← Uncensored CMO
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign.
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B
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to uncensored CMO. Now it's the beginning of 2026, so I thought it'd be a great moment to think about the year ahead, careers where you're going. And I'm joined by somebody that's interviewed a lot of very successful and very high profile people and has incredible podcast of his own, Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. Jimmy, welcome to the show.
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A
Thanks, John. Feels different.
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B
This is a bit different, isn't it? And you've taken up the guest position over there. I see. I have. How's it feel being the guest?
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A
It's nice. You can look out, you can window.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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A
It's sort of, it's, it's good, it's, it's kind of. I've really enjoyed sort of prepping for this because you learn so much when doing a podcast, but you don't sort of necessarily get an opportunity to kind of repeat it back.
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B
Yeah, I, I was at an award ceremony the other day, the Marketing Week Awards, and we won something which is very, very exciting. But I ended up being sat right at the front of, you know, literally right by the steps up to the stage and we, and we had this amazing comedian called Maisie Adams who was absolutely brilliant. She was so funny. And I had my back to the stage and I was thinking, please don't pick on me. You know how comedians kind of roast the front row. I was intentionally like, you know, head in my hands, looking the other way. Hey, please don't pick me. Of course. Where did she go? She literally picked me. And then she goes, what's your name? What do you do? And I said, john, podcast. And she goes, yeah, middle aged white man. It figures.
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A
Yeah, going for an identity, going through an identity crash.
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B
There we go, there we go. Yeah, he's always going to get he called out, but, but anyway, here we are, two middle aged white men with a podcast, living up to the dream. But how did you end up in, in this situation?
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A
What happened was so I was a advisor in Downing Street. Now that used to be a really impressive line on its own. Like now I have to qualify a bit more with. I wasn't involved in any parties and I was there for longer than 50 days. But essentially I left the of 2019 and I was like, I need some time and some space to figure out what I was going to do next. We just had our first kid and I went out to study at Stanford originally for a couple of months on their kind of like executive entrepreneurship program. And we Had a great time out there, took the wife and the newborn with us. But this was March 2020 and of course the world sort of changed and everyone remembers their March 2020 and got back on the last flight to the UK. My wife is a doctor, so she was like, I want to go back to work and help with the fight. And so she was back at work sort of in April and I became a stay at home dad to our five month old. And those listeners that have got young kids or had young kids, well, know there isn't much you can do with a five month old. They're too young to even really watch telly. So basically we just listen to lots of audio and with our one hour walk around the park as well. And so during that time I thought, is there something I can do here to help tackle the unemployment crisis that's going to be coming up?
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B
And.
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And I thought back to a conversation I used to have quite regularly with the PM at number 10 would be I would take the call from Debenhams or Wilkinson's at 5 to 8 in the morning saying we're just about to go into administration and you know, we're going to make 10,000 people redundant. And I would walk into the ATM meeting with a PM and sort of say this wonderful news. And she would say, sometimes, Jimmy, all you ever tell me about is job losses. Like, yeah, this time the stats showed record high employment. She was like, well, where are all these new jobs coming from? And I was like, well, you know, it's entrepreneurs that create one or two jobs a week, but that never gets wrapped up into a jobs announcement. And so from then on I thought, well, I'm going to include in my weekly note for her a company that is sort of making, you know, is hiring and doing interesting things. And so that was the concept for the podcast essentially was could we recreate those kind of conversations. I used to have a number 10 about where the future of the economy was going, but sort of democratize it to a wider audience and inspire people because at the crux of it, I think there's this interesting thing that's happening in the world, which is it's never been a better time to be building, starting or switching a career. There's more opportunity than there's ever been, but it is a lot less linear than it has been in the past. Like there's a lot less shop floor to boardroom kind of stories. And so actually if you don't come from a sort of privileged background, it can actually be harder to work out what to do than it's ever been. So you've got a sort of paradox happening of where, yeah, it's never been better and then it's also never been harder as well. And so that's the idea of the. Of the show, is that we talk to really interesting people about what jobs they're doing, what their advice would be. And, yeah, we're 250 episodes in now.
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B
And you've had some, like, insane guests as well, just your back had low. Like Tony Blair. You even had the current Prime Minister. I mean, yes, that must have been a scoop to get him to take a. You know, take a bit of time off to come and chat.
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A
Yeah, well, that was an interesting one. So I can tell you about a couple of those things. I mean, I have to say, interviewing Tony Blair at the start of last year was quite a bit moment because I. There's something very strange about interviewing politicians from your youth. Like, you just have them on a completely different sort of pedestal, really. So that was interesting. But then he's always been a very good communicator and I think he saw what was happening with the kind of the Trump effect and so on, and was. Had always been quite sort of keen to do it, so difficult to put him down. But we did in the end, the Prime Minister one was interesting because one of the things I've learned, interviewing serving politicians, particularly those in government, is quite hard because they are, as I know better than anyone, like, really busy. And so they don't perhaps have as much time to kind of think about some of the kind of broader issues and so on. But Downing street were very keen to kind of do it, and they were the ones that sort of suggested it. And it sort of. We had this whole game of where initially they were like, can you come to the Midlands and do six minutes with them? I was like, it's not really a podcast then, in that case. And basically sort of this. This dance continued for a couple of weeks until they were like, well, look, come to number 10 and you can have 15 minutes, which I know is quite a long time for a PM to give. And I knew that once we were in the room, we'd be able to push it to 20 as well. So it sort of worked quite well. And I think he came across quite well. And look, you know, I'm a former Conservative special advisor, right, so I'm not sort of exactly a natural bedfellow of the Labour Party. But what I would say in my research about Keir Starmer was that it was quite interesting listening to what kind of working class background he come from. And I thought, this is a guy who has got to the top of both law and politics in his career. That is quite impressive given where he's come from. So that's what we're always trying to start the show with, particularly when we're interviewing people from public service, is like, even if we. Even if I don't agree with them and so on, is that we want to give them a fair hearing and we're interested in what kind of persuaded them to go into it.
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B
And this is what I think people are coming around to realize the power of podcasting. I know we talked about, or people talk about the last election in the US Being the podcast election, but it's incredible, the power of Trump going on, Joe Rogan, for example, because it shifted the conversation from. At best, you might get four minutes on cnn. Like that would be like a steal the show kind of slot to suddenly got three hours, which I reckon you come across entirely differently. When you've got nowhere to hide and you tend to get. It gets more personal, you go deeper. It's a very different media that gives a. I mean, I mean, listening to, you know, your interview with Kier, I say Kier, you know, Prime Minister, casually dropping my mate. But I mean, in terms of my perception of him before I listened to that was completely different, you know, because, you know, he's coming for a lot of stick. You know, there's a lot of things he's done I don't, you know, I disagree with. It's been very hard, right?
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Yeah.
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But he came across very down to earth, very human, very warm. And it's a. You see a completely different side of somebody, don't you? When you have a.
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You do. And it's also the way that it sort of starts as well, because with that we're obviously sort of doing the testing of the mics and so on. So you're having a bit of that kind of sort of filler chat and so on. And we were in the small dining room in Downing street, which was like my favorite room because it's basically where Thatcher and Gorbachev sort of thawed the Cold War. And it was great for when I was getting invested into number 10 to have that room specifically, because you could sort of start with that and you would immediately sort of loosen them up because, you know, a lot of investors tended to be Americans in their 50s and 60s, so they were of that generation where that happened in their formative Years. So that was quite a good sort of trick that I learned early on. And so we were sort of chatting a bit about that and he was asking me about being here and then I was telling him the story of how the podcast started and I, I realized I was sort of getting a bit too sort of deep into it all and thinking, gosh, we're sort of eating into time. But then he interestingly picked up on the stay at home dad stuff and he was asked me about whether he thought it made me a better father and stuff. And it turned out that he had done that between sort of finishing as a lawyer and starting the job at the public prosecutions. And it was, it was just really interesting. And we sort of basically started the podcast from there and in some ways I kind of wish we'd just gone and like spent 20 minutes on that. I'm not sure the press team would have been that happy about it, but I thought again, he was coming across quite well there and quite interesting in a way that he couldn't go anywhere else and sort of talk about that.
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B
Yeah, I mean, I think you should do Diary of a CEO, honestly, I think that, I think that would, if he did one thing to transform perception of him and the Labour Party right now would be that, I mean, Kamala Harris came on recently and that was really interesting. I mean, obviously it's different for her because she's no longer, you know, in, in a race and in Frontline politics, but it's just so powerful. You just see a completely different side of people.
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A
It is. But I think the problem is, I mean, remember when Sadiq Khan did Diary of a CEO? And it'd be interesting, get Steven's reflections on it, but he wouldn't answer the question about like, what's your biggest weakness? What's your biggest kind of regret? And I, I get that. And you know, he responds by saying, you know, I'm just, it's just going to be used by my political opponents against me and so on. And I just. It's interesting how you, it comes back to that when you're serving this stuff is, is harder to do. And I just wonder how much Stephen wants to do it. I mean, I, I thought what was quite interesting was Steven's interview with Boris Johnson as well, actually sort of from last year, because he, Stephen unlocked a bit of Boris that I hadn't sort of really seen before where he was like associating with him on the sort of being from a kind of broken home etc and was asking Boris about when was the moment your parents told you you were being divorced. You know, I've known Boris for 20 years. I've never heard him talk about that. Like, he's always been quite sort of private about that and actually he sort of got that and it was just very interesting kind of way of doing it.
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B
I think that's what he's very good at, isn't it? It's that it's like tapping into the personal story, the emotion. He did that with Kamara. I know he brought some photos of, you know, special moments, career. And it really changed the dynamic in the conversation. I mean, you've obviously worked as an advisor. I remember doing media training and with the BBC in fact. And it was one of the best days of my life. It's like, it was really exciting because I remember like walking into a room and they give you no preparation. You go straight into the studio and then they hit you with some really hard questions. I was at the, I was marketing direct on Lucas Aid and we're going through the sugar tax and we're having to announce that we're kind of halving them out of sugar in the formulation and so on. And the brand's been around for 80 years. I remember sitting in the studio, first question is, when will you apologize? I'm like, what am I apologizing for when we apologize? Because you're admitting today that you've had twice the amount of sugar in leukozyde and generations have grown up, you know, with too much sugar in their diet and they're obese because of you. When will you apologize? You know?
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Really?
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Yeah, really hard. But what was amazing is afterwards, then I had a panel of people sat behind the screen kind of assessing my performance. Then you basically get deconstructed in terms of the job you did. And it was, it was exciting and nerve wracking at the same time. But I learned so much. But the, the thing, of course, I think, you know, is relevant to this conversation is that you learn to pivot all the time back to the message. But it's like this game that we all know politicians are doing. So every time it gets exhausting, doesn't it? Please answer the question. So why is it that politicians can't just be honest? I mean, I mean, because you must have advised plenty in your, in your career.
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A
Well, I think there's a lot of, you know, journalists are so embedded in the kind of Westminster system. They know the weak points and so on that they're trying to get to and they're all driven by creating news and headlines. And it all becomes a bit of a kind of circular kind of motion in terms of that's all they want, etc. And that's why I think part of the problem with our politics at the moment is it's just so short term in terms of who's up, who's down and so on. And it's, you know, it's, it. I just think it's really hard because they kind of zone in on that and also is they do often only have sort of, you know, max, like, you know, even like the big sit downs with like Laura Kingsberg on a Sunday are still like 12 to 14 minutes. Right. Like, it's really difficult to actually sort of like explain nuance. I think that's one thing in our system is it's just got, you know, the government has got so big and so complicated that it is just difficult to explain all these kind of like trade offs and decisions that have to be taken because that's ultimately what politics is. The entire time is like a series of, of trade offs.
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B
Yeah. Now you've had some insanely successful and well known people on your podcast. What would be the top, let's say, what are the top three episodes that you've, you've done? And would, would that surprise people?
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Yeah, so I think so. So let's take last year. Right, So I, I'm gonna give you five guests. I want you to kind of guess the order of where they came in terms of.
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Oh, I like this.
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All right, so we had Tony Blair, jewels, guides, Tim Campbell, Rory Sutherland and Simon Squibb. What are the order of those five? The breakdown in terms of long form views.
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Right, See you. You'd probably assume it's Tony Blair because.
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Why don't we include Keir Starmer in that?
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Oh yeah, let's do that. Keir Starmer, Okay. You would think Keir Starmer because he's in the news, he's current Prime Minister. However, you can hear from Keir Starmer every single day. He's in, he's in the press all the time. So I'm just wondering whether as unique as it was to get him to talk off the record, people are probably a bit checked out. Tony Blair I would have assumed is up there. But I'm guessing because the way you've asked the question, maybe not. And also it's been quite a long time since he's been relevant, as fascinating as it is. So I think it's more about current and knowing how the algorithms work as well. I think it's about how current you are in social media with algorithms and so on. So I'm gonna go Simon Squib top, then Rory Sutherland. What was the second one? Jules.
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Jules Guides.
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I'm gonna go Jules next. Then I'm gonna go.
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Hang on, you've got Simon script number.
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One, Rory number two.
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Yeah.
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Jules number three. I'm then gonna go Tony Blair, Keir Starmer and Tim Campbell. I'm gonna go in that order because I think the politician is going to be at the bottom half and then we're going to go based on recency, Sakia obviously being current Tony Blair and Tim Campbell.
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A
So that is pretty good. But not. You called Simon Squid massively wrong.
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B
Okay.
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A
So that's interesting because. So basically the order that it goes is from the bottom of it's kissed armor. Tony Blair about the same, basically. And bear in mind Starman had six months less as well. So like, you've got to come and factor in. But those two are sort of at. Well, at the bottom is Simon Squib, actually. And then next is Keir Simon, Tony Blair, basically. Yeah, agreed. But then it is Tim Campbell, then Rory Sutherland and then Jules Guides. You've got about half.
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About half. Right, okay.
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Which is not.
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Simon's got a very big following, hasn't he?
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He has, but I think the thing is, is that he makes a lot of videos about his advice. So my logic on why Jules and Tim do well is that they don't do many videos on their background, whereas Simon has done a lot and it's quite powerful. Anyway.
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Yeah.
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Like in terms of the algorithm. But it's interesting. So I thought Simon's. But Simon's clips did amazingly well.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Interestingly, Blair and Starmer both did well, but not sort of stratospheric.
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B
Not. Not sort of like change the world.
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A
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's just quite interesting. Quite an interesting sort of thing really. But I think it comes to the point of it can be quite difficult to predict what is going to do well. Yeah, I mean, if you told me Jewels guys was going to come on top of that, I mean, I was sort of almost a bit reluctant about doing the interview, really. Yeah, totally. Sure. It's like our biggest one.
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So.
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But like, to be fair, it's quite interesting. He basically goes around London making tour guide videos and he does have a really interesting job because he's basically Tour guide meets YouTuber meets comedian meets historian. Like, it's just quite an interesting sort of mixture of things.
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B
Yeah.
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What about you what are your top five?
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Ah, well, probably, since you actually, that there's a few surprises and probably a few, you know, expected ones in there. So if I throw out five at you. So I recently had Gary V, who's pretty well known, and he's probably got the biggest social media following of anybody that I've ever interviewed. I start the year interesting every year for the last three years. I started the year with Les Burnett and Sarah Carter and they wrote this iconic book called How Not To Plan. And so every year I do a How not to plan in 2026 or 2025. So within advertising, they're kind of legendary. Mark Ritson. Mark Ritson is the founder of Mini mba, so he trains a lot of marketers. He writes for Ad Age. He used to write for Marketing Week. A bit of a scoop this year, actually. Do you remember the Jaguar rebrand last year that got a lot of controversy? I actually managed to interview the managing director for Jaguar, a guy called Rawdon Glover. So he's been on the show. And then something else I experimented this year with as well was actually having two people on to tackle a topic, including, actually, Jaguar was one of the topics, and I had Rory Sutherland and Scott Galloway, and both of them have obviously got a big following between them, but I changed the format. So I did an episode with Rory, did an episode with Scott, and then I got them together to discuss a topic and I put that out. So that's five big ones from the year.
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A
So, gosh, sub. Now, I'm gonna say I get. I basically get any game, bypass everything. So I'm gonna guess. So I'll just read them all out. Yeah, I reckon. Fifth was Mark Ritz on.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Fourth. Gary Vee.
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B
Yeah.
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Three. Les Burnett and Sarah Carter.
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B
Yeah.
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To the Jaguar story. Yeah. And one robbery, Silver, London. Scott Galloway, because that's just a powerhouse.
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B
Yeah, you. You are very close. Very, very close. That's not. You're not far off. So, surprisingly, to most people listening, Gary Vee last. I say last. I mean, fifth. I mean, obviously he's way up there compared to anyone else, but. But actually, relative to his, you know, social following. And I think, look, I. I was really delighted with that episode because we filmed it at his dad's wine shop, where he came from. So we got quite unique content. It's where he grew up. It, you know, it's a different conversation. But I think for my audience, Gary Vee's kind of on the edge of the audience a bit, and he's, you know, obviously there's you can hear from him anytime. Fourth, Les and Sarah, actually. So Les and Sarah, for my audience, are absolute stalwarts. And, you know, I've always got a really good. You know, got a good thing to say. Ritson, number three.
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A
Okay.
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Actually, Ritson's a. Ritson is a. He's so opinionated. He's always got data. He's very good, very entertaining. Number two. So you got this one, right? Rawdon Glover.
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Yeah.
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B
The Jaguar. Now, that's partly because, although I don't tend to interview managing directors as much, that story was probably the biggest story in marketing in the last 12 months.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And everyone's got an opinion about it. So to actually talk to the guy behind it was. Was a massive scoop. But number one, and he called it Rory Sutherland, Scott Galloway. And the interesting thing about it was I interviewed them individually and put those episodes out and together, and there's something about that. The contrast between the American kind of economics and, I mean, Scott Galloway's got a book, the Algebra of Wealth. And Scott is algebra. He's data, he's logic. And Rory is just this eccentric kind of, you know, creative, you know, behavioral scientist who just looks at the world as magic.
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Yeah.
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And I think the combination of that and being very British as well.
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Yeah. Ultra British. Yeah.
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B
Ultimately, quintessentially British. The mix of those two thinking styles is just magic to watch.
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A
Yeah.
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So if I can ever do that again, I. I'm gonna try and find ways of doing that, because that's. That's really cool.
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A
I do think. I do think if there's a way you can put, like, other inputs into people. Like, one of the ones. I mean, this was an old one that we've done now, but it's like three and a half years ago, was with Ben Francis of Gymshark. But interestingly, it's one of the few interviews that Ben has done alongside Noel Mack, this chief brand officer there. And I do think that sort of slightly unlocked Ben in different ways because he was there. So I do think, particularly with these people that are used to giving interviews, like, if you can find another way, partly changing the environment as well, like Gary V in the wine shop. But I think it is an interesting sort of, like, movement.
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B
So if you had to pick the episode that has inspired you the most, so not necessarily the one that's done the best, but has inspired you.
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A
I often Talk about my 100th episode with Miles Jacobson, the chief executive of Football Manager, because for me, that was just. I think, when I started it all it was like, that was one of the guests that I really wanted to do because I partly just wanted to go football manager offices, but also when I think about the people that we're trying to inspire on the show, which is generally the sort of like the 22 to 32 year olds that are in a job but maybe not sure if they're in the right one, like most people just get a job and we're sort of with this kind of like driven and ambitious, but maybe slightly directionless people is who I sort of think about basically what I was in my 20s and I just thought that episode was so interesting on so many levels. He also doesn't do many interviews as well, so we were kind of lucky to get him. And it was just interesting. Some of the stuff he was saying, he was like, yeah, we're not short of computer programmers because we're football manager actually. We're short of people that can write English narrative and so on. So I think it was just that sort of element. So it's the one that I cite one we did with Octopus Legacy guy called Sam Grice. So Octopus Legacy is largely a world writing company, although it's kind of like expanding now. And it was just interesting because he started the company after his mum had died. And I remember thinking this, gosh, it's going to be a really hard interview. And actually it just completely changed my sort of opinion and it was put me at ease and so on. So that's one that sort of just was. Was different and so on. But it's. It. You'll find this, right? I mean you can. You probably get asked your kind of like favorite episode. And I do, I do try and have a bit of a roster that in terms of meeting people at a party or something. And I will say, well, go and check this episode out because I think if you recommend a whole podcast to someone, it can be a bit overwhelming now when they've been going for sort of like five, seven years of gosh, where do I even sort of start with this? I'm like that with the rest is history, right? I know I would love the rest is history, but I just don't know where to start with it. And so I always try and think of what the person is like and what's one episode they might like. What about you? What have been some. Who do you direct? Well, I.
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B
My answer usually is, in fact, this is through our mutual friend Rory. Rory. He, he. In fact, it was during this interview actually with Rory and Scott that he mentioned this idea of reverse benchmarking. And he. He mentioned this guy, Will Godara, who basically is the founder of Eleven Madison park in New York, which got to number one in terms of the Michelin top 50 restaurants in the world. And one of the things Rory was talking about is he said they used to go and scout out rival restaurants, but rather than focus on what they did well, they focused on what they did badly. And he tells the story of, like, they went to this rival restaurant, the perfect dinner. It was absolutely, you know, spotless, brilliant. And at the end of the meal, they were sat there going, we cannot beat these guys. There's nothing they've done we could improve on. And then they got served the coffee and they drank the coffee and was like, do you know what? This coffee's just coffee. It's just average coffee. And it was right at the end, they thought, hang on a second. Rather than having, like, a wine sommelier who, you know, introduce you to a thousand, you know, esoteric wines, what if you had a beer sommelier and a coffee sommelier and a tea sommelier? So you basically found every single bit of the. Of the experience. You found out, how can we do that to world class standard? And I listened to Rory talk about it. He sort of rebranded it reverse benchmarking, which I thought was quite clever. And anyway, anyway, Rory introduced me to Will, and we went over to Nashville and recorded basically, an interview with him talking about how he got to become the world's number one restaurant. Now, my audience is marketers, right? That's who I'm targeting. You might go, well, what's a restauranteur got to teach marketers? And I've never had an interview that's got so much marketing wisdom from somebody who you wouldn't consider to be a marketer in terms of how they tell the story, in terms of, like, you know, who they target and how they target them, and the importance of experience over, you know, over the products and all that kind of thing. Because basically the idea effectively, of the book is they first made the top 50 list about seven years before they won it. And they were in the big award ceremony, and they do it from 50 to 1, right? And they were sat there going, oh, I wonder where we've come. We're sat next to Heston Blumenthal, you know, does this mean we're kind of in the same league, you know, at number 5011 Madison Park? And they said it was like, literally losing. We were the losers in the room. And they went off and, you know, kind of left early went to drink a lot and consoled themselves. And what they decided actually at that point is they could not win on the food. So the only way they're going to win is on the service. And the service was the thing that restaurateurs overlooked. It's not. They overlooked it, but it was very stereotypical. It's very stiff. It was very formal. And actually his belief was how you feel basically dictates what you'll think about the experience afterwards. If we can make people feel like they had a personal experience, it's been completely what they need. Every need has been cared for. And way beyond the food in terms of when you walk in and how you get served and how long you stay and how the bills presented. Everything was just thought about in terms of the service, not necessarily the food. And think about it from marketing perspective. We often obsess about product or we obsess about how we communicate things, but actually, if you obsess about the experience that somebody gets when they're. When. When they're your customer and. And all that that involves, you suddenly open up the aperture of what your brand stands for a lot more anyway, so I found it just fascinating and inspiring. But sometimes you have to step out of your own kind of, you know, discipline, don't you, to actually kind of get the inspiration.
- [27:04]
A
And how much do you think going to Nashville heightened that as a kind of experience on a podcast for you, in terms of the sort of the travel time and the amount of time you must have spent thinking about it as well?
- [27:17]
B
Definitely helped, actually. I mean, I. I read his book twice, so I read it once as a. As a punter, and then I kind of read it a second time as an interviewer. So, yeah, I. I thought very carefully about it. I mean, going to someone's. I mean, it wasn't in his home. He was in a podcast studio like this in Nashville. But. But going to where someone is has a different feel to it, doesn't it? Yeah, because you're kind of in there, you know, on. On their home turf. The other thing that helped very generously, we had a couple of hours, so we had a bit more time than normal, which is amazing because I could relax into it and we could. You know, in fact, we ran over a little bit, so it was having the extra time and space was good.
- [27:53]
A
Yes.
- [27:53]
B
And also, to be honest, somebody that's not in marketing, you don't get the typical marketing response. So one of the challenges I have is obviously I ask a lot of similar questions to a Lot of different people and you can get the same answer and you tend to get sometimes a slightly more obvious answer. Whereas talking to someone like Will Godara, somebody doesn't think like a marketer, although he's one of the best marketers on the planet, I think, just means you just get a much more interesting question. The other thing, of course, is he is an absolute pro at telling a story. Now, you know, obviously, if you got the world's number one restaurant, you will have told that story a few times. I mean, you must find this as well, right? You have a guest who knows how to use the medium. Yeah. Now, often I find with, you know, with CMOs, they're used to being in corporate presentations, they're used to being in team meetings. Right?
- [28:41]
A
Yeah.
- [28:41]
B
And therefore they'll. They'll ramble or they'll take a while to get to the point where someone like Will Godara will just say precisely what needs to be said and then have a beautiful story about when he was sat down with Oprah Winfrey talking about. You know what I mean? He'll just have a beautiful way of telling a story and getting to a point which makes for good content.
- [29:00]
A
I found that CEOs and entrepreneurs, quite similar, can be a bit business, bit corporate speak and so on. But actually, broadcasters and politicians, like you basically spend their lives doing interviews, right? Yeah. We say, yeah, well, how terrible they come across and whatever. But they have, like. They are really sort of forged in it. Like, in terms of. It is a primary kind of component of their job. So they're often sort of quite good to interview. I think they don't sort of tend to waffle so much, which might surprise kind of people, really, but I think when you put them in, again, when you put them in a kind of relaxed environment and so on, which politician would you most like to kind of.
- [29:37]
B
Get on partly because of recency? I love Kevin Badenock's response to the. To the budget. Right. This is just. We recorded this just after the budget. Oh, my God. That was. She was on fire, wasn't she?
- [29:50]
A
Yeah.
- [29:50]
B
And I just wonder, like, uh. She's very impressive to listen to. She's very good at going on the attack and having the information at her disposal. But I just wonder what it's like to take over a party that's in utter freefall.
- [30:02]
A
Yeah.
- [30:03]
B
Everyone hates you because of the legacy that's just been left and you're probably third or fourth in the polls. I mean, I just think what. I think the interesting position that she's in I don't know. I find her quite fascinating.
- [30:14]
A
Yeah, I think it should be good. Have you.
- [30:15]
B
Have. Are you going to get her off Breaking news Laser, you heard it here first.
- [30:22]
A
That phone call is just going. Was the Chancellor's press office. So that's why I just also think.
- [30:26]
B
About that we interrupt this podcast to bring breaking news. The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves.
- [30:31]
A
Put a ticker up, guys. Put the ticket to the producers. I'd say one of the worries that I've got for kind of like podcasting in 2026 and beyond a little bit is the amount of shows that are. Interview shows that are being released means that everyone might end up staying in their lanes quite a lot. And so what I mean by that is, if you look recently, you've had Amal Rajan launch his podcast, you've had Emma Barnett launch hers, you've had Michelle Hussein launched a Bloomberg show, Rameshwang, and Nathan has launched his show as well. Now, my sort of thinking on it is that it might end up being a lot of the same people going on the particular kind of verticals of those podcasts that those people kind of relate to. And that slightly worries me a bit because I think so. For example, Michelle's saying, second interview with. Was with Nigel Farage. And it was a fascinating interview and it was really interesting on both sides. Totally think both sides got a lot out of it. But I thought to myself, I wonder how much Nigel Farage would get out of actually doing Ramesh Wang and Nathan show instead. And Ramesh might be the opinion he's not quite ready to sort of do that yet. Needs to kind of like ease himself in. But I just thought it was. I just thought it was interesting with the proliferation of podcasts that come out, is that actually sort of hopping across the genres is going to be of more sort of benefit for people potentially.
- [31:49]
B
And that's why I think I'll spark. I think the magic here would be comedians and politicians. Cause you had Jeff Norcott on, didn't you?
- [31:56]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [31:57]
B
I love Jeff Norcott because he's like. He's like. He's a very funny, average bloke. I mean, his entire Persona is the kind of, you know, the bloke down the pub. But he's. His observational humor is just absolutely spot on. But I think, like, politicians would benefit from being interviewed by a comedian and almost like having a bit of a piss take out of it. I think that worked really, really well. I mean, imagine Jimmy Carr interviewing Nigel Farage or something like that. Yeah, yeah. The Entertainment value. But I think any politician that was willing to, to lean, lean into it and almost like have, have themselves roasted, I think they'll get a lot.
- [32:29]
A
It's quite interesting. I mean, Matt Ford's very good at that. Like the labor guy and the Nottingham Forest fan is very good at it. So yeah, it's interesting. He was basically the first podcast I ever listened to, the first podcast I ever listened to with George Osborne on Matt Ford's podcast. And it was just, it was very funny. And I think also that's something that in politics we've sort of underestimated a lot actually. It's like politics without humor and personality is just words on a page. Right. It's just a manifesto, effectively that's, you know, pretty boring. Like it is politicians that bring it to life and bringing stuff to life is like marketing humor, like all these different things. So I think we sort of underestimate that and I think it is definitely part of the kind of like Trump Farage, Boris appeal.
- [33:12]
B
Yes.
- [33:12]
A
Is sort of, I mean they do tell themselves, but there's, there's a sort of light hearted nature to it.
- [33:17]
B
Well, it's Farage down the pub with the pine or it's Boris doing the zip wire at London 2012, isn't it? Is those things that suddenly make them relatable that that counts. I was going to ask you a question actually on this because I don't know if you know this about marketers or advertisers, but there's, there's been this poll of who do you trust it by profession? So you've got doctors and solicitors and so on at the top, second from bottom are politicians. Now that won't surprise you. No, what might surprise you and is of great depression to anyone listening to my show. Advertisers, people who work in advertising are officially less trusted than the politicians that run the country, which I find the most damning thing about the profession that I'm in. Yeah, it's a bit depressing really.
- [33:57]
A
But it's interesting that, isn't it really? Because it's all coming from where people are also the level of paid for political advertising. And I think it's interesting in terms of like where this sort of YouTube and podcast economy is going as well in terms of. Yeah, I think one of the reasons that it is being successful is that podcasters are recommending the brands that they like or whatever. Or that's where it kind of like really works actually. Whereas, you know, sort of paid for advertising is probably just on the on the floor, on TV and social. Anyway. Right. So, yeah, it sort of. It doesn't. It doesn't surprise me. I mean, it is fascinating, the kind of, like, professions and how people kind of allay different status to different things as well. I always remember a wedding that I went to. Like. Like I was saying, I started the podcast in the pandemic and went to a wedding where I didn't know that many people and they were asking me, why didn't I say, oh, well, I'm a podcaster? And they're like, wow, that's incredible. That's the most amazing job. At the time, we had probably like a couple of thousand listeners or whatever. And I just remember thinking, like, if I'd said, like, I'm a BBC local radio host, I'm not sure they would have had, like, quite the same response. But it was the same thing. But it's just that sort of twisting and reframing of it. It's like one of the things I've always thought had struggles from sort of branding on this side is like, webinars. Like, webinars just sound like the most sort of, like, boring thing, whereas actually they're not. They're not that different to a podcast in some ways. Like, you know, it's sort of people explaining and so on.
- [35:35]
B
Like, apparently they've been rebranded late this year into broadcasting, which is effectively what a TV is. Yeah, it's a video broadcast. And so I've noticed quite a lot of brands now that they're changing the webinar to a broadcast and then suddenly you're like, yeah, yeah, that's what it is. So I think it's probably a Covid hangover, isn't it, where suddenly everyone was on webinars. It's a bit like. I think this is why no marketer was involved in the launch of Chat GPT. Right. Who would come up with ChatGPT as a name? It's like. It's like a code word that ended up kind of like, you know, the engineers probably put that as a code word between them at the beginning of the project. And then they had no marketing involvement. Right. And then they launched. They were. They launched with the kind of code name rather than actually coming up with something that anyone could understand what it was.
- [36:21]
A
Yeah. Sam Altman says, doesn't he, we're a lot better at building product than marketing, which is probably true.
- [36:28]
B
So it's quite a funny story in that, actually, this year, because I was thinking back to the. The big kind of marketing moments of 2025. And one of the ironies is, of course, you know, Chat GPT and AI launched their first broadcast campaign and where did they go on tv? So ironically, for being a kind of ultra modern, you know, AI business, actually did a very traditional TV ad. And going back to our friend Mark Ritson, he, he wrote a column about it, you know, do as I do, don't do as I say, because of course, you know, I would want to spend all your advertising dollars kind of, you know, on online. Whereas actually they decide to go to, you know, go to TV to do it, which I thought was ironic. But in Mark's column, he downloads the, the TV ad onto ChatGPT and says to ChatGPT, Please evaluate how good this ad is based on everything you know about good advertising. And it scored it a 5 out of 10. So ironically, ChatGPT appears not to even used its own advice when they made their own TV ad.
- [37:26]
A
That is really interesting, isn't it? But Monzo also did their first sort of TV ad this year as well, which has gone down really successfully.
- [37:33]
B
Monzo's done a brilliant job. Well, I think firstly going back to Will Godara, their customer experience, they really, really obsess about customer service. I mean, in fact, I switched from Tide bank to Monzo last year, night and day. I mean, extreme. It's like going from a 2 out of 10 to a 9 out of 10. It's just like different scale altogether.
- [37:55]
A
Is that your business account?
- [37:56]
B
Business account.
- [37:57]
A
Because I'm thinking about what to do.
- [37:58]
B
100 do it. No, you won't regret it. A big plug for Monza there. Yeah, yeah. But then, you know, there are things like that which are obvious. Right. And then there are things that are less obvious, like the Coral card. So because it's like when Apple first did the earphones and they had a white lead, this is going back a little bit. But you remember people's headphones were back in the day when they were wired, everyone had black wired headphones. So you didn't know what make of headphone you're listening to or what make of, you know, music player you're using. But the moment Apple launched one, because they were white, suddenly everyone went. It gave the appearance. Yeah, Because. Because as from marketing point of view, things we notice, they call it salience, that things you notice, you then notice again much more often. Right. And so because they had a Coral card, you know, rather than everyone having a black bank card, which just blends into everyone else, you could see someone else using a Monzo. So actually Just the color of the card was one of the key to their success. You know, System One, where we kind of rate every ad, they did very, very well. The ad you told me I got four stars out of five. Now bear in mind actually that only 1% of ads ever get a five star, so maybe only three or four get to four star. And also in banking as well because most banking ads are quite dull.
- [39:11]
A
Yeah.
- [39:11]
B
But Monzo, by leaning into emotion, I've got a very, very good rating and also 96% of people that saw the ad new as Monzo. So they're also like, you know, distinctive and memorable. So you can, you know, you're most likely to remember the brand as a result of seeing it nationwide.
- [39:26]
A
Done a good one. And they were. Dominic west as well. I quite like that one is it's sort of. Yeah, it's doing well.
- [39:32]
B
We're using humor. You say there's a very serious case for humor in advertising. Humour is probably the most undervalued asset in advertising because over the last 10 years we basically switched from making funny ads to making purposeful ads, all very serious and saving the planet. But actually, in fact, where I work in my day job at System One, we've actually broken down the emotions people feel when they watch advertising. And happiness is the most powerful emotion. But if you break happiness down and There are apparently 15 types of happiness and we measure all of them, but let me throw a few at you and just try and pick. Which of these do you think is the most likely to make someone do something and which of these is the least likely? So to pick the most likely or the most useful and the least useful of these types of humor. So I'll give you six. A feeling of pride, a feeling of awe, feeling of amusement, a feeling of schadenfreude, a feeling of uplift or a feeling of being pleased for others.
- [40:34]
A
Okay, well, I'm going to try and do this quite like instantaneously without thinking about it too much.
- [40:39]
B
Which is good, by the way, because that's how these things should be.
- [40:42]
A
Bottom, I can't say that German word very well, but Shannon Fraud. Then basically I was thinking uplift and please for others is probably like four fifth kind of like join that. And top three were amusement at three, Pride, two or one.
- [41:01]
B
I'm going to disappoint you now. Quite. You've got almost perfectly in reverse. And this is. This is a baby. A sad reflection on humanity. The most effective emotion is schadenfreude. In other words, pleasure at someone Else's, you know, misfortune.
- [41:19]
A
Wow.
- [41:20]
B
And the least powerful. The least powerful is please, for others.
- [41:25]
A
Okay, all right.
- [41:25]
B
So they're almost the inverse, aren't they? Yeah, yeah, but, but also number two actually in that list is humor. So amusement. So we don't generally tend to recommend schadenfreude. So we tend to recommend humor.
- [41:37]
A
Right.
- [41:37]
B
Yeah, but, but what's interesting is if you look at advertising in the last decade, the use of humours, like drops in half.
- [41:43]
A
Yeah.
- [41:44]
B
And the use of purpose broadly has doubled. So they've crossed, they've crossed places. So we're much more earnest today in our advertising than we used to be.
- [41:52]
A
Why is that? I mean, that's definitely a cultural thing. But is that shifting again, do we think, in terms of like.
- [41:58]
B
Well, I think it goes back to your job, actually. So corporate, corporate responsibility and corporate comms has jumped the fence because when I used to, you know, be a CMO before I became a podcaster back in the day, you know, the advertising departments and the corporate comms department were very separate. Right. You had the kind of corporate comms, did the sensible, you know, we're looking after the forests and we're treating our employees well and that kind of thing. And the advertising department was broadly connected to the brand. And you know, you, you kind of, you had your brand positioning and often you'd use humor. Whereas now actually I think kind of corporate responsibility and brand response and brands are much more closely embedded in most companies. So when we sign up to our pledge on the environment, we're much more likely to use our brands as a vehicle to talk about that than we would have been in the past. So I think there's been a general trend towards good corporate citizenship being reflected in brand communication in a way that it wouldn't have done.
- [42:55]
A
But do we, do we think there's a sort of vibe shift happening at the moment? Right. And I think that sort of the Trump election has sort of made people think that in lots of different ways. And yeah, it was like strictly getting Tom Skinner on, etc. Yeah. And I think one of the interesting things with politicians, I think is they're actually quite, they're actually quite quick at reacting to public opinion and communicating. They're very quick to kind of change their methods. Actually. Corporate comms marketing, much more kind of like risk averse, stayed in, you know, our lane until things have. Have changed. So I'm just be interested in your kind of reflections on how that's changed in the last year. Year, basically.
- [43:37]
B
Your observation, I think, is Pretty spot on. I mean one, one kind of bellwether for this is every year, you know, the Cannes Film Festival, there's a can advertising festival happens a few weeks after. So same kind, but celebrating the best, best in advertising, you know, hundreds of awards based, you know, different categories, different, different, different criteria. But it's jury selection, right? So it's not voted by the public, it's voted by experts in the industry. And what you've seen in terms of what gets awarded, if you go back two or three years, the majority of awards would be purpose led. So they're trying to do some good in the world. Last year we saw a return to humor. So basically and historically humor would have featured quite highly in the award. So there's definitely a sense that the industry has recalibrated a little bit more to more sort of populist, funny, everyday kind of work than before. So I think that vibe shift follows through. To your point though about reactive versus consistency. There's a really interesting insight in advertising which is quite surprising, that familiarity breeds contentment, not content. And what we find is that we have this concept in advertising called wear out. So the idea being is the more you play the ad, the more you show the ad, the quicker people get bored of. Turns out the opposite is true, that the more familiar you are with a particular bit of advertising, the more you come to like it. It's actually the reverse. So what happens is marketers ditch advertising. About the point, it's starting to work and I think this is probably something politicians could learn from is that, I mean some have, I think very effectively. But actually repetition is not boring. Repetition actually is important for. Because people then start to like it more the more they hear it.
- [45:17]
A
Peter Manelson used to say like it's only when the politician is bored of saying it that the public beginning to kind of take notice.
- [45:24]
B
I think exactly the same insight. Yeah.
- [45:25]
A
I mean I always think the classic one was this was like David Cameron and long term economic plan, right. That I think that's been underplayed because of what happened with Brexit a year later. Sort of changed everyone's kind of opinion. There were so many kind of like different political marketing campaigning techniques to look on. But in the run up to that 2015 general election, David Cameron and George Osborne were absolutely relentless about every answer, almost coming back to long term economic plan to the point where like in the kind of Westminster village, it almost became a bit of a kind of like running joke. But like it, it worked. It is interesting in terms of that Political communication, how they're having to kind of do it as well. It's a real sort of challenge for politicians. Also, just the amount of platforms they need to be across now as well I think is like, it's just sort of really, really challenging.
- [46:13]
B
Something. A couple of things I learned as well. When I go through a crisis on Lucas Aid. I remember a really good mate of mine in PR bringing him in to say, you know, help us out, you know, what should we do? And something that really struck with me is the first bit of advice. He said, treat your relaunch as if it's a party political campaign and you're going to be prime minister in 90 days. Who do you have to communicate to? What's the simple message? How many people do you need to have on side? Who's, who's against you and could cause you problems? What are the unexpected things that could go wrong? What are the good news stories that you need to go out and talk about? Right. And it was just a real kind of pivot in my thinking that, you know, to think like a politician in a marketing context actually quite radically changed how I, how I approached the relaunch and was, was super helpful. And the other thing I think I wish I had taken as well, back to your point about kind of you've got five years in the job, marketers don't think beyond the week or maybe if you're lucky, the month and the quarter. There's an amazing quote actually from a guy called car. It was a Harvard Business Review paper by a guy called Carb Mellor and Len Lodish and they said if brands are built in years, why are they managed in quarters? And it's a brilliant quote. And again, you think about that from a politician's point of view, if the country is governed for a five year period, why do we just care about tomorrow's newspapers? That's something else I think most marketers could learn from is you've got to think in five year cycles, not in the next kind of the next Twitter feed. We could probably go on for quite some time, I think, comparing politicians and marketers, but we should probably kind of round it off. And I just wonder Jimmy's jobs. The future is obviously about jobs and skills and what we can learn. And what would be your one bit of advice for somebody in 2026 who's thinking about their job and career.
- [47:58]
A
So I often say this in schools that you, in life you have to work out what your edges, what your unfair advantages, lots of different terms for it the one thing that all young people have over other people is time. Time in the day but also before kind of like family responsibilities kick in and so on. And so at the moment I would just say it's like learn how to use AI tools, play with them lots. They're changing all the time. There'll be lots of different things that you can do. Also human skills are going to become more important than ever before and the only real way that you learn human skills is to interact with other humans. You can't read it from books etc so like go and join communities like online ones are fine but also try and find things in, in real life as well because I think Greg Jackson makes this great point who is the founder of Octopus Energy. They've, he's created more jobs than any other UK entrepreneur over the last decade and he says they look for T shaped independence individuals, right? They look for somebody who's got a deep specialism but also can bring lots of things and lots of adjacent things to that. You know, Skills is going to be hugely disrupted over the next few years and we don't quite know where we're going to end up with it all. So you want to have as many of those kind of like expanding things as you can do that you can kind of bring a little bit into whilst also trying to have some kind of like specialism as well. So that's sort of like the advice that I try and give because one thing I've realized over the last five years is of doing a podcast about jobs for the future is nobody really knows what the future looks like.
- [49:21]
B
Another thought you'd give me actually talking about politics and marketing Campaign magazine, which in our kind of circles is quite influential or was, I'd say was quite an influential publication. They ran a front cover with Nigel Farage about six or seven years ago and it got so much hate that the editor had to write an apology to the entire industry for interviewing Nigel Farage. And I thought it was. I actually wrote to her quite a long email saying I think you're totally wrong to apologize and for two reasons, right? Number one, whether you like him or not, he represents a big percentage of people in the people in the country and how they think. Why as marketers would we not want to hear from how most people, you know, a lot of people in the country are thinking our job as marketers is understand it's not to have a political opinion. So I thought that was crazy. Secondly, he has marketed himself better than any politician. I mean his marketing is Amazing. So there's also lessons to be learned in terms of how he markets. And I thought it was worrying that one of our most influential trade publications should be swayed by how the bubble in which we operate thinks.
- [50:27]
A
Yeah.
- [50:27]
B
You know what I mean? It's just a sad reflection, but was.
- [50:30]
A
That pre or post Brexit?
- [50:32]
B
This was around Brexit. So I can't remember if it's before or after, but it was a black and white photo. He was smoking a cigar. It was a very.
- [50:40]
A
Yeah.
- [50:41]
B
Cleverly done thing. But it's basically man, the people type. Type positioning that the editor had gone with and she wrote a whole big apology and went out and said, I missed, I misjudged the audience and et cetera, et cetera. But it said more about us as marketers that we only want to hear from people we vote, we would write to vote for than people we don't.
- [50:59]
A
I think that's true. I. One of the reasons why we've ended up kind of where we are.
- [51:04]
B
This is all.
- [51:04]
A
With a lot of this stuff.
- [51:05]
B
This is how Trump gets elected. Because we're running around thinking this, you know. Yeah. Understanding what people actually care about.
- [51:10]
A
Yeah, yeah. We can't, like, platform these things. Yeah, yeah.
- [51:13]
B
Well, the best bit of advice ever on the podcast, actually, Sarah Carter, who was one of the top five, she has this quote which is just. Should be written on the front, you know, the notepad of every market in the country is just to remind you you are not the customer.
- [51:28]
A
Yeah, right.
- [51:29]
B
Because we think we are the customer. And unless you're like me, you're a marketer. Marketing to marketers. Most people are not customers and therefore they need to get out and meet their customer.
- [51:38]
A
Yeah, yeah, completely.
- [51:39]
B
Even if they vote for Nigel Farage. Jimmy, thank you for doing this, mate.
- [51:42]
A
Thank you.
- [51:43]
B
Pleasure. It's been a lot of fun. You enjoyed it?
- [51:45]
A
Yeah, it's great.
- [51:46]
B
Thank you very much for listening or watching Uncensored cmo. I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please do hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. If you're watching, hit subscribe there as well. I'd also love to get a review. Reviews make a big difference on other people discovering the show. So please do leave a review wherever you get your podcast. If you want to contact me, you can do. I'm over on Xensored CMO or on LinkedIn where I'm under my own name, John Evans. Thanks for listening and watching. I'll see you next time.