Call to Action®

This week’s Call to Action® guest has made mistakes. But, rather than crying, raging or blaming it all on Alan from Accounts, he actually went out and wrote a (very good) book about it all. His name is Paul Dervan, Head of Brand Marketing at Miro, and his book, Run With Foxes is an entertaining (and deeply reassuring) reminder that mistakes in marketing are rarely as catastrophic as we make them out to be. Including the time we spent all our marketing budget on a brand collab between CTA and Toadfish from Neighbours. Anyway, listen to Paul… Available on all good, and bad, podcast platforms. Dedicated to Peter Field. _ 📣 Feel better about #marketing with Call to Action. A ...Gasp! PODCAST hosted by Giles Edwards #AI #effectiveness

This week we released #AI from the punishment cupboard in which we’ve been keeping it in order to win the approval of author, marketing super-brain and AI believer Paul Dervan. Having guided the marketing efforts of everyone from O2 to the Irish National Lottery, Paul is now putting his remarkable marketing brain to excellent use at Miro (and, in doing so, has surely become a target for potential reprisals from the sticky note industry). Over his career Paul has earned the reputation for being one of the industry’s bulkiest brains when it comes to marketing effectiveness, and has even scooped up the title of Ireland’s Marketer of the Year in 2022. He is a strong advocate for the role of AI in our business and his book, 'Run with Foxes' is an entertaining, and reassuring, exploration of marketing, decision making and our unhealthy attitude to mistakes in the industry. In a chat that ducks, delves and dives like a man trying to escape a platoon of angry Post-It notes, we cover… • How Paul’s early jobs in the care industry shaped him, personally and professionally  • The influence on young Paul of advertising, and especially David Ogilvy • Why decision-making, and not outcomes, is the thing we should all care more about • The current, and future, role of AI as a co-worker in our world • Some practical ways AI is already changing the way we work • Confessions of a campaign calamity and what it taught him • How he hopes his book will help young marketers dodge the dangers he didn't  • Why a culture of transparency, and owning your mistakes, will make marketing better, and so much more. 📣 Hear, here: https://lnkd.in/e-nVRakt ❤️ Paul dedicates the episode to the brilliant Peter Field (with pod nods and kind words to previous CTA guests Phil Barden and Paul Feldwick along the way). Thank you Paul :) _ Feel better about #marketing with Call to Action® | A ...Gasp! PODCAST hosted by me #CTAPod

Maybe you pulled your Hustle Muscle. Maybe the 10x maximized results gurus are giving you hives. Maybe you’re just burned out. I found this Call to Action® pod delightfully resetting, at a time where slowing down to recenter was needed. A few lovely writing tips tossed in, to boot. Certainly worth a listen as a reminder to enjoy the ride during our time on this spinning rock flying through space. As Jerry Seinfeld said, “The secret of life is to waste time in ways that you like. NOT to get caught up in the chaos of life, routine, the race for productivity.” Link in comments.

We may have had to look up what the word polymath meant, but only so we could describe our Call to Action® guest (and my hero) from a few weeks back without the phrase ‘knows a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff’. That guest was none other than Mark Denton – advertising hero, artist, fashion and furniture designer, rogue, prince, rascal and gentleman – and, as you’d expect, he had some incredible yarns to tell… Stick it in your ears, nod along for an hour or so, and feel better about #creativity almost immediately. Available wherever you get your podcasts, and over on ...Gasp!'s website with bonus tasties. _ *WARNING* Do not exceed the stated dose of the Call to Action® podcast. It can cause excessive marketing knowledge and capability. #marketing #advertising

A couple of weeks ago I was invited by Elliot Connolly from ...Gasp! to attend a live Call to Action® poddy. Many events promise to be 'packed with insights', but usually the only thing I walk away with is a bunch of free biscuits shoved into my pockets. This one was an exception – I left genuinely feeling better about brand and marketing, with things I could implement immediately... as well as a bunch of biscuits for the train home. There's this bizarre notion that creativity belongs exclusively in retail or consumer industries. It's utter nonsense. If you're a marketer in B2B, you've no doubt encountered this. And yet, business related buying is a highly considered, multi-layered process. Here's the reality: 95% of your buyers have a list of 3-5 brands in mind, and 80% of purchase decisions come from those 3-5 brands. You may not want to hear this, but they'll never see your pitch deck or your 'meet the team' page. In fact, you likely won't speak to them as their mind is already made up. Being known and being memorable is critical, and creativity key in achieving it. If you're spending the entirety of your time, budget, and effort on pitch decks, you're probably doing your business (and personal) brand a disservice. Don't get me wrong – this stuff does matter, but if they're the cornerstone of your strategy, you're missing a big opportunity. As Brian Macreadie said (and I'm henceforth stealing): "You can't stand out from the crowd if you're identical to the crowd." Simple but packs a punch. I'll leave you with this video – actual footage of how we think the market will react to that brand spanking new pitch deck that looks exactly like everyone else's. 🥱 #B2BMarketing #Creativity #BrandStrategy

🚨 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑯𝑰𝑫𝑫𝑬𝑵 𝑩𝑼𝒀𝑬𝑹: 𝑾𝑯𝒀 𝑻𝑯𝑬 𝑩𝑬𝑺𝑻 𝑺𝑶𝑳𝑼𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵 𝑫𝑰𝑫𝑵’𝑻 𝑾𝑰𝑵 🚨 You know that feeling when you’ve done everything right? You’ve researched, compared, vetted, and finally found the perfect solution? That’s exactly where my team was. We had identified an incredible digital product that came highly recommended by our agency, fully aligned with our needs, and ready to roll. We entered the long and painful due diligence process, bracing ourselves for the usual scrutiny. IT, procurement, and legal had questions. Lots of them. ❓ What about security? ❓ What’s their risk profile? ❓ Are they compliant? Cue endless back and forth - emails, meetings, follow-ups. The vendor handled it brilliantly. Every concern was addressed. Every box was ticked. We thought we were in the clear 👏 Then, at the final hurdle, a new voice entered the chat. Someone from another function - responsible for data compliance - took one look and said, "Never heard of them." And just like that, it was pretty much over ❌ Not because the product wasn’t right. Not because it didn’t meet our requirements. But because this key stakeholder - who had been left out of the vendor’s targeting - was more comfortable with a well-known, ‘safe’ competitor. 💡 My team (and agency) were the vendor’s visible target buyers - the ones they had engaged and influenced. 💡 But B2B decisions aren’t made in silos. The hidden buyers held the power to block the deal. 💡 If the vendor had built awareness with these unseen stakeholders earlier, the outcome might have been different. That experience was a turning point for me. It reinforced a crucial lesson: 𝑩2𝑩 𝒃𝒖𝒚𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒔 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒑𝒍𝒆𝒙, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒇 𝒗𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒐𝒓𝒔 𝒅𝒐𝒏’𝒕 𝒆𝒏𝒈𝒂𝒈𝒆 𝒃𝒐𝒕𝒉 𝒗𝒊𝒔𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝑨𝑵𝑫 𝒉𝒊𝒅𝒅𝒆𝒏 𝒃𝒖𝒚𝒆𝒓𝒔, 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒌 𝒍𝒐𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒅𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒔 - 𝒏𝒐 𝒎𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝒈𝒐𝒐𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒊𝒓 𝒔𝒐𝒍𝒖𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒊𝒔. 👉 This article from LinkedIn’s The B2B Institute explains it brilliantly: The Hidden Buyer Gap. https://lnkd.in/gq_mfxdq 🎧 For more on this, check out Mimi Turner on the Call to Action® podcast - she breaks down why targeting hidden B2B buyers is so crucial. Well worth a listen! https://lnkd.in/gZBxxJgQ Has this ever happened to you? #B2BMarketing #HiddenBuyers #MarketingStrategy #DecisionMakers

When I think of my favourite ad ever, this is always in the mix. Read Nick Bell's story behind it whilst I giddily doff my cap in his, and the extended creatives, direction. "julie adams and Richard Connor, a young team at Leo Burnett, were working on a trade brief for John West. As they were waiting to share their work with us one day the sun was shining and Mark Tutssel and I could see their idea through the back of their layout. ‘That’s good’, we said together. ‘But it’s not running as a trade ad’. We asked photographer Andy Roberts to shoot the ad for us and presented it finished to our clients. It ran as press and as a 48-sheet poster and won the Grand Prix at The London International Advertising Awards and two Silver Lions at Cannes. A recent online article featured the ad under the headline ‘Is this the best press ad of all time?' _ #advertising #marketing

Finally, a marketing podcast I can pop into my EYES, not just my ears. Some lucky peeps on this spinning rock flying through space will be fortunate enough to snag a copy of "10 1/2 Proper Marketing Principles as Told by Our Leading Podcast, Call to Action." As a self-professed fan of Call to Action® and happy supporter of my pal Giles Edwards and the brilliant team at ...Gasp!, I binged on the delicious art direction, recalling some of my favorite guests and memorable stories. The pièce de résistance? Each story has a QR code connecting to its corresponding pod episode. Ugh. Brilliant. Thanks for the inspiration and for setting the bar high, Giles. (Rolls up sleeves and gets back to work) Support your friends! And let's all keep working hard to raise the bar for our profession. #brand #marketing