SPEAKER_00 0:15

Ah Mini MBA, how are you? How are you going? Welcome to session three QA. I'm not obviously in my usual place. I am actually I'm only in Sydney, but I had big meetings this morning and I couldn't get home in time to do QA, so I'm in a we work with sorry with bad acoustics. I'll do the best I can. We're in a good place, I hope. By the time you finish module six, we've got to the end of strategy. We're going to give you reading week next week so you can have a week off or track back and check some stuff or catch up. We won't drop a new module next week. Module seven will happen a week after next. The platform is open, but we won't have anything to digest that's new. We just want to give you a little time to catch up. We've tested this, and this is the best way, just to allow everyone a little bit of time. And also it's a nice gap between strategy and tactics. So we'll kick off with module seven and product in a week's time. Yep. Anyway, I hope you're well. We've got a nice collection of questions, probably about 30, 45 minutes. So let's crack on with those. Um, and then we'll we'll just finish things off for reading week. Marie, uh, not really course related. I was speaking to a prospective client about a marketing hire who said we need someone with an eye on what's next in marketing, specifically AI-enabled marketing tech ops campaigns, SEO, GEO? I'm a bit of a dinosaur. I know the world is changing, but I don't really like a lot of the AI-generated content. What is your view on AI-enabled marketing tech? Do I need to embrace this or get left behind? What are the AI tools and traditional things that marketers need to add to their toolkit? Are the core principles we're learning in this course applicable in an AI-enabled world? Yeah, we're obsessed with the pornography of change, Marie. Um so what to say? Uh yes, it is going to change. Um I I've got a special module coming for you. Um, we're gonna do it after the exam. Rather than putting AI content into the module when we when we make all this in January, things have changed so much. I I I just left it and said, look, we'll do a special module on all of this uh once the exam's done. So you'll get that, and and I'll give you a detailed response. The short answer at this stage is the there's definitely gonna be an impact, a huge one. But the successful people are the marketers that know marketing, like you, that can use AI together. That's the win. It's not that we're gonna replace you know, marketers with AI, it's that we're gonna need less marketers, but ones that know marketing and can use AI. That's the sweet spot. Um there's two areas. I mean, everyone's obsessed with AI advertising. That's not where the action's gonna be. No, but it's just because everyone's obsessed with comms. AI is already having a huge impact with synthetic data. So we're producing research without using consumers that's more accurate and cheaper and faster, especially in B2B. So synthetic data is something I'll talk to you about at the end of the course. And then within a year or so, AI-enabled planning tools that build your marketing plan from synthetic data. We have a very advanced AI planning tool, which we're prototyping and which we'll make available to you guys as alumni in the second half of the year for testing, and which will we will then market next year to our alums. It's a very good tool. I've built it with a team in America. We've been doing this for two years. Um, I think it's a game changer. I'll talk to you about more about it when we get to the end of the course. I think the key message is the the guys that are like, oh, you won't need marketers anymore because AI will replace you. That's not true. You you need marketers who know marketing and you need them connected to AI, and things really do change. We'll cover it at the end. But yeah, your course is still, I would argue, even more relevant than it was a year ago. Cinder. Well, I agree that distinctive brand assets or codes are valuable for any company. I don't see the same importance in B2B and B2C. In your experience, have you seen brand codes mattering for B2B companies the way they do for B2C? Yeah, it's an interesting challenge. Yeah. I is it because is it because they're not as important, or is it because B2B companies are much less good at building them? If you look at Salesforce, which is our one notable exception, the distinctive B2B company, I think Salesforce have benefited as much from their distinctiveness, their characters, their clouds, and everything else as any B2C brand has. So I would suggest there that you're right, B2B brands haven't benefited as much from distinctiveness, but I think it's because they're crap and they're too busy making excuses for why they're different to realize we're not that different. And you know what we need? We need to stop talking about how we're different and build a palette of distinctive brand assets and look more distinctive. Because if I go to one more conference where everything is blue, I'm gonna shoot myself in the middle of the conference hall. So I accept your point. I think the reason, as usual, is B2B marketers not getting their shit together. Merrill, I have a question related to brand. In early modules, you very strongly devalued brand. Oh, I wouldn't go that far, indicating that consumers care, uh, may care about a very few number of brands among so very many they consume. Oh, that's not devaluing brands, Meryl. That's being realistic and not drinking the Kool-Aid. Anyway, you carry on. However, in the targeting session, you highlight the great work the boots are doing in increasing brand awareness. Can you help to clarify what is in intended in the contradiction? No contradiction. Listen to me. Brands are not important to consumers at the level that companies think they are. Just take a simple fact, Merrill. You're working on one brand, yeah, five days a week. Consumers, the average consumer would have at least two or three thousand operating brands in their life. Just run the numbers on that. And that's where we get that balance. Yeah. Does that mean brands are unimportant or devalued? No. It means they've always done what they've done for consumers, but they're not at the center of the consumer's life. Yeah. It means when they're needed, they'll come into play. And brands like Boots, when they increase their brand awareness for pharmacy, perform a very important function. But note that Boots, by the way, is one of the top 10 brands in the UK by salience measures and also by uh trust. But my main point is your brand absolutely has to increase salience and awareness, and it has to do it because consumers aren't thinking about it as much as you think they're thinking about it. So rather than a contradiction, those two explain each other. I'm saying to all the people on the course, stop worrying about your brand purpose. Nobody cares what a toothpaste brand thinks about racial equality. Yeah. Worry about does the brand come to mind in the moments when it needs to come to mind? Because that's the key process here. Yeah. So, no, I honestly don't see a contradiction. I think the reality check is absolutely correct. I'm right on that. And I'm also right, unfortunately, on the need for brands like Boots to increase brand awareness and salience in the moments where it is momentarily important. And I promise you, I'm not defending my, I would be happy to admit I'm wrong. I'm 100% right. Meryl, if a product within a portfolio has a user group that's different from the current target segment of the rest of the portfolio, can this product pull off a successful targeting of a different user? If so, what must be true for it to be successful? Interesting. I think there's two there's two issues there, right? It may well be that you can pull it off naturally if it's already beginning to happen, and you'll find the walls between these different segments are more permeable than we thought. Second, though, have a hard look at brand architecture because probably what must be true for it to work optimally is that you can still have a portfolio, but if you manage that portfolio's brand architecture well, you can benefit from the same brand, but with different sub brands or endorsed brands that allow a little bit of difference. So you benefit from the parent brand, but have degrees of freedom for different targets. Yeah. You know, look at how you know the classic one is courtyard from Marriott. Yeah. So we have for a cheaper segment, the courtyard brand, still endorsed by the Marriott company that organizes it, next door to the Marriott hotels, which are five star. We can do that because the architecture is giving us the best of both worlds. I think that's a key uh consideration. Duncan, if a brand is launching into a genuinely new category where no competitors yet own clear positions, how should it think about positioning? Should brands still avoid the temptation to position too broadly? It's a good question. I I think you you still want to focus on what are the, you know, you still want to focus on two of the C's. What can we deliver? But the big one obviously is what does the consumer want? I would still suggest you want to focus because at some point, if it's a good category, others will come in and you don't want to have taken six attributes because now you've spread yourself too thin, and five competitors can come in and specialize. You can see that happening, yeah? So I think you still want to focus on the one or two things that drive the customers the most. As long as the company can deliver on them, though, I think you get to be a little bit more greedy than normal. Lucy, from an agency perspective, how important would you say a client's objectives are within the context of a short-term brief, e.g., project or campaign that might be more tactical? And how essential is it to understand how those objectives relate back to the broader marketing funnel? Objectives are often shared with limited context, but I'm wondering how important that wider strategic context is in helping agencies deliver effective work. Well, uh, this one's uh an easy answer. It's hugely important. If you look at that better briefs research, um, the agencies will tell you that the thing that's missing that they want more than anything else are clear objectives. So they can be so they can get the coordinates of the work, but also come back to you later and say it was successful because we've achieved those objectives. You have to have objectives to brief. Well, it's kind of uh non-negotiable. Atiya, I'm starting to apply market research in my work in an investment company. I'm currently implementing backward market research. At the survey stage, we plan to send it only to our clients. However, since we have a large client base, it's difficult to send it to everyone while ensuring strong response rates. My question on what basis should we select a sample of clients? Should we target VIP clients, highly lower customers, or smaller clients? No, no, no, no, no. Adhir, don't do any of that. Send it to all of them. But then when they reply back, you can code them as whether they're one of the four types. And you can compare the results, but also agglomerate them together. You want all the responses you can get. It doesn't cost you any extra money. Send it to everyone and then look at the differences across the sample. Mikhail, to targeting. I believe you're conflating two layers: marketing strategy versus marketing execution. Okay, strategic targeting, ICP, product positioning copy, landing page, non-negotiable, agreed. Yeah, hang on. So hang on. Um so I hate ICPs, right, Mikhail? So I don't like ideal customer portraits or profiles because if you look at what they do, they kind of do the segmentation and the targeting in a shit combined way.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

I I would really encourage you to come back to segmentation and targeting. Remember, segmentation, let's do a map of the whole market, targeting, let's pick multiple potential segments or all of them, and not do this ICP where we just kind of merge it together in a non-empirical way. But that that's by the by. If we're saying segmentation targeting, and again, strategic targeting is just positioning. Yeah, you can't have copy or landing page or product as being strategic. They're all tactical executions of target position to some degree objectives. Yeah. So I you agree, but I'm still not having it. But but but okay, let's keep going. But ad-level targeting in ads manager is a technical setting, not strategy. Yeah, okay, I'm with you. Advertising is by definition tactical execution. But here's my point. I'm I'm not I'm not just doing targeting for advertising. As long as we agree on that, I'm doing targeting for who I make the product for.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

I'm doing targeting to feed pricing. Yeah. Um, to do uh market research. Who's my target segment? Comms is 8% of my job, yeah. So I agree with you. I've got a target, and then that's gonna feed how I do the actual targeting for my comms. But I've got a much bigger 92% of other targeting issues to worry about. Does that make sense? Anyway, carry on. Um, even in B2B SaaS going broad, there often delivers a lower CAC than tight manual audiences. When I optimize for demo requests, the algorithm gets a clean signal of who actually converts. The creative and landing page filter for the ICP, narrowing the audience manually shrinks the learning pool and raises CPMs. Yeah, yeah, it definitely does, right? The ad manager is just delivery and broad, and clean conversion signal is often the more efficient setup at that layer. But that's a technical choice. It changes nothing about strategy or the targeting. What do you think about it? Yeah, you know, I that that's fine. Just remember it's 8% of targeting. Yeah? It's 8%. Well, it's 4% because what you're describing is the digital stuff, and often there's a non-digital component of comms that hits a broader market as well. So it's 4%. But for the 4%, you're right. Just don't forget the other part. Who's my target customer, you know, for the product, for the service, for everything, before we winnow it down to comms? That's my only point. But otherwise, I do agree. Doug, you mentioned several times that the test at the end is quite difficult. But without any homework that gets graded, how would you recommend we prepare for the exam? I wouldn't prepare for the exam at all. Watching the videos and doing the reading is table stakes. But how would you recommend we check if we're applying properly before the final? I don't care about the final, Doug, okay? I want you to fail the final because I think those that do badly in the final learn more. And I don't care about the final or the grades, and neither should you. The final is part of the learning. It's not even a final, right? It's a test exam to help you learn more. I'll tell you a lot more about it at the end of the course. I I will I want you to get a C, Doug. I don't want you to get an A. I think getting a C will teach you more, and the whole point of exams is to learn. I have a very different approach to it. And honestly, by the end of the course, you'll agree with me. Yeah. So forget about the exam. The exam is just another way to learn. Watching the classes, doing the readings, it's all you need to do. And then doing the exam will be a pleasure, it will be a pain, it will be a massive learning exercise, and you'll get an A, a B, a pass, a distinction. And you know what? As I'll tell you then, it doesn't matter. What matters is learning. Okay. So don't don't I don't want this course to be about helping you do well in an exam. I want this course to be about you just learning. So keep doing what you're doing. You're doing everything right. The exam is part of this process. Michelle McKenna. Uh, thank you for the course. My brain hurts. I have an ex uh existential question about positioning. And I've also gone back to market orientation. And now I'm now stuck in a loop of are we the railway company, only thinking about the railway? So, my question: we are currently positioned as a software company that provides technical services to the mining industry. But software is likely to be a thing of the past as AI takes over. Well, yeah, hang on. Okay. No more programs per se. No idea what it will be called, but it won't look like it does now. But the same could be said of mining, in that it is an industry which potentially will change, albeit not as soon as software. What am I? Why am I? A tech company like the mining version of Apple or a mining service company or something else? Or am I overthinking this and I should start in one position? Yeah, look, uh, it's a it is an interesting question. It's funny, I've just been listening. We our course podcast with Hal and Jess. I don't know if you're listening to it, but they I mean, I haven't scripted them, right? They just go off each week. They're getting very existential about that, you know. You'll see that, you know, Jess is pretty wobbly, you know. Anyway, um, what what would I say? Um, I think you can go too far with marketing myopia, or you cannot go far enough. You know, you're not a software company, would be my point, Michelle. That's that's being too myopic. I think you're a company that helps mining companies make their machines work, and that's somewhere in between, you know, two extremes. Um at the end of the day, though, we have to, you know, my my my saving comment for you is worry about the next 12 months. Now, part of your brain has to worry about the next 15 years, but 80-90% of your brain is what are we going to do for the next year? And then do some other longer-term projections. For the next year, we've got diggers and we've got software, and we can we can worry about that. You know, eat the elephant one year at a time while having a little bit of a thought of longer-term stuff is the right way. Erin. I have a question related to the long and the short of it. I lead a sub brand that's closely tied to the master brand. We share the master brand name as part of our name. As a sub brand, how much should we rely on the master brand to be doing the long game brand awareness marketing while we focus on short-term activation? Or should we as a sub brand focus on long and short? We're in a different category than the parent brand. That's the key point, right? So the the master brand will be doing a bit of the long, but because you're in a different category, you're also going to have to do your own work too. And it's going to be brand building and it's going to be activation. Look at automotive, Erin, which is the classic subbrand category. Porsche does all this sponsorship stuff and it does all this Grand Prix and Monaco and all that stuff at the top. But it also, when you get to Porsche Cayenne, the Porsche Cayenne has its own brand building things as well as activation promotions as well. So if you like, you've got how would I do this? Do it in thirds. A third comes from the master brand, a third comes from your sub brand in your cat your master brand in your in your category, and a third comes from the activation work that's going on for your sub brand. Yeah, for the for the product brand as well. So it's yeah, it's it's a third, a third, a third if you wanted a rough approximation of what you need to do. Alexi, I really like the return of crocodile dundee case. Hmm, it's an interesting one. How the objectives were set based on the biggest weakness in the funnel, even versus competitors. Yeah. What puzzles me, if the objective was mid-funnel, consideration, why did the campaign look so much like a broad awareness campaign? I love your point. Super Bowl placement, outdoor mass reach. I'm asking because I come from a B2B business development background where funnel progression is usually associated with increasingly narrow targeting, broad reach for awareness, then more targeted campaigns for consideration and conversion. My assumption is that the distinction lies in the scale of reach. No, no, no, no. Listen to me, Alexi. You're right. Tragically, the woman responsible for this, Lisa, passed away a couple of years ago and she was a good friend of mine. And I had a great dinner with her. And this is your question, is exactly my question to her. I love the analysis, I love the work, um, I love the objectives that were done, but I think there's a mismatch between execution and consideration. And she didn't disagree with me over several very nice glasses of wine. I I think your point is brilliant. I think you're right. And I think, frankly, tourism Australia went a little bit astray. You're you're you're bang on the money. I think this is a great case about working out the right objective. It also illustrates a mismatch in execution. Well done. Alison, in your example of reconceptualizing the total potential market for the parental nutrition brand to be all patients who may be malnourished, how does the size of the brand relative to its competitive set factor in? Ah, good question. For example, let's say you're the number two brand. Does it make sense to let the number one brand in the category spend their resources establishing and creating the category, and then you draft off those headwinds? Yeah, it can do, Alison. But I wouldn't, that's not my point. You're talking about the objective. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Both brands would do something differently. When you're above 60%, you can grow the category and make a lot of money. But my bigger point was it doesn't matter if you're number one or number two or number three brand, you still have to define the thing all the way up to the top. But you're right. Then the objective would change. You're Absolutely right. Irena. Carry thoracics and sonic cues are often identified as highly distinctive assets. They are. Despite being relatively underutilized. That's true. Do you think their their effectiveness is driven by their rarity? And why do so few brands commit to them? This is a great point. I don't know the answer. And here's the bit, Irina. I don't care. Here's my point to you. If you were to pick a Sonic Q and a character asset in your category, you would probably smash it. Now, if in 20 years' time everyone does that, will that diminish the power of your assets? Maybe, but we don't care. Take the information and use it. Why are companies not using it? Here's my answer to that one. I also don't care. Take the information and use it. Hannah Hall. I'm really enjoying the course and I'm in danger of wanting to boil the ocean. That's okay. However, for small B2B marketing teams, what do you see as the most important elements to consider for marketing when resources are tight? Bullshit question, Hannah Hall. Look, it's great you're seeing boiling the ocean as a risk. And it's great you're asking me a bullshit question about what should my priorities be. I can't answer that. You have to answer it by doing strategy properly. And I'm not being lazy. You know, part of your job, Hannah Hall, is to work out what these priorities are, right? You know you've got to do it. I can't go, oh, you know what, Hannah Hall. What you need to do is this, this, and this. I don't know. You've now got to work it out. From your diagnosis, from the strategy, from the stuff I've shown you, you come up with your five objectives. Come on, get on with it. Jack Rothery, M. What does the M stand for, Jack? Mature. I enjoyed the story about Brian Nichols' positioning work on Starbucks, and I'm impressed he implemented it so quickly. I think he's a bit of a machine, old Mr. Nickel. Anyway, you mentioned how he tested new initiatives in certain stores before rolling them out. What are common challenges you see when brands try to implement new positioning? And do you have any tips for overcoming them? I think it's getting the hearts and minds of the org behind it, and I think it's getting it tight. And I think the thing with Nicole is he's the CEO and he brought in his own people. So he had the internal power. It's internal power, Jack, that and getting it across the org that's the challenge when you're not the CEO. Charles, I wondered if you had any thoughts on how or if anything is different when working in the charity not-for-profit space. Purpose is always seen as extremely important here, contrary to some of what you're saying in other markets. And it can be difficult to find complementary messages for different audiences. Yeah, that's true. Donors versus people were there to help versus individual donors. Are there genuine differences? Look, I've had this question before, Charles. You've eloquently laid out why there might be, right? There's the people we help, and there's the people we we we seek funding from. There's orgs, there's individuals. I think the answer therefore is yes, but the process of positioning remains the same. Yeah? So just as I would say, does a coffee brand do positioning differently from an ice cream brand? Yes. The process is the same. I wouldn't keep looking for, you know, we talked earlier about distinctive brand assets. Why do B2B brands not use more distinctive brand assets? Because they're so busy going on about how B2B is different, they just don't get on with it. Why are so many not-for-profit brands so poorly positioned? Because they're too busy looking for what why is it different in not-for-profit? It isn't. Apply the three C's, apply what we know generally, and you will do well in this field. And I'm not being dismissive, I'm just suggesting it's time to get on with it. You know what I mean? There aren't, you know, there are special properties in your in your sector, but not special if they need special tools. It's just you have to apply the tools in your sector. Court. Maybe a better question after the course is complete, but how do you decide where to start with a client? Do you collect as much current state information across all phases to find the biggest constraint and fix that first? Or is it ideal to go through the entire process linearly and validate fix in order? Additionally, when you've gone through this entire process with a client and then get to annual planning year after year, is it the same or different? Do you go through the entire process again? I don't think it's up to you, Court. If you want to be a consultant for a minute, the client's going to come to you. I've had gigs with the clients like, I need to set up proper marketing planning. How do we begin? I've had clients that come to me and said there's something wrong with our positioning and it leads to something else. I think you're asking me great questions, but they're not for you or me to decide as consultants. The client will come with whatever they come with and you take it from there. It's truly the right answer. Great questions. Charles, often you're coming into a role mid-year where there's inadequate data in place. The process is the ideal one, but it's not often possible to stop work in train to reevaluate. If you suspect it may be poorly conceived, what do you think is the most valuable things you can do to fix or maximize work or that's already underway? So I don't think you fix anything, Charles. I think you manage expectations. It's very common. You come in, there's already a plan in place. It's really brilliant. Maybe there's no real data. So what you do is two things. First, you manage upstairs and you say, look, I'll come in and I'll triage this for the rest of the year. It's not my plan, it's not my tactics. There isn't really a clear strategy, but let's get this done and I will do as best as I can to make this work for you in a non-precious way. At the same time, behind the scenes, while I'm doing that, I'm going to be getting proper data and building a proper strategy. And next year, you'll see a much improved plan. If you do it that way, you're buying yourself time, you're managing expectations, and you're able to basically hit the ground money. That's always the right play. Ren, I have a question about positioning and market orientation for publishers with broad catalogues. From a market orientation standpoint, it seems consumers usually discover books through topics, problems, categories, authors, retailers, not through the publisher itself. True. This makes me think that positioning happens primarily at the individual book level rather than the brand or publisher level. Yeah, or we could say the book brand level, yeah, rather than the publisher. But please carry on. If that's true, does a publisher effectively need many different brand positioning strategies and acquisition funnels? That feels operationally heavy. How do you think about positioning in a portfolio business like publishing with very different category entry points? But the publisher still wants to build a coherent master brand. Love your question, Ren. So, first of all, the publishers need a coherent master brand. It still supports the retailers. You know, I want Penguin in my bookshop. It really supports the employee run proposition. I want to work for Penguin. And it really supports the authors. I want to have a penguin book. So it doesn't negate that. But what it's telling you is the balance between master brand and book or product brand has to be much greater towards book brand. And this needs to be, again, you talk we talked about it on the course. You've got an overall brand positioning, distinctive brand assets for the for the parent brand, which is Penguin. But then you've got a product positioning strategy, and probably 70, 80% of the balance going into the product brand positioning target, who, what, the book, what it's doing, versus other alternatives, the benefits. Yeah. You'd swing it much more that way. And I think with that balance, you've got it exactly right. Finally, Doug, are there any books or deeper material worth reading on positioning? You tossed Rossa Reeves, Trout Porter, Ehrenberg Bass into the bin. Admittedly, you said they're still worth reading. I listened to April Dunford on her two uh Lenny podcast, but she sings the praises of Reese and Trout. Is anyone out there hitting the right balance, in your opinion, in published works? Many thanks from one of your untargeted American students. So, Doug, the best I can offer you are two people. I think April Dunford, I don't agree with everything April says. She's a specialist, she's smart. Uh, a lot of what she says is good, particularly on product positioning. Um, and then I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you it's me. I think my approach is different. I think it's a good hybrid. So what you're getting on the course is good. There's no one else out there. If anyone has a recommendation, shove it in LinkedIn. I find them very disappointing. Those are the two voices, my own. But really, April is very good. So even if you don't, you know, you know, a recent route or out of date, it's still good. Um April's the one that I think is very practical and very good. I do think she's worth more of a listen. I think she's good. Right, great questions. We're out. Enjoy reading week, do something fun. I'll see you in a week's time. We're into product the most important P. It's a great module and it's a great start to tactics. So we're off and running. Enjoy your break. See you in a week.