Embracing Marketing Mistakes
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.
Episodes
155 episodes
How A PR Exec Survived Lads’ Mags, a Riot, And A Near-Top Gun Airspace Incident
What happens when the person paid to pitch stories decides to live them instead? We pull back the curtain on 90s Soho PR, where relationships were built over ringing landlines, long lunches, and last-minute invitations, and where the distance b...
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6:34
EP 104: Why Liquid Death and Guinness Highlight Their Flaws with Phil Agnew
Behavioural tactics collapse more often than marketers admit. Phil Agnew joins us again to expose the shortcuts that fail, the ones that hold up under pressure, and the science senior marketers can actually trust.Phil is the creator and ...
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56:05
We Printed 50,000 Catalogues... With the Wrong Phone Number.
Ever had that stomach-sinking moment when you realise you've made a massive, irreversible mistake? Try 50,000 glossy brochures printed with the wrong phone number. One poor marketer handed over a random pensioner’s number to the public, then ha...
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8:15
EP 103: From Fax Nightmares to AI: Staying Future Ready with Alistair Frost
A single fax almost caused a multimillion pound pricing collapse. Yet the story is only the starting point. This episode goes much deeper into how marketers cope with relentless technological change and why so many professionals feel overwhelme...
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46:34
What happens when creativity outpaces strategy?
On this episode of Embracing Marketing Mistakes, I’m joined by Gareth Turner, founder of Big Black Door and former Head of Marketing at Weetabix. Gareth has over 23 years of experience in food and drink, having led marketing for brands like Joh...
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6:03
EP 102: How Kevin Chesters Helped Make Britain’s Worst Ad
One advert wiped out a supermarket product in six weeks, and Kevin Chesters was right in the middle of it. He saw the disaster coming, ignored the warning signs and watched the whole thing collapse in real time.Kevin Chesters is a seaso...
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1:00:17
We almost made political history on Twitter, until they pulled the plug
I’m joined by Stuart Bruce, who is internationally recognised as the PR Futurist. He is a thinker, strategist and hands-on practitioner in modernised public relations, communications and corporate affairs. Stuart specialises in AI, communicatio...
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4:02
EP 101: Stop Wasting Social Spend: 12 Social Media Trends That Will Make Or Break 2026
Marketers are fighting on too many fronts. Budgets are tight, algorithms change daily and AI is flooding every feed with low grade content. This episode cuts through the noise and lays out the 2026 social landscape with absolute clarity....
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59:08
Hold My Buffalo: Samsung's Aussie Adventure Gone Wrong
Joining the conversation today is Richard Noble, Head of European Public Relations at Audible. With years of experience managing brand reputation and navigating high-pressure PR situations, Richard understands how quickly things can go wrong wh...
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8:27
Ep 100: 450,000 Emails and a Waterboarded Exec: The Best of 100 Episodes
A hundred stories in, and the sharpest truths are hiding inside the worst moments. We mark our rather large milestone with a definitive countdown of six unforgettable marketing screw-ups.From an automation update that unleashed 450,000 ...
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54:57
When Exposing Bad Hairdressers Costs Eight Hours of Your Life
Let me introduce you to Ann Wright, a journalist, BBC producer and PRCA-approved media trainer with years of experience behind some of the UK’s biggest live events and investigations. She’s had an impressive career, but not without a few wild t...
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5:59
The Secret Spelling Mistake That Cost Six Figures
In this episode, we’re joined by Rachel Massey, Director of Marketing at Huthwaite International. She talks us through one of the most stressful moments of her career and what it was like to deal with it in real time.We dig into a cringe...
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8:20
EP 99: Why PR Needs a Complete Rethink in 2026: Sarah Waddington
She went globally viral. Overnight, she faced death threats, abuse and media frenzy reaching across continents. This is the story of how PRCA CEO Sarah Waddington rebuilt, refocused and reshaped the PR industry in the middle of chaos.In ...
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50:45
Even experts fall into their own marketing traps.
Katie Tucker is a marketing strategist who helps teams truly understand their customers so they can build products that sell. She works with companies of all sizes, offering practical support, training, and discovery sprints that cut through th...
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3:38
EP 98: Media Training Masterclass: How Leaders Land Messages in a Digital‑First World
Chris Norton and Will Ockenden of Prohibition PR unpack what modern media interviews really feel like for leaders today. They move past the old PR textbook and talk frankly about hot mic blunders, off‑record comments that never stayed off the r...
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1:01:15
From Office to Remote: A Pandemic Pivot Gone Wrong
Rich Mullholland, Founder of Missing Link and a presentation company leader, shares how his eloquence led to convincing himself of incorrect strategies that nearly cost him their business after the pandemic. His decision to permane...
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5:46
EP 97: Ex-McKinsey Strategist: Why Your Strategy Will Fail - Faris Aranki
A brilliant strategy doesn’t fail because it’s wrong. It fails because people don’t own it and leaders won’t focus. That’s the energising premise of our conversation with Faris Aranki, founder of Shear Ghetto Consulting and former McKinsey advi...
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47:41
Behind the Skip: How Eight Students Nearly Ruined a VIP Event
Melanie Parker, a university recruitment professional, shares a hilarious mishap when student hospitality staff abandoned their posts at a high-profile university event to get drunk behind a skip. Eight students helping themselves to champagne ...
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3:38
EP 96: Community Isn’t a Campaign: Lessons from Comms Hero Asif Choudry
What does it take to turn a simple hashtag into a thriving community of 15,000 marketing and comms professionals? In this episode, Chris Norton sits down with Asif Choudry, founder of Comms Hero, to unpack the journey from a one-off event in Ma...
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55:36
The Unlikely Path from Vatican City to Kim Jong-un's Birthday Party
Ken Robertson, Paddy Power’s former Head of Mischief, was given one job: grab attention by any means necessary. Known for outrageous campaigns and a flair for chaos, he built a career out of toeing the line. But one particular stunt, his most a...
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10:41
EP 95: A £7K SEO Disaster to LinkedIn Success Story: Niraj Kapur
Ever sunk thousands into SEO with zero return? Or been ghosted after a pitch you poured your soul into? In this episode, LinkedIn Top Voice and sales trainer Niraj Kapur joins Chris Norton to unpack the brutal truths of modern selling. From red...
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56:01
I Forgot to Book the Entire Afternoon Session of my Event.
Former marketing manager at Prolific North, Natalie Davidson, once accidentally invited 100 people to the wrong day of an event due to a rogue automatic reminder. She discovered the mistake while in the middle of briefing a speaker and was unab...
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4:28
EP 94: The Pink Batman Strategy: Finding Your Brand’s Inner Weird - Mark Terry-Lush
Mark Terry Lush spent thirty years chasing every opportunity. Big brands, wild projects, new cultures, he said yes to them all. The problem was that adaptability started to feel like progress, and it cost him focus on his own brand.In th...
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47:26
How A Bird, A Lost Bag, And A Typo Taught Me To Safeguard My Marketing Career
Writer and freelance marketing expert Sarah Townsend joined the show on episode 43; she shared a set of moments from her career that are equal parts chaotic and unforgettable She talks about shouting “Look, a heron!” in the middle o...
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6:32