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.
Six People Trolled Me. It Felt Like Sixty Thousand
•Prohibition PR
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Social media can feel like the best networking tool in the world, until it throws you a curveball. We were joined by Asif Choudry back in episode 96. We talk about the early days of Twitter when it felt like a friendly space for real conversations, and how one superhero-themed event turned into a lesson in handling criticism. From swag bags to unexpected backlash, this is a story about resilience and why staying visible matters even when things get uncomfortable.
We also dive into the reality of trolling, online pile-ons, and why ignoring negativity is often the smartest move. If you’ve ever had that sinking feeling after a public misstep or worried about what people might say, this conversation will give you practical advice and a reminder that mistakes don’t define you, they shape you.
Just to take you back to the the the superhero mistake there. So you you have you've had the positive side of of Twitter and then you've had the the Elon Musk side of Twitter as well. So what so what happened with the with the superhero theme that went wrong then?
Asif Choudry
Yeah, it was it was interesting because I'd I'd just like many people in the day in those early days of Twitter, so this is 2014 we're talking about, and um everybody was really nice and it was like I classed it as like the Facebook for business and um I wasn't on Facebook and I'm not on Facebook, but this was I was having conversations with CEOs that about running and running shoes and things that I would never in a million years have been able to talk to them about. So it was a a really friendly place talking to customers and prospects about X Factor on a Saturday night and then having some deeper connection with them, which from a sales point of view it takes years to build that kind of level of knowledge because people were just now um freely and with their own permissions just being human. So I found I really enjoyed that part of doing business with people uh and being on Twitter for that reason. And after that first event, we had the superhero theme and some of the stuff that we had in there, you know. I went uh I can't remember, it might have been home bargains or something. I I bought like superhero pencils and because we had to give a pencil or a pen and what have you. And they were these little like I think they were designed for children to be honest with you. And I put them in the swag bag and they were all bang on theme, they were bang on the creative. Uh, and then somebody commented afterwards saying, Oh, it was just you know, we went to this event and there were capes and masks and the stuff that most of the 80-odd people enjoyed, and then saying, Oh, there was loads of this tat and stuff like that, and
uh what do we pay for? All that tat didn't actually make up the budget because resource took the hit of that, and um my first it was the first time I'd had any negative feedback on social media. Uh so that stopped me in my tracks to be honest with and I did genuinely that that turned into somebody else jumping on that bandwagon and someone else. It didn't go viral or anything, ultimately it was six people. Pylon? Yeah, but it felt like sixty thousand people, and I thought, oh god, I um this is not nice. I'm gonna leave Twitter. And and I spoke to a couple of CEOs that I knew who are in um who were in the social housing space and on Twitter actively, and I thought, well, I've spoken to them before about them being accessible and they get trolled every day. So I thought, well, let's let me actually speak to them. And they gave me some really sound advice, which was look, um, just the best thing is to ignore it and don't get involved and try and justify yourself, but also if you're getting trolled, then you're visible and you can't be visible just to the best people, you have to be visible to everyone. And I went, actually, I'll take that as a compliment. And that I'm glad I took that advice, but it was definitely everything felt like a mistake, and that could have stopped this community ever 11 years on, stopped it dead in its tracks.
Chris Norton
I mean, I've been trolled. We get trolled like with the this podcast, is uh I'm gonna plug it out here. We're on the on our YouTube channel, Embracing Marketing Mistakes on YouTube, and um I we did a video, I can't remember what I did a video. I mean, obviously, with there's loads of video
bits, right? And um I was talking to camera about something, and someone put in the comments my marketing manager flagged it to me because I hadn't seen it, and she was like, I don't know, I think I saw it and I said, Oh, have you seen did you see this comment? How come he didn't tell me it was a couple of weeks late? And she was like, Oh, I I didn't think it was very nice. And it said, Uh, if he's got such a successful agency, why does he why is that why is he wearing that shred? And then people just saying like horrible things you're like, and and and and she was like, Does that upset you? Are you upset? And I was like, No, I don't care. Like, I just I really don't care. Like, there's people out there that you've got to you've got to think to yourself, the people out there like you've got your own people, right? The people you know. I care about the people that I know and that I value their opinion. The people that you don't know who are out there to because people out there who are not getting the the the um the love, they don't feel the love, right? And the only way they can get some sort of credible engagement sometimes is by saying something really either really funny, which actually I actually laughed at the shirt comments, so fair play to you on YouTube, whoever said that. Um, but the um I didn't I don't know if I wore the shirt again, I'll have to let you know. Um I I do think that yeah, you you can't take this stuff too seriously, they're all keyboard warriors. But I do know that when
I've seen some people get cancelled or whatever, where you see people just get jumped on pile. Yeah, having I could see if it can't if it was something that was really embarrassing or whatever, that that could be that could be quite horrible. And there's been quite a few that but then often on Twitter back in the day, yeah, I'd see I'd see I used to work with a guy called Jed Hallan, and back to the London reference, he wrote a blog post, right? I worked with him, I I'd worked with him, I actually hired Jed Hallam, he's like uh one of the he works he works for quite some of the big agencies in London, he worked for MindShare and stuff. Anyway, uh um he wrote something on his um, he wrote a blog post, it was a really articulate blog post about how London-centric the UK is, right? London takes all the glory, and just like what you were saying about marketing events, and he was he wrote this post, and I knew what he was trying to say, which is basically there's also some talent up in the north as well. Absolutely. Don't don't turn down Manchester, Newcastle, and all these other places Leeds would where we are. Um, but he'd written it in quite a cocky, provocative and oh my god, Twitter, it must have been 2016 or something like that. They the whole they just piled on him, like, and I I felt sorry for him, so I stuck up for him a little bit. But you saw like you saw the pylon, and then a couple of days passed, he didn't tweet for a couple of weeks, which was only that was
when he used to tweet all day when people would be doing like so. I've seen it from every angle, and it the truth is value the people I think value the people.
Asif Choudry
I think that's what it taught me, and I and and we had we have had a couple of further instances. We had somebody who took the hashtag and I had a a bit of a vendetta against one particular comms professional in our community, and um excuse me, so he'd he'd actually created a hashtag com0 Z.
Chris Norton
Okay.
Asif Choudry
Uh saying the community doesn't um provide any value, and and I'm thinking, I don't even know who you are, it's you know, by association, um and but it was one person, it was literally just one person. So we've had uh stuff like that before, and then uh more latterly there was there's one um person, and that's kind of happening at the moment over the last year or so. That because that there's a uh a very senior comms professional who is being targeted by a troll. And um uh he'd actually he's tagging in comms hero into his posts, which I see and I'm thinking it's it's two separate things. Please leave us alone. And you just have to ignore it, and you do realise that it it is sometimes to somebody who's not necessarily uh confident in themselves, it would it would it would make you it would crush you and it would make you stop in tracks and it would it made me stop posting for it probably was two or three days, but it felt like two or three years, you know, because like you say, you could you could post uh ten, fifteen times
a day if you wanted. It was there wasn't any um limits to what you should do, and there wasn't any uh guidebook or any best practice or good practice saying you you should only do one tweet a week, like like it happens on LinkedIn now, you know, three or five posts a week and that kind of stuff. So people were just having conversations and engaging with people. So it was a big deal, and I can't I I you do feel for a lot of people who who get who are just doing their job representing an organization and they get trolled. So there was a huge learning uh piece out of that. And I did a couple of speaking sessions where uh especially in social housing, a lot of the comms people because they they're not they're putting the messages out for the organization, but they're the ones that are getting trolled, so they were on Twitter and people can it's easy to find out who's doing what job, and and I thought that bit was a bit it's unfair, but if you're uh if you're in this world now you you you're kinda publicly accessible, so you've got to take it on the chin sometimes, you know, you can't hide away.
