality, how can you end up with something distinctive? So, my argument is that the sea of sameness in branding is largely down to uh quite a lot of brands which are using tools maybe for the first time, but they're using it as their creative director instead of as their assistant. And what you're losing is this human this judgment, this fact that that you will and you, Chris, and myself, we've been in the business for a long time. Our human judgment means a lot. The actual value of why clients buy us is because we can really see something before someone else can't, and we're blinded by by very, very polite LLMs telling us something which is which we think is great in a in a and packaging it up in a particular way. But the reason that people gravitate to you or Will or you, Chris, or anybody is usually down to your personality, and it's the value that you bring to uh your personal life, your professional life. And when I am engaging with a brand, you know, if a brand is trying to engage with me, what am I looking for? Well, everything is subconscious, but what I'm really looking for is does it appeal to me? You know, can I can I see that that brand being on my shelf? Can I see myself using it for whatever it is? And I'll check, I'll do what everyone else does. I'll check the reviews, I'll check this, that, and the other. But when you've got to make a difference between the two,

Launching Chinese Tech In Europe

SPEAKER_02 17:00

it's quite often not a unique selling point because most of the points are the same. You know, every I'm I'm working, I've worked with everything recently from baby monitors to battery packs to laptops to whatever. They've all got the same specs. You know, there's very, very little between them. Okay, maybe there's price. But what's going to make me gravitate towards it? Well, I want something to stand out, I want something to be distinctive. And so that's what I'm looking for. It's that it's almost the tall poppy that's standing up in the middle of the field that stands out and waves at you. That's the thing that your eye goes to. And I love we live in a world that's very, very symmetrical. Everything is perfect, everything is samey samey. And it's the things that stand out that are a little bit different, that are a bit quirky, that will actually make draw you towards them. And I think brands miss the opportunity to be distinctive, to move away from the mediocre. And I don't mean brave versus saviour. Brands don't have a right to talk about bravery, that's just rubbish. Um, it is all about doing something which really resonates and connects with your audience in the same way that you as a human being will walk into a room and connect or resonate with another human being.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

So at risk of oversimplifying it, you know, let's say I'm a brand, there'll be lots of um, you know, brand managers and and and senior marketers listening to this thinking, actually, uh I'm probably in the sea of sameness as well. So let's say we're we're in the the baby monitor sector. How do we I suppose how do we be more distinctive? You know, is it a period of self-reflection? I mean, what you know, what how without giving away your trade secrets?

SPEAKER_02 19:24

No, there's no trade secret secret, and this is just going to sound daft, but it it's it's look for your weird, look for your inner weird, you know, look for it. What is it that you that that universal truth? There's nothing new in finding a universal truth about a brand. That that point that you know, it's it's when people talk about a brand, there's usually one or two things that are said, and it's that thing when you're in a brainstorm, it's that kind of that moment where somebody says something, you're like, Oh, God, yeah, that's true. And that universal truth means something to everybody. You know, you don't do personas for a baby monitor or personas for a laptop or personas for a smartwatch, you know, you know, you go running, well, yeah, you do this, or yeah, you do the other. What you're looking for is that universal truth, that real human aspect of why do you use a brand? And that to strip it right back, it all comes down to benefits rather than features. And I get that a lot with my Chinese clients. They just send you the specs and the features and blah, blah, blah. And what you're looking for is what's the amazing benefit? What's the human truth? What's the universal truth about that smart projector? Uh, you know, what is it that really makes it special? Yes, what is its its personality? And it's not necessarily the box and the design and what it does. What can you say about it that makes it distinctive? Uh, and it may be it's weird, it may be that it just is got one thing about it that's slightly different, or it's one interpretation that you as a creative uh can identify and hang a story on. And then we come back to the storytelling, and that's the bit that I think we all like. We all want to be able to tell stories. That's why we're in this this job. That's why we that's why we do what we do is being able to tell a great story. And you find your universal truth and then find that story that resonates as but working backwards from who is your audience? Where are your audience? How are they conversing? What kind of tribes this, that, and the other in? But I don't really believe in personas. I believe in in personalities.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

So so can you can you kind of bring that to life with a with a I mean, obviously bearing in mind confidentiality, but an example of a brand you've worked with where you've found that that weird or that um you know that element and you've kind of focused in on it, that might be quite interesting.

SPEAKER_02 21:29

It might be. Well, I think we'll have to pause and have a tea break and then me come back. Um what I would say, instead of focusing on one particular brand, is this concept that uh a creative friend of mine called Lars Bastonhobe, Google him. He's ex-creative director of Google and many, many fabulous agencies. He came up with this idea of the pink Batman. You all know what Batman looks like, you know, you've instantly got a picture in your mind of Batman. Now, if I say to you, pink Batman, then all of a sudden you've got this image in your mind of Batman dressed in pink and you can't shake it off. So his theory is that you need to be thinking about what is your brand's pink Batman? How is it in that sea of sameness where your uh baby monitor or or whatever it is your your just tech product or whatever it is you're selling, how can it be somewhat pink? How can it be standout? How can it be different? How have you found that in a weird? So I hope that answers your question without going into the detail on some brand.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

And now I've got the image of Pink Batman in my head that I can't shake.

Will Ockenden 22:33

One thing that I thought would be quite good for this show is pitch nightmares, you know, where something goes wrong in a pitch. Have you had we've we had somebody who took a um who's a very um I actually shared it on LinkedIn today. Um we had a guy who came on the show and told us that he hired a magician for his uh for a for this um this pitch. And he did a magic trick in the middle of this uh with a newspaper, uh, folded it up, cut it into you know loads of little pieces, and then popped it out. And the client just he sort of did the trick, and the client just stared at them as if to say, what the fuck was that? And then uh he actually went, I'm gonna have to stop the pitch here because this isn't working, is it? And it's like I I think there's a great theme there to for we've all had pitch nightmares. I wonder if I wondered if you've ever had one or two that you you'd be willing to share.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

I I will, and I'll go I'll go, I won't mention the name of this luminary, but um she was notorious for being late coming into pitches. I am going, I'll I'll mention the brand. It was for it was a pitch we were doing for PlayStation, and it was in the mid to late 90s. And uh I'll never forget it because she was late coming in and she came in and sort of swished in, and the client was like, Oh, she's here, or we're like, Oh, she's here, and the magic is about to happen, and we're sort of going through the motions of this, that, and the other. Anyway, she sort of stands up to take Central center stage and then just just collapsed, just collapsed in front of everybody. And it was um, and it was, I think we were there, shout there were shouts of get her a Mars bar, get her a Mars bar, because she's her blood sugar level had dropped so much that she was having a diabetic thing, I'm not sure. But and I shouldn't laugh. Um, so somebody comes in with some water and and a Mars bar, and that's fed, and everybody sort of she goes and takes a seat and stuff like that, and and and it's it's all fine. We went on to win the pitch. That's the funny story there. I have been in pitches where people were drunk um back in the day when that was a thing and there was lunchtime drinking and whatnot, and you know, the the whole room just smelt of ale. This was a sort of afternoon pitch, not a first thing in the morning type pitch. Um, those things were always quite quite fun. But actually, that we we went on to win them. They were they were full of a lot of emotion and talking, and I think the passion uh came through on that. Some of the weirdest pitches that I've been on, there's one or two that I'm reminded of in the last 12 months, whereby it's been two or three o'clock in the morning, and we're pitching to a brand in Beijing or China uh or wherever Shanghai or Shenzhen, and

Culture Clashes And Media Realities

SPEAKER_02 25:05

it's a room full of full of people. You're literally you're on your Zoom call, and there's like 20 people in the room, and they're all kind of horseshoeed there, what have you, and then you're you're doing your I'm doing my thing, and it's maybe being translated. Sometimes they're in English, sometimes they're fully in Chinese, and sometimes it's a it's a bit of a mix. So you're doing those pitches, and um I I noticed that there were people asleep in their chairs, snoring between people that have just been laid down. That they're probably on their sixth or seventh pitch of the day, you know, their minds are blown, they don't know what's really going on.

SPEAKER_00 25:42

Somebody actually been asleep.

SPEAKER_02 25:44

Somebody told me that if if if someone's asleep, then it's it's a really good sign. I don't quite know how that works. How can I make they're not listening? They're not listening. So I I think I've had I've had authors, I'm a great believer in pitch theatre, and that's not about getting a magician in. It's more about dressing the room, and it's making the client feel very, very comfortable and very, very warm. But what the client wants to see is they want to see that connection between you and your colleagues. They want to see that you get on, that you are unified, that you are, I don't know, you've got each other's back, that you all believe in the one story, over-rehearsing, all that sort of thing. I'm not a great believer in that, but you know, telling stories in pitches is is a much better way of getting on a level with a client than it is just chucking away to data at them. The best thing for us is when we go into pitches, is we say, look, there's all this bit at the beginning about strategy and this, that, and that. Do you mind if we just forget that? You can read it later. We'll just dive straight into the fun stuff, which is the creative. And quite often that's a big nod because they just don't want to listen to one of the data and the internet.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

How many awards do you want as an agency and uh what your what your philosophy? I think I think um a lot of people spend way too long on that stuff, don't they? You know, and you're 20 minutes in and you're still talking about yourself rather than their business.

Will Ockenden 27:01

Well, Rob on LinkedIn does the videos, always goes, Hi, I'm the founder. Have you seen this one? He goes, uh, hi, I'm the founder. Um, I'm gonna talk for 10 minutes, and then you're never gonna see me again till next year. Yeah. That's like, oh, it's a good job. We can't we're too small to be able to do that, but it may be laugh.

SPEAKER_02 27:19

Well, I wouldn't tell our Chinese clients that we're award-winning, or we've got lots and lots of awards, so you can just buy them over there. So they're just like, well, it just powered. And then you've got is is how how rich you are.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

Wow. So I'm I'm guessing so some of those stories I think were from the the hedonistic mid-90s PR industry. What what was it like working in um were you in London then in the 90s?

SPEAKER_02 27:40

Yeah, yeah. Jackie Cooper was based on Poland Street, uh right in the throbbing heart of Soho. Uh the great days Ketchum was in um in Common Garden back then. So um it was great, you know. When I first started my career, not to sound like an old fart, but it was it was you know, I remember the first Apple Macintosh classic coming into the office and everybody sort of cooing and ooing and ring around it. Um I remember having mobile phones for the first time and going to events, things going wrong at events, and people trying to phone each other up and then not working, or your battery ran out. Um, there's those sort of silly things, but there were also times where people used to sort of party a lot harder. Um I was working, I was very, very connected with the lads magazines in that era. A lot of the editors are saying a lot of stories, you know, PlayStation, my clients were Carlsberg, John Smith, lots of beer brands, this, that, and the other. And um, and and and the relationships with the journalists was very much you could pick up a phone, you could go around, you'd meet them for you'd meet them for lunch. Uh, there's a lot of that, you'd meet them afterwards. Everyone was always going to parties. You know, if you've ever checked out the loaded era, uh, I think it might be on Netflix or iPlayer or something like that, you know, the things that they used to get up with, you know, PR companies weren't like that. PR companies wanted to be the journalists, but we were still part of some of the hedonism that was going on. And as I said at the start of this, you know, as well as wanting to tell the story, I wanted to be the story. And I'd been a bit of a journalist and a photographer, and I think I can't remember the exact occasion, but I was out so I was with somebody uh loaded or an editor at the time or FHM or whatever, and I used to pitch these stories. Sometimes they were to do with clients, and sometimes they were nothing to do with them. I ended up being commissioned to do a stream of adventure stories. You know, they were everything from go to South America uh and meet some football hooligans, take part in a in a in a riot at a football match. So I went to Buenos Aires and I took part in a riot uh with Bocker Juniors against River Plate. I got blindfolded and taken out of town, uh, and then I got brought back in, and next thing I know, I'm in the middle of a thing. So I wrote about it, I photographed it, and it was in Lads Mags. Um, I went to the States and learned to do the 900 with a skateboarding thing with with Tony Hawk. I had to go and visit a number of illegal massage parlours in 24 hours to see how many I could fit in in Manchester, 26 as it happens. Um and the one that sort of sticks out, which gives me kind of stayed with me all my life, is that I went, I was commissioned to learn to fly in 30 days. So after I went to San Diego, I guess I think it was, and uh, you know, joined this flight school, started doing all these things, and on one very, very, very misadventure, I went, I took a plane out one day. I think I got about 16 hours of flight experience, no maps, no navigation experience whatsoever. A thing called sea mist comes in off the Pacific, and all of a sudden you're up in the air, you look down, and there's just a blanket of of white, and you're like, Where am I? I have got not got a clue. And there's me trying to go from A to B. Um, I fly into you know, Top Gun. There's a thing called Miramar on Top Gun, where the Top Gun comes from, uh their their Air Force base. It's called Miramar. I flew accidentally into Miramar airspace in front of a whole bunch of helicopters, military helicopters were doing their thing. I don't think I'll ever shake the image of the pilot giving me the V's as I sort of tried to do an emergency something or other. With your 30 days experience. I did, and then I flew into a parachute drop zone that was live. Uh, and I'm in uh and then the next thing I think I flew accidentally into Mexico and the radio burst into life with the sort of, you know, who are you and what are you doing? Uh and I put on my best Biggles accents, you know, sorry, um blah blah blah. You know, I'm just trying to get back to Brown Airfield. Uh could you help me? And they're like, Yeah, go to this, that, and the other. Do a Mayday thing, turn the channel over, and then they sort of guide you back. And um, I did get sort of guided back to an airfield, and I I landed at this airfield. It wasn't the airfield where I was supposed to be, it was the wrong one. But I sort of thought, oh, I know where my airfield is, it's over that ridge of mountains over there. So I sort of touched down, and there's lots of big tall men in uniforms walking towards me, and I turned around and took off, and uh, and then tried to fly my way back and then get lost again, and then have to do the same emergency routine and ended up flying back and getting to my airfield um where I was supposed to be. I got an enormous amount of trouble the next huge amounts of trouble. Um, and I failed my flight test first time, second time, and on the third time I think he just had enough, and he was just like,

Escaping The Sea Of Sameness

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Yeah, you've passed. So I do technically have a pilot's licence from back in the day. But you know, it's that sort of thing, as again, as I said at the top, it's that sort of always just trying something new, that curiosity into everything, a master of nothing. Um has just given me a kind of quite a lot of colour when I go into in in with clients and meetings and perhaps overconfidence, um, but sometimes it gives you instinct, maybe it does give me permission because I've done stuff I can say almost what I like sometimes and get away with it. But uh you know, the lesson for the people I work with is you you need to be curious, you need to have that critical instinct, you need to have good judgment, you know. I've had a lot of bad judgment, I've done a lot of stupid things, but uh all of those stupid things have given me um I don't know, they've given me maybe an edge sometimes.

Will Ockenden 33:21

Um we've definitely got a title of this podcast then, um Flying Bla Flying Blindly with Mark Ferriller.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

Yeah, um those those days on um I mean I've I've I'm fascinated by Loaded. I mean it it it was actually I mean the lads mags really dumbed down, didn't they? And and and um but yeah, I mean that that's where when like zoo and nuts came out, it was just it was it was just kind of the you know a race to the bottom. But when loaded came out, it was it was edgy, it was interesting, it was different. Some of the journal, you know, and some um you know, some of the um some of the kind of the stories they published were were amazing. And I'm fascinated by the the culture, you know, when James Brown was editor and the the kind of I mean it it sounded wild and hedonistic. I mean I think half the launch team went to rehab and um are now teetotal, aren't they?

SPEAKER_02 34:17

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean they they they were bold, they were courageous in in the sense of what they were doing because they wanted to break the mould and they were given the opportunity by their publisher to do that. I mean, they they were uh within the building they were, I IPC, somewhere just off Oxford, if I if I remember rightly, you know, you'd to step through their office, it was carnage. Um how they got a magazine out at the end of the month, I'll never know. But they somehow they did it. And that gonzo journalism and that style. The great thing was at the time it gave a lot of writers, a lot of photographers, an opportunity to do something and to do something creative, and they were prepared to print just about anything. There was there was an editorial quality about it, there wasn't the race to the bottom. Yes, there was an awful lot of Me Too that that followed. Then there was the race to the bottom where it was just about putting a pretty girl on the front cover or or doing things inside. But there was actually a lot of good journalism, and it made some of the others step up as well. You know, GQ and Esquire had to step up. They were known for quality journalism, but they equally they suddenly had to appeal to a much wider audience. They were suddenly back in touch culturally, zeitgeist with where people were. We have TikTok and we have Instagram and YouTube shorts and what have you. It's not it's not my era.

Will Ockenden 35:38

What is the state of the magazine media in 2026? What's it gonna be? I mean, because magazines, weirdly, so a lot of them, there are there is still a um a fair few. When you know, going to you go into the your your local news agents or your WH Smiths, you can see still see, despite the you know, the proclaimed death of the traditional media, which which the media is miles. I mean, I'm with your era as well, so I I've seen the the media just shrink and shrink and shrink. Um and there's now more PRs than there are journalists. Yeah. Um which was it was which was never a thing before. Um I wonder what the state of the magazine, the m you know, like the monthly magazines is is today. Because there's no FHM, there's no loaded, is there?

SPEAKER_02 36:20

No, but there's also they were of their time. Um, and of course people get their stories now and they get their content in a different way, and it's much more instantaneous, and and technology's changed the way that we interact with content. So in those days, there was no other way to do it except by the and look forward to that next edition on the shelf and that visceral feeling that you get when you take a magazine and you flick through it, and you're hit by all your senses. Well, not all of them, unless you start to lick it, but um, if you flick through it, then obviously you'll you're getting the smell of it, your eyes, you know, there's the sound, the rippling effect, there's that whole touch thing. It was a visceral experience getting a magazine off the shelf in the same way. Now we're gonna we don't want to sound like a bunch of old farts here, in the same way that vinyl has a revival, is people are seeing and feeling that visceral effect uh of not just putting an MP3 on and taking something out of a shelf, taking it out, having a look at it, putting it on, putting a needle down on something. There's something about uh a ritual of that, which it was of its time, is still of its time. Is it in the minority? Will magazines ever come back? They are relatively stabilized. I think I uh heard Ian Hislop. I think something like Private Eye is is is magazine only, it's not online. Um I think it's its circulation is as healthy today. I don't know whether it's as healthy today as it's ever been. Certainly when I worked back in magazines and was working for Hello magazine and and FHM, the only reason they couldn't sell FHM, the only reason FHM couldn't sell a million copies was because there wasn't a printer in the country who could produce enough. And that tells you it tells you about the demand and the desire for that content. And that content is is now packaged up in a different way, uh, and is now all you need to be thumb stopping. Let's go back to mediocrity and let's go back to a monoculture. If every media was the same, then we get very bored very fast. That's why we scroll through so much stuff. It takes something quite thumb-stopping, and it's generally something which hits one of your emotions or your senses. And when I talk about experiences, events, then when you're designing a fantastic experience, you want it to hit your emotions and you want it to interact with your senses. When you go to an event, there's a huge expectation before you get there, then you walk through the door, then you take your seat, beer, and you get whatever it is you're doing, and you sit down, you go to a concert start, and then the concert happens. There's a huge amount of emotion that happens, and then maybe your gig happens. And it's the same when you put on a marketing experience, you know, this is this bringing people into it, this is the experience that happens, there's the way that is it shareable,

Find Your Weird And Pink Batman

SPEAKER_02 39:06

um, and then once it's shareable, then how do you get people to come and reinteract with something from the physical to the digital or vice versa? You know, it's a huge I don't think things have really changed. You you read any I I do a bit of lecturing at um at a couple of universities, and I was looking at some of the old textbooks, and they still give the students textbooks which have marketing theory from the nineties or the early noughties and what have you. And I was reading something, it's like, well, okay, it's it's actually still true, as true today. Some of the theories are as true today as they've always been. And you know, we still have the four Ps and we still have ADA and we still have this, that, and the other. A lot of them have been updated, you know. USPs, we we mentioned that earlier. Although I like to think of it as a unique selling personality. Well, yeah, marketing through the era has always been influenced by new platforms. Print was influenced by radio and thought that radio was going to kill print, and then Telly came along and said it was going to print kill radio. Look today at the resurgence of radio in the format of podcasts. You know, radio is still very much alive. We just call it something different. And TV is very much alive, but it's called YouTube these days.

Will Ockenden 40:20

Yeah. The popularity of YouTube. The only the only thing is there's the free pr the what do they call it? The free press. And the the the only media that's sort of balanced, well, supposedly with the least amount of bias, is the BBC in in theory. Um, but the the as I see people complaining about the the press are still, you know, they're still like harassing people, Madeline McCann's family and stuff like that. That's still going on. They just it's just crazy that people can't be protected if Against that shit quality journalism, which I hate, which is like because investigative journalism's got a role to play, but like these journalists that ruin people's lives, not so much, I don't think. They love to build somebody up and then smash them down, don't they?

SPEAKER_02 41:01

Um at least journalists have a code of conduct that they have to abide by whether they're treading a line or not. I think what is unregulated is the issue, and you have and they're not even called citizen journalists because you can't really call them journalists, but people who do go and do a lot of YouTube standing outside of courts or YouTube standing outside of events. And I was watching the P. Diddy um uh series on Netflix recently, and I was very, very interested when it got to the point uh when they were talking about how his legal team had used social media to influence pre-trial to try and influence those that would could potentially be jurors, um, and how they were they had a PR team that was briefing uh everybody that was outside of the courts, and they were handing out briefing notes of what they wanted, you know, talking points of what they wanted the YouTubers to actually um what they wanted them to broadcast, which was creating a narrative that was possibly at odds, I don't know for sure, that was at odds with what was going on in the court. So it's that kind of unregulated broadcasting that is an issue, but we're we're now going down a rabbit hole which is completely different to we should be listening to the media show on uh on BBC Sounds.

SPEAKER_00 42:23

This is a good diversion. I've enjoyed this. I've enjoyed this. Yeah, I like it. I'm now imagining the um the the um the loaded newsroom floor in the um in the mid-90s on a on a Friday afternoon.

Will Ockenden 42:35

Yeah. Um quality investigative journalism is is great though. For that some of the journalism back then was was amazing.

SPEAKER_02 42:43

And it still is, you know, the the The Guardian plays a huge role in investigative journalism. Telegraph recently is on our stuff that to politicians holding people to account. What I I mean I I live in in Gloucestershire and I was a newspaper photographer many, many years ago, and the campaigning, the the fact that regional and local newspapers have been completely eroded for one reason or another, and local BBC is being eroded, means that you don't hold local politicians to account. There's nobody out on the beat looking for things that are going on out and about locally, where you get local, local news from, and regional news is is a real challenge, and the role of local newspapers was so so so important for you knowing what was going on in your doorstep or holding local politicians or what's going on with healthcare in your area. All these things were so so important. Um I was just thinking back to the Lads Mag's days and and why they why they commissioned people like me and many people like me to do what they do, and it was because we didn't just bring uh we didn't just bring them words and a few pictures, we were bringing them human truth, we were bringing them jeopardy, you know, that was a great story that that made the the the learning to fly in 30 days, it would have been really, really dull without that thing happening or those series of things happening. They really did. So they brought that that jeopardy, the friction, uh the excitement, and that's what people wanted to read. They wanted to transport themselves out into what they were doing, whatever they were, wherever they were, on the bus or on the tube, or or whatnot. They want to be transported into a different world, and it could be stupidity, it could be triumph, and and a lot of that is what people on a daily basis want to try and experience. You know, we all have hard lives, everything's tough, uh, nothing's getting any easier, but we want to be taken out of ourselves and have some excitement. Um and I think a safe story changes nothing. So bring that now back to marketing.

Will Ockenden 44:42

You've you've been on the show now, Mark. If um you were us, who is the next person that you'd have on this show and why?

SPEAKER_02 44:51

Well, what happens is you immediately think of someone you are either you were just talking to or had got got in mind, and two people actually have just sprung to mind. And one is um they're both actually. I mean, Mark Bukowski is a legend in PR. If you've not spoken to Mark, then maybe do. He's incredibly strong um insights and opinions. And uh another one is again is an old school. A guy who gave me one of my first jobs, actually, he's called Martin Loat. And uh he recently sold his um his agency, he was B2B agency, and he's he was very, very connected with lots of media types and stuff like that. And he can always tell a few stories. Either of those.

SPEAKER_00 45:34

Mark Bacowski is a great shout, actually. I'm a massive fan of him. Some of his creative campaigns are are amazing. So yeah, that's that's a great shout. We should definitely reach out to him, Chris.

Will Ockenden 45:45

And and if people want to get hold of you, Mark, how how can they do that?

SPEAKER_02 45:49

Uh Markterilosh.com.

Will Ockenden 45:53

Okay, that's fairly straightforward, isn't it? Most people just go to LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_02 45:57

Oh, yeah, cool. I'm on LinkedIn.

Will Ockenden 46:00

But in the modern era.

SPEAKER_02 46:02

Yeah, yeah, fine. Connect with me on LinkedIn, it'd be lovely to see you.