 So, Dr. Mark Ritzage, what an honour to have you on the podcast with us today. For those of you who don't know Mark, he is possibly the most famous Mark of our time. Wow Chris, that's rubbish, that's rubbish. I'm not that famous, I hope not anyway. It's nine o'clock where he is, so he's having a cheeky Heineken, I think. It's actually Cooper's, which is our version of Heineken down under. Sorry, I have to say it's better than Heineken, but it's very similar. It's a Greek can, it tastes of beer. In BBC standards, other beers are available. Other beers are available. Not as it turns out in Tasmania at 9pm in my refrigerator. Cooper's. I enjoy the keepers, but yeah, so Mark's been writing about marketing for over 20 years and obviously heads up the very famous Mark Ritz and Marketing NBA. And previously to that, you were a personal, is it a sort of marketing consultant for incredible brands like Pepsi and Eric Sanderson? Yeah, I was a bit of a strange, really I was an academic gone wrong. They still teach my career path at the consortium, which is like the big doctoral trading thing in America for marketing professors, on how not to do it, how to blow it from a good start, you know what I mean? So I'm a warning case study, do you know what I mean? I'm a prohibitory story of how to get it wrong. So that's where I stay in the academic. So I am an academic theoretically, but yeah, I was a very bad one. I was a very dirty academic from the start. I like to do stuff. I mean, it was a good place to start. How did you go from the academic world into the sort of practical world? Was it just meeting people at universities and then they said, oh, can you come and help? Yeah, basically it was London Business School. I mean, I'm an unusual marketing professor in the sense that I became a professor because I really liked marketing. Most marketing professors became marketing professors because they wanted to be a professor, which is a very different motivation. So I was just into marketing. And I'd done my PhD partly in the UK but partly in the US. I'd gone and taught in the US for four or five years as a junior professor, very theoretical. And then I'd come back to London Business School late 90s. And London Business School was like at the centre of everything and it was still quite applied. It still is, but it was very applied back then. And I decided I was going to be a branding professor, not an advertising professor. And there were many of them in the 90s. It sounds odd now, but there was only a handful of them in the world. And I was in London, so I got tons of exposure and began to get, I began to work for big companies on big branding jobs that I was incredibly unable to service. But of course any good consultant you very quickly learn while being paid what it's all about. And that was how it started. Were there any sort of amazing brands that you worked with where you were like, I can't believe I'm getting to do this at the moment? It was London, right? So I got to work on Ericsson, Sony Ericsson and then Ericsson when that sort of Nokia Ericsson thing was going on. And that just taught me how incredibly fucked up the whole thing. Like how much money was being spent without any strategic reconnaissance. So that was kind of an exposure to incredibly good people but in an incredibly fucked up context. So that was very useful. Probably the other big one was LVMH. So I got plucked from my class at LBS to go and work for the LVMH senior team in Paris. So I spent about 14 years in France working across all the brands in the group at the CEO level. So that was hardcore, that was great. And that's probably the one where you get to work on Don Perignon or you get to work on Tag Heuer. It was amazing what we were able to do and how much trust you had because all the CEOs knew each other. So I would be sold from one brand to another on the basis you should get the guy from London in. And so I did 50 or 60 jobs internally over the years on positioning and tracking and brand extension and CRM. So I really got to know it at a very high level and I'm still close to some of those people. Even Sephora, which I know has just started in the UK, I'm still very close to people from Sephora. So yeah, that was a lovely time, really lovely. That must have been fascinating. You were going from different brands, different brand, often in different industries. Did you devise some kind of checklist when you came in and were like, where is all this money going? How am I going to sort it? It was really interesting. I'm a real procrastinator. So what would inevitably happen would I would fly to Paris or Tokyo or somewhere and I do the famous thing. There's photographs of me on Twitter that I've taken of myself doing this, which is I'd get on a 15-hour flight with a shit ton of documents on my laptop fully with all these documents on it and I'd just spend nine hours drinking wine and watching Marvel movies and having to sleep and then of course I'd get to Paris or Tokyo with nine hours to go before the gig started the next day and I'd have to stay up all night in my bathrobe getting my shit ready. But the advantage of all of that was you went in relatively inductive and clean. You didn't go in with some very organised structure and then if we did a three-day job on say brand positioning, every day I would get up mega-early and take day ones into day two and refinangle it and then go into day three and refinangle it again. It was interesting in my 50s trying to do it. I tried to do it recently for a large brand. First time I've done it after COVID and I just found that I couldn't because I was just too old because you really had to get by with two hours sleep. You know, four or five days and so I've stopped doing that. But yeah, it was very inductive which I think was the benefit of it. You teach some stuff from other clients and then you open it up and we do the work and it was. We did the work on Donna Karen's brand with Donna there and I can remember just being a pull on all these examples from all over the world from other luxury brands we worked on to the point where they were just badly in love with it because it was kind of what do you want to do and we can work on these things and we'll come out with a plan for next year for the brand stuff. So yeah, very inductive, chaotically so in a way but it usually worked really well. It was brilliant to be at that higher level doing a very micro thing, the same thing really, the brand stuff for so long. It sounds like you've been a true creative even though you said you're an academic sort of a very bit of a creative trait to leave everything to the last minute. That part certainly was creative for sure. But I guess there's a... You said something there that I thought was interesting that kind of almost... Yes, you've got to do your prep but almost if you do too much prep it's hard to see nearly. Do you recommend that for... It's a key point Chris. There's no such thing as brands in general is one of my key lessons, right? So the minute we try and take what's worked for one brand and import it directly into another even in the same category probably will work as well because the definition of a brand is it's the opposite of a generic so there has to be a slightly different path for each brand based on what's in them. We're not doing commodities, we're doing brands. So I think being sensitive to that and not being too formulaic is I think one of the great strengths and it fascinates me how few marketers are able to move from brand one to brand two to brand three and be able to start from a blank page again. Most of them come in and it doesn't work with an a priori approach which was built from the previous brand but won't work for brand two. Sometimes it works okay but the reality is you go back to diagnosis you go back to understanding the brand that you're now on then to strategy, then to tactics nor I know how brands work, you know, blah blah blah that's not how it should be done in my opinion. So when you were doing all of this where did you get your learning from? Like nowadays obviously luckily people can take your course or take one of our courses or read a million amazing books but I mean where did you get your inspiration from? Was it just hard trial and error or were the people who you... I'd studied it to quite a great degree within the academic firmament. So coming up with a PhD in marketing and then having taught MBAs and having published work of my own I pretty much read everything up until, I mean where are we now? 25 years ago there was a lot less being written of any note. So I was pretty on top of anything that David Archer, Kevin Keller and everyone going back from there had written. You know what I mean? Like Tom Roberts and all those guys I knew all that stuff pretty well and it was pretty good stuff I have to say. So I knew all of that and then I was immediately getting exposed to actual work and it was... in my opinion it was how it should be because you had this theory you had then loads of consulting experience and in the middle you were then doing your teaching MBAs the thing you were doing you know like Indiana Jones and the three things together were beautifully but throughout my career as a business school professor I was constantly told that I was getting it wrong you know because my teaching was too good literally you know I was like feedback and I'm spending too much time consulting and I was always kind of pretty sure that was stupid it was like no and if you look at what's wrong in business schools now they're populated by delightful people who haven't got a fucking clue about the thing they're teaching. Right I mean what talking about that what do you think has been the sort of greatest evolution that you've seen from doing your brand consulting when you started to where we are today there have been some radical changes I mean obviously the landscape has changed a lot but what do you think? Oh look I think it... I'm a big one to say the fundamentals don't change that much Right. Having said that if someone like me says the fundamentals are changing then they probably are I'm the last guy to say they are but they are now you know I'd say that the obvious one is tactically we've got now this split between digital and traditional which doesn't make perfect sense but that changed things tactically but the big one's probably been strategically in the sense that over the last ten years the role of segmentation has definitely changed it definitely seems less and less valid and the impact of arabo bass has been very positive there are two things for me really bringing mass marketing back as a potential opportunity and obviously they work on distinctiveness but certainly segmentation I think we over segmented things in a far too complex fashion and I think that's been a very big change the idea you can target everyone in the category and not be seen as an idiot is probably the biggest revolution that's happened in my during my time being involved I was actually listening to one of your podcasts the other day you did a lovely talk with Joe Glover from the marketing meetup wonderful chat if you haven't heard of the marketing meetup go and check them out and I thought it was a lovely talk to listen to because you talked a bit about the difference between how to grow a brand if you're a big brand and how to grow a brand if you're very small your your early summary was not great if you were a small brand it bears repeating Chris you're very fucked if you're a small brand because capitalism isn't fair and American marketers have many great strengths but one of their weaknesses is they have this fetish for David versus Goliath and that small entrepreneurial brands will win and it's just painfully not true it's never been true it does occasionally happen but so rarely we shouldn't really talk about it the story of marketing is big brands getting there first when categories are created and then dominating from that point onwards partly because they've got more money but also because their dollars go further because they're already a big brand and it's not fair so yeah I think it's hard when I talk to people at Joe because Joe's wonderful and he has a very optimistic view of that entrepreneurial start-up culture I think it's horrible and destructive and incredibly hard on people and teams and I want nothing to do with it at all and I respect those people very much I have not a bone of entrepreneurial true entrepreneurial what's the right predisposition in me because that definition of an entrepreneur where they'll risk everything strikes me as bananas you're much closer to an entrepreneur than I am yeah no I still think you've made big bets in your life you've moved to different countries you've taken lead where other people wouldn't have those are all big entrepreneurial traits it's an interesting one I still think about this when I left London Business School I can remember the professors, several of them who were good friends of mine saying what are you going to do you're going to Australia what are you going to do have you lost your mind and I can remember not being fazed by it and to this day I don't know over that because I have a gigantic ego or I have no ego at all and I still don't know the answer to the question because if I had a huge ego I'd have to be at London Business School and hello dear boy and I've got the cards and all that or my ego was so titanic that I was able just to leave and go I'll just go to Australia and do it you're right it was a bit of a bold move but there was always financially I was never going to I'm very working class I was never going to risk everything to a proper entrepreneur that risks everything and I'm like I just could not do that I don't think you need to risk everything to be an entrepreneur I mean if you think about it the original French definition is it's a man or a woman who invests more than they have on their gambler so I forget but it's something really trade-out masochistic in Rome and Catholic something really art American entrepreneur is not the same as the original famous George Bush quote the French don't understand entrepreneur it's like their fucking word mate I'm pretty sure they do so you swapped the wonderful weather of the UK for the heat and wonderfulness of Australia and you went over there to go was it Melbourne initially or did you go to Sydney was it? I was married by then to a bar maid from the Windsor castle which is the local pub at London Business School funnily enough she ended up being from Tasmania she was a proper Tasmanian in the sense that she hadn't really been to the mainland at all she'd flown straight to London when she turned 19 big culture shock we met later in London and I kept saying to her when we got back what about this I have no idea what this is what do you think so she was useless so we went around the whole of Australia out of New Zealand and I gave talks at all the universities and at the same time we were trying to work out where do we fancy living and in the end Melbourne was the winner so we ended up at Melbourne Uni at the Business School, Melbourne Business School which is great I would have probably done certainly more than 10 years there first of all as a real professor and then as my consulting kept going I became essentially an adjunct professor so I kind of again my career was gradually petering out as an academic throughout so I became like just a part time academic and by then I was flying everywhere I mean literally two weeks a month on planes partly because I had now the refutation but also Australia has come on a lot in the last 10 years but when I got their 0304 there wasn't any work to do there in the brand space they just didn't get it you know they were Neanderthals when it came to brand stuff it has got lots better but back then it was terrifyingly bad I mean there's some amazing agencies there in Melbourne Clemensha BBDO is very famous they did lots of amazing work on that what I guess is now AB of brands back then it probably would have been its own thing but yeah it's oh gosh what were the brands over there well it would be Tuis and VB it's a fascinating story Australian beer because when I got here my father-in-law would bore the crap out of me with these beers you know he had to show me the difference in the Australian beers and VB was this and Melbourne Bitter was that and Tuis was this I tried these beers what became apparent to me very quickly was A they were all very average and B they all tasted exactly the fucking say and breaking that to him was very hard to do but I had to break it and then of course what happened then I took him to America when I started teaching in the States and I went look you want to see what beers taste like when they're different be all dry the American Revolution had begun and now in Australia thankfully it's definitely happened here as well and it's moved on but yeah the story of Australian marketing for 60 or 70 years was basically an oligopoly you know there were two big breweries three big newspaper companies two big supermarkets and in an oligopoly what you get is basically zero market orientation zero innovation because the companies are phenomenally successful because you haven't got any choice and it was only around the turn of the century when the foreign brands came in and kicked ass that Australian marketing which you know Australian is a very good business culture marketing was just very very prehistoric started to catch up very quickly to the point where it was very strong but yeah 2003 it was frighteningly bad so when you do travel all over the world you've seen how marketing operates and advertising operates in different different parts of the world are there I'm sure it maybe shifts and changes over time but are there any places right now where you think that they've got it or they're better than other places in the world well I'm not I think everyone's getting to this sort of global sort of media line now where you know globally we're all kind of getting good which is nice to see I think the Americans have totally lost the plot but I think the big marker isn't the story of who's who's got it it's kind of who's lost it you know what I mean I went to America in the mid 90s because that's where you went and that's you learned marketing from companies and people that were 20 years ahead of anything in the UK you know and I don't think that's an arguable point they were just so far ahead and you look back to that point and where we are now with American marketing they're off the pace and I say that as someone who loves America loves Americans and I don't get much disagreement from most of the Americans that have international exposure American marketing seems to have not isn't driving it anymore and that's sad but also an interesting opportunity for the rest of the world I think you read something in a marketing recast actually the other day I thought it was really interesting you said how does a brand appeal to everyone when that society is openly opposed to the whole sections of itself which I thought was an interesting observation I think that was on the back of the sad stuff that happened with I think it was Bud Light yeah I used to have I've got a lot of old dogs and one of them got quite annoying and took exception to his own penis and I remember he used to sort of attack his own penis quite vehemently lay usually lay in the evening for some reason he would suddenly sort of go right I'll sort you out and sort of just stop biting his balls of his penis and it's a metaphor for America at the moment it just seems like an old dog that's attacking itself do you know what I mean like it's like there has to be some grace there to realize that I actually think Elon Musk is a bit of a hero I think Musk is trying to forge a path between the two tectonic plates hugely unsuccessfully but bravely non the less and you can tell what kind of media you read with how Elon Musk is portrayed if you think he's a left wing lunar libertarian you're reading right wing press and if you think he's some kind of right wing fascist you're reading left wing press and I think he's genuinely trying to be like he said yesterday you know the unabombers manifesto actually made a lot of sense it's a very brave thing to say in the middle of America and not an untrue thing either right so it's a yeah it's a I've seen it in meetings in the States which I have much less of than I used to have with clients there isn't an ability to call it like they used to be in the States I'm not talking about being rude or politically incorrect but just talk about the real things you have to have it's almost like the sort of old Swedish approach you have to have a pre meeting and a post meeting around the meeting that's not a way to do business you know and I think that the American brands are struggling with it you know what I mean the great example is that Bud Light now are running a competition to win an assault rifle right so they've just swung from transgender transsexual whatever to you know machine guns and assault weapons whatever but it's just like this has to be the low point for American civilization I guess and again I love at the States it's my happiest country so it's sad to see it in that state they are a brilliantly optimistic bunch the Americans maybe not anymore Chris I've met so many particularly American women very talented late 30s, 40s some things who are dotted around the world now and when you have a beer with them you know you're from Philly you're from you know San Diego and they're like I've got two kids I'm not bringing them up in America the minute they had the first gun drill they were off and I could give you and this is not an exaggeration I could show you 25 women I've had a chat with about that I had a few men but especially the mums who go the first time they had the drill when someone comes into the school with an assault weapon I'm an international marketing person I'm gone you know what I mean yeah it's sad and unnecessary but it's like I'm into that I know nothing about the Negro what's the what is the so America's not doing so well which is one that you do think is doing well oh look the second one that's not doing well is the UK but let's not talk about that either they'll get back there eventually I'm very there's a couple of little pockets of great marketing we should talk about New Zealand right so New Zealand has this pointless little economy on it and if ever there was an oligopoly that was you know Australia makes it you know makes New Zealand look terrifyingly bad and yeah we have extraordinarily good marketers extraordinarily good brand management really sensational products very good agency culture and there's really no explanation for it other than the Kiwis are just this sort of it's like they're all blacks you know there's no explanation for that really it doesn't make sense yet it exists you know the Kiwi marketing culture is another one pound for pound they're punching above anyone's weight you know what I mean so I'd always highlight them as a group I think the broad insanity of Thai advertising needs to be talked about more I don't think I've ever seen more any showreel from Thailand always delivers extraordinarily insane shit you know that needs to be... no one's ever talked about that you know Lynn I've never seen a Thai ad that wasn't fucking bonkers in a good way where are these creative people can we get them involved with other brands where else have I been I've also I've got a real hard on for the Germans yeah so the Germans I think the Germans are actually about you know they're a huge market they've always had no idea about marketing they've always struggled with it the long bit the brand building bit it's not been quite years on it I get this sense we're getting more and more Germans in every country who are getting it and I feel great optimism that the Germans are gonna are gonna be a force in marketing in the next 50 years they sure as shit haven't been in the last 50 years but now I feel like they're coming and it's a good thing I think culturally that I mean my wife's half German and I think it seems that there are a lot less repressed than they used to be I don't know if it's about the Danes I've never met a bad Dane or a bad Dutch person but I've also never met a bad German I just find them to be more and more engaging you know they're the good men and women of Europe and I think now they're a liberal bunch obviously and yeah I would expect them to come on now and I get that sense there's a lot of people saying interesting things in Germany about marketing and it's starting to sort of bubble up a little bit and so it should it was a brilliant piece of work that I I'm sure I'll win at Cannes this year it's from a New Zealand mobile phone company I remember it was the one where they were reading out the billboards have you seen that one did Colenzo and Colenzo were the great agency there they win all the awards right pretty sure it is but I'll I'll share it with you afterwards you're really selling it Chris really selling it out I didn't do the case study I watched it once great thanks I'm here all week selling ads when it comes to brands themselves are there any brands again trying to keep it in this positive light that you think are doing great work and really get it at the moment I think across the world you've got to give McDonald's a big kind of salute and partly because the work so good partly because it's been happening for a long time but also because we had all that nonsense about Burger King and all that crap and it was like that was a great example of the pointlessness of creative awards you know it wasn't bad work it just wasn't particularly good work either it was just stuff that wins awards and meanwhile McDonald's work wasn't bad work either certainly wasn't the kind of word that wins awards but it was the kind of stuff that was driving really quite splendid growth, revitalization you know it was doing the job but if you look across many countries McDonald's it's a high watermark for me I think they're doing a really good job got back 20 years there's a question mark whether McDonald's had that kind of future you know and yet they've evolved beautifully with it and I think if you want a long and sure exemplar it would be them so yeah they'd probably be the one I'd look at at the moment I see a lot of work coming out of their arch nemesis KFC and KFC are also strong they've just got this back bench of what seems to be our hundreds not all women but mostly incredibly talented marketing women and they just seem to be breeding them somewhere and there's just layer upon layer of them now they're going off into other companies but they still got that core sort of KFC effectiveness skill and then probably the last one I'd give the most credit to is the tourism Australia guys I don't think have done anything new in the last 12 months or invented anything radical but what they've done is just applied the principles of effectiveness which everyone kind of knows perfectly and done a really good job and that's always good to see you know there's nothing special it's just brilliant you know it's just really all well done so they're the kind of brands that float my boat at the moment who else have I looked at I mean Guinness is the other great story Diageo generally in Guinness I was very struck Neil Shah he'll fucking hate me saying it right that's how good he is Neil Shah who runs marketing for Diageo for Guinness in the UK when they became the best selling pint I sort of forced him to do an interview with me about it and he said I don't I don't want you to mention my name in the article because we really are a team at Diageo and I was like yeah okay mate whatever and then I wrote the article and everyone says that but I just put him in 10 times I thought he was like you know don't mention me at all do you know what I mean and then I saw I put him in there I don't want my name in there he really wanted it all out and I just thought that was so impressive because he said we're a team you know all the way from the late great Ivan you know what I mean he's sadly passed away there were a real team culture but again that backbone of effectiveness nothing new just doing it doing all the basics well and you know prospering as a result they're all brands that strike me that they know very clearly who they are and they know clearly who they're not that really helps doesn't it the other one that really helps is and they know who they're going after when I did that work with the better briefs guys one of the great statistics that came out of the British sample was that I mean on the client side and I'll get this slightly wrong about I think it was about 65% of clients said my brief is very clear on who I'm targeting so straight away 35% of them are like ah sorry I'm clear they don't even know who they're going after but when you talk to the agencies the agencies were like 65% of them said we have no idea who these guys are targeting at the end of the briefing process so you know you get that contradiction between all this rubbish about AI you know what I mean never mind AI two thirds of the big brands in the UK aren't clearly aware of who they're targeting and who they're not that's where we are you know what I mean that's where we are yes it's a it's a tough one I mean and it's also I mean it is an interesting time to be alive I think we're going through some big changes but I mean as you know with the knowledge that you have on behavioral science the sort of culture and the way that humans act think and behave doesn't necessarily change very quickly it's a lot of this stuff this kind of caveman era stuff well we have to put up with this nonsense Chris on a daily basis that the attention is shrinking and the way people's brains work is changing none of which is true right I mean it's I posted something today and I shouldn't have but I couldn't resist there was some shit nonsense going on linked in about how everyone was using chat GPT to to work out how to improve their resume and everyone was going I was 8000 people yeah it's the future blah blah and I just posted a chart from Morgan Stanley showing that 10% of people have ever even logged on to chat GPT in the professional sphere so I'm like yes some of them have but 90% of them haven't so can we just calm down to your point you won't happen but it's not going to happen at the moment for me AIs like the metaverse a massive long term story but in the short term has fuck all to do with marketing yeah good point very clearly put we talked very briefly about a while ago about Byron Sharpe and his work and it's when I read what you're saying it's always interesting you do agree actually on a loss I think there's just a little bit of a mix in some things I think he says which are not quite right can you just explain what the overall position is the homoerotic tension in the room have you ever met we were lovers in the 60s we went back when the war was young no we know each other very well we've been having arguments for 30 years I remember going to the University of South Australia and having some data on TV audiences and some dude in the back row just basically just throwing a bus all over it and me going what the fuck are you talking about just Byron we were off I mean I think what's interesting as you get older is you realise there are certain people whether you want them to or not will travel through your life with you and Byron will obviously be part of that for me the impact Byron's had is sensational your wonderful intro is fantastic but I suspect I'm not but Byron might well be and I think if you look at a couple of this heroic I mean first of all it's Eremburg and it's the Eremburg Bass Institute but it's a lot of it is also Byron pushing it the ability to take something like mass marketing which all of us thought was stupid and make it the right thing to do is astonishing and the ability to push something like distinctiveness Sadians which we hadn't talked about since the 60s and bring it back was super super useful and the only problem I have with a lot of this is there's a whiff of aftershave behind the white coats of Eremburg Bass and what I mean by that is they just have a bit of razzle commercial razzle dazzle this isn't science you know so they all this bullshit we had in the 90s about brand loyalty and brand communities Eremburg Bass went which was great you know but then they went too far with it in order to dominate the dogma and I just feel that last 20% they always go too far they've done a brilliant job of getting distinctiveness to be something we all think about and we owe them a big favor for that but the way they critique differentiation is just wrong it's just not right and so for that reason I think you know yeah but Byron people don't realize what Byron is he has a very good sense of humor he doesn't take himself too seriously on the right day you know what I mean so he's good value he's handled it pretty well you know but he doesn't suffer fools either you know you wouldn't want to go in there you know really nearly you know you could get your ass handed back to you on a tray I'm mildly petrified of him looking at how he should be how he responds properly intelligent schools you know mother fucker I mean you wouldn't want to mess around with Byron he's got the tools to eviscerate people you know what I mean but that's great you know that's what you want you want a few people who are like fuck Byron Sharp you know fuck you know the best story goes when we did that debate so the festival of marketing this would be like I don't know fucking ten years ago now what like a showstopper debate because everyone went to the pub on the final day of the festival marketing so we erase this debate and you know we'd neither of us was doing it for anything other than fun so and I always remember and we had a big call about it six months in advance what we're going to talk about Byron I always remember thinking I'll go in a really big fucking like I'll fret I'll read the red book I'll do this really complex you know fucking argument stuff and I'll spend months like Rambo in the forest you know lifting logs getting ready and then I just forgot all about it and then the day before I did pay got incredibly drunk in some fucking bar in south London and I woke up like 10 a.m. I'm over and I had to go to Waterstones and find a copy of his book and try and read it and come up with anything I was going to you know it's just such a fucking mess you know compared to I was meant to be rocky in the fucking forest it was just me stumbling around Waterstones smelling of piss you know it was oh God you know done it again but how did it go I still beat him yeah you know I still won the debate yeah it doesn't mean I'm right it just means I can I can you know but I think you need those kind of characters the I think that the lovely thing about the both of you is you know everyone learned I mean we're both now doing sort of educationy things and everyone learns in a different way and I think you need that kind of straight academic rigor sometimes but I think you also need things to be put across in an approachable enjoyable fun way and I think that's what I've always loved you for Mark is that these very complex things that often baffle us and we get too into it so to lose ourselves and I think you you clear that path for us and make it so much easier and so so much more and really mean this importantly so much more enjoyable I think that's the lovely thing to say Chris I remember I had a PhD student lovely PhD student who I supervised for four years and when he submitted his PhD he wrote a paper which got published you know the journal consumer research I remember from the very start not understanding any of it and I was like and not because I'm thinking it was just like none of these sentences make any sense like we've got to go through each I like what are you you know and I remember thinking this is prima facie what we should not be doing do you know what I mean where academic still go wrong is if you can you know we talk about it with strategy if you do your work on strategy with great complexity and great thoughts what you produce is incredibly obvious and in the same way if you actually understand the topic you should be able to write it in a way that a child can understand it you know we don't need the big words you don't mean so there you are very very very fine which I'll absolutely take with me thank you thanks it's it's it's I think Rory's the other person is very good at that southern time he is but he has that Colombo thing where he rumbles in you know I mean like he's you know then he solves the crime right at the end there do you know I mean like hang on Rory are you even with us here you know I don't have that I don't have the old Colombo magic at the end you know out of the Mackie pulls the thing I don't have that unfortunately that's a rare that's a Rory skill that you're both marvelous and I know we sort of got to end up very quickly but there's one thing another thing a small thing I wanted to ask about was in advertising there's been this sort of I don't know what happened to it but humor seems to have disappeared a lot I remember growing up I mean that was actually what got me into advertising was watching TV's and they're entertaining me making me laugh I kind of often programming was so bad back in the day the ads were actually more enjoyable than the TV programs themselves frequently do you see that's coming back to all of you seen some not yet I mean it doesn't make any sense though what you're saying even though what you're saying is absolutely correct so we know a couple of things right we know emotion is a massive driver of all kinds of wonderful things in advertising and we know of all the emotions probably humor is the most obvious easiest win right and yet despite the fact we've become aware of this in the last 10 years the preponderance of humor has come down in most ads right but we're taking ourselves awfully fucking seriously now right it's a serious business what we're trying to do right and I think that unfortunately part of the problem is we are this purpose period that we're maybe coming to the end of it I don't know one of its antecedents is the destruction of taking the piss out of oneself and having a bit of a laugh about it because the end of the day doesn't really matter do you know what I mean it's not important the different brands are not that important you know we should be able to enjoy that there are still brands that keep that in mind it's always delightful when you meet someone from a senior position and they reveal to you pretty much earlier in the conversation I'll do my job very well but at the same time it's more to life than that it's a super important thing we're missing that at the moment the earnestness is the antidote to humor and we probably need we need some form of revolution to bring it back and bring it back for commercial reasons but you know we come back to a key point there are too many people working in marketing because of other reasons other than to sell stuff it's okay to sell good products you know what I mean it's beautiful to make brands that are cool and aspirational they don't have to come at the cost of the planet or animals or human rights we can do all that well but at the same time it doesn't have to be this earnest all the time you know what I mean it doesn't matter which butter brand you buy at the end of the day if you start from that you'll make you'll be a much better brand manager and you'll make much more ads but we're not living in that era we're living in an era where it's funny I'll tell you a good story Chris which my editor won't like I got off the phone from my editor you know I've put him through so much shit over the last he's published things he's like and he gets the shit I don't even get the shit he gets the shit so they want a title for the festival of marketing that I'm talking about in October they're after me for a title it's fucking June you know what I mean they're asking me in May for some fucking title I haven't even thought about what I'm gonna say until late September and they want a fucking title so I told the people there I said I want my title to be Sex in the Fast Lane purely on the basis there it's just such a nonsensical fucking title and I'll explain when I get to the festival in October I just gave them that because just to shut them up and then I knew we'd come up with something better a week ago do you know what I mean but I said well my keynote to be Mark Ritzen Sex in the Fast Lane and even Rosso's got a big big debate with him he's like now what's this about sex in the Fast Lane like come on just put it in it'll be alright he's like well there's people that complain about this and I'm like yeah but sex between two men two women whatever sex you want that's the sex we won't be talking about do you know what I mean but yeah so we'll see how that goes that's the kind of thing I'm talking about it's alright the festival of marketing not the festival of cancer you know what I mean we're not trying to cure something important here we should be we should be having fun with this or something's gone horribly wrong well here to having fun and I know I'm massively over time so just to finish one quick one if you just personally were interested if you were to have a dinner party you could have any any five people sort of living or dead any mines spring to the top oh look well that's an interesting one who do I like who do I really like enough to want to hang out with look this is going to come across as quite tween and sentimental neither of which I'm really subscribed to but because I don't spend any time with my wife because we have small children I just like to have a dinner with my wife like if you said look over here is Karl Marx you know fucking Barbara Streisand Kevin Koster and you know fucking Marco Polo but over here you could have three uninterrupted hours with your wife where we could actually get drunk I'll go straight to room two do you know what I mean just because we don't people don't explain the apocalypse of small children properly you know what I mean until it's too late so you know by the time you are able to you know you see those old couples in restaurants who are sort of 65 and they don't talk to each other it's because they're just fucked you know you think they've got a kind of relation no they're just they've been through like the jungles of child rearing and now they decide let's just sit here and look out the window because I can't be fucked doing anything else you know what I mean it's just nice to enjoy silence you know what I mean so you know I'd probably just go with my wife I mean there's four other seats you know what I mean just unfilled preferably that would be great okay well what a mother's answer and your wife will be very happy if she listens to this podcast she'll never listen to this Chris so it's completely you know what I mean it's totally waste she said Chad she will listen to this ever I'll send her those 10 seconds in an email she won't listen to that either by the way please do send me that software you tell me about I'm more interested in that my wife will never know any of this it's fine it's interesting thank you so so much for taking the time to say hi and like I hope you have a marvellous rest of your week and the land of wonder the land down wonder and yeah hopefully meet up in real life sometime soon and yeah thank you for all you do for everyone that really mean it so cheers Chris I'm just increasingly worried as the interview's gone on that your day has got brighter and mine's got darker and it now looks like I'm in the Death Star you're kind of the forces of good and I'm like I might put a blackout on me and launch missiles at people do you know what I mean it was cheery here an hour ago but now it's like you know it's all good I'll turn the brightness up in the editing yeah and also maybe a little like Brad Pitt obviously that's a little bit though it's just a small little tweak there on the edge no worries cheers