Embracing Marketing Mistakes
Every marketing expert has a "greatest hits" reel, but their biggest wins are usually built on the back of failure. Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the world’s leading podcast for senior marketers who are tired of the polished corporate bullshit.
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 screw-ups they’d rather forget. The show moves past the vanity metrics to uncover the brutal, honest truths behind marketing disasters, from £30,000 SEO black holes 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. 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 disasters into your unfair market advantage.
It's time to stop pretending everything is perfect and start learning from the biggest mistakes from the world's best.
Episodes
141 episodes
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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1:02:57
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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7:43
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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49:24
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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5:35
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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57:18
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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12:38
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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57:44
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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6:25
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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49:09
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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8:29
When Twitter Turned On Royal Mail
A single missing gesture can set the internet alight. We open up about a day when Royal Mail faced a fast-moving backlash over Paralympics stamps and how a quiet policy gap looked like a loud value judgment on social media. From the first surge...
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5:37
I Booked The Billboards For The Wrong Week And Somehow Didn’t Get Fired
When Lisa, co-founder of Common People and strategist at Wavemaker Manchester, accidentally misbooked an out-of-home campaign linked to a BBC event, it was more than an embarrassing blunder back in episode 41.It became the moment she sta...
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4:38
EP 93: How Overinvesting in Performance Ads Cost Adobe's Andy Lambert £30k
What happens when you drop £30,000 on an influencer and the sign-ups never show?In this episode of Embracing Marketing Mistakes, Andy Lambert, co-founder of ContentCal, author of Spheres of Influence and now Principal Manager of Product ...
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1:02:47
The Craigslist Sandwich Board Stunt That Misfired
When Director of Thinking and Creative PR Specialist Peter Freedman joined us for this episode 39, he unpacked the unusual marketing mistake he made while working with Craigslist.Tasked with satirising the rise of in-your-face shirt spon...
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7:16
EP 92: What Ken Hughes’ 30-Foot Drop Teaches Brands About Loyalty
Ken Hughes spent 15 years chasing NPS scores, loyalty points and dashboards, only to realise his “loyal customers” were simply trapped by discounts and habit. Then he ignored two clear warning signs on his own roof, fell 30 feet and shattered 2...
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59:00
Inside the Haircare CGI Mishap That Stopped a Campaign
As Creative Marketer Anil Manji joined the show, he reflected on an early-career incident that continues to guide his thinking today. We take you into this segment of episode 40, inside a haircare TV ad that reused legacy footage, layered on a ...
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6:28
EP 91: How AI Is Transforming SEO: Chris Attewell on Google, Bing and the Future of Search
This week on Embracing Marketing Mistakes, Chris Norton is joined by Chris Attewell, former CEO of Search Laboratory and now board advisor at Realise Advisory, to explore how AI is changing the future of SEO. Chris revisits his earl...
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56:56
I Lost $25,000 On Ads And Learned Exactly What Not To Outsource
When Pinterest Strategist and Niche Marketing Expert Meagan Williamson joined the show for Episode 38, she opened up about a painful and expensive mistake that shaped the way she works today. Early in her business, she hired a Faceb...
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8:22
What Happens When Your Influencers Refuse to Use Their Own Names
Marshall Manson is the CEO of Fleishman Hillard and a communications strategist with deep experience in both brand marketing and corporate reputation. In 2006, while working at Edelman, he played a central role in the infamous "Walmarting Acros...
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18:35
EP 90: The Body Shop Line That Haunted Vikki Ross
A single soft line on The Body Shop catalogue haunted copywriter Vikki Ross for six months. Years later, another forgettable line slipped through and ended up across London on billboards. In this episode, I talk to Vikki about how...
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59:16
From helping DJ Bob Sinclair to almost getting fired.
Christopher McKay, Head of Brand Engagement at Hillarys shares his career-defining failure when working at Ministry of Sound, revealing how a creative idea bombed due to lack of audience research and testing.• Started career in journali...
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7:01
EP 89: The Secret Brain Hack Powering the World’s Biggest Brands with Claire Koryczan
What if the key to leading brilliant brand teams was already wired into your brain? Claire Koryczan, founder of Imagine Beyond, has helped FTSE 100 brands and creative agencies unlock smarter ways to lead, create and think. In this ...
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1:01:33
Three PR Nightmares That Cost Brands Millions
Marketing mishaps from major brands reveal the critical importance of PR coordination with marketing efforts and careful forward planning to prevent campaign disasters. • Zara's campaign featuring mannequins with missing limbs was ...
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8:33
EP 88: How I Built a PR Agency from Zero During COVID - Darryl Sparey
What happens when you leave a top PR agency to launch your own business, only for the world to shut down weeks later? Darryl Sparey, co-founder of Hard Numbers and former Hotwire leader, shares how he built an agency focused on proving ma...
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50:00
EP 87: From KFC’s Pricing Error to Expedia’s Deck Disaster: Lessons from Sam Benton on Creative Courage
Sam Benton, co-founder of Mad Masters, shares a career-shaping error many ambitious marketers will recognise: believing you know it all and avoiding help until reality proves otherwise. He explains why pricing is a feeling, not a nu...
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50:40