Call To Action

This week we spent all our time pressing the flesh (until finding out we’d misunderstood what that means and getting very firmly asked to leave Subway) all in order to win the approval of this week’s guest, the master networker Oli Barrett MBE. Blessed with the ability to bring together the right people with the right ideas at the right time, Oli has built a reputation for being the nation’s ultimate connector. But, being a fine fellow as well as a canny-business operator, he has used his powers for good – forming remarkable social change initiatives like ‘Tenner’, the UK’s largest schools entrepreneurship competition and ‘Turn On The Subtitles’, a global children’s literacy campaign. Deftly uniting the worlds of entrepreneurship, innovation, education and social impact, Oli has been rightly lauded and awarded for his considerable efforts – bagging, among other accolades, the title of ‘Most Connected Man in Britain’ from Wired and a place in GQs ‘Top 100 connected figures’. Plus there’s the small matter of b

This week we tried (unsuccessfully, messily, hauntingly) to mate a canary with a cockerel – all in a bid to impress our guest, former Norwich and Tottenham footballer, turned performance psychologist, Paul McVeigh. Having played more than 270 professional games, as well as earning 20 caps for Northern Ireland, Paul kicked ball with and against some legendary players, earning a few trophies, a few promotions and, perhaps the ultimate honour, his own song.But rather than go off and do the sort of generic post-playing jobs many ex-pros go for (like moaning about stuff on the tv. Or moaning about stuff on the radio. Or moaning about stuff on a podcast etc.) Paul has bottled up all his remarkable experiences in sport and used them to help all kinds of leaders to perform when it matters most.As a highly respected performance psychologist, Paul has built a super-successful second career out of helping to dismantle the old narratives about shouty, macho, ego-driven leadership, through his coaching and his two excell

This week we made our way through twenty rolls of ‘Word a Day’ toilet paper – not (entirely) because of tummy trouble, but in order to impress one of the world’s greatest wielders of words, copywriting legend Tim Delaney. An advertiser who made all of advertising try harder with their adverts, Tim is of course the founder of the famous Leagas Delaney agency as well as being one of the all-time great copywriters.  You’ll no doubt have spent much time gawping at and/or weeping over some of his most iconic work – including some extraordinary campaigns for Harrods, Adidas and Nationwide. He’s also the creative brain behind the unforgettable ‘Perfect Day’ film for the BBC – giving the world the briefest sniff of what a Bowie/Boyzone collaboration might have been. Wildly successful in both the building of an agency and the writing of copy, Tim is also one of advertising’s most compelling talkers of sense – with a philosophy built around strategic thinking, disciplined work and a healthy appreciation for the valu

This week we’ve been out every night, committing crimes (twocking Nokias, cussing at ducklings, stealing the dust caps off your dad’s tyres) all to attract the attention of South-London Batman himself – and this week’s guest – Kazeem Jama.  A comedian so entertaining he almost makes you hate yourself slightly less for being on Instagram all the goddam time, Kazeem has been liberally lubricating the amusement pipes on the BBC, Comedy Central and the Mobo Awards. Before comedy grabbed him by the earlobe and dragged him over to the funny side, Kazeem spent decades working in the education sector, primarily with children with special needs and in alternative education – making him humorous and kind-hearted enough to make us all feel really bad about our own decisions, especially the terrible stuff we said to those ducklings.  This episode is proudly dedicated to the people who shaped Kazeem: his mum, his dad, his kids, and all the doubters along the way. ///// Follow Kazeem on Instagram and Facebook Watch th

This week we rented the top 3 maths movies of all time – A Beautiful Mind, The Imitation Game and 3 Men and a Baby – all in order to be mathematically competent enough to share a pod with one of the world’s greatest number nibblers, Marcus du Sautoy. So highly acclaimed and awarded, we could have filled the entire podcast by listing out his many achievements, Marcus is perhaps best known as a Professor in Mathematics, Fellow of the Royal Society and Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. But, as well as being one of the very smartest people on the planet, he’s also one of the most engaging and enlightening speakers on the unexpected stories to be found in numbers, having written for several national newspapers and appeared on a number of mathematically-inclined TV shows including Mind Games, The Story of Maths and The Code (not to be confused with The Cube). By now you’ve probably run out of fingers to tally up all the brilliant things he’s done, so we shall just wr

This week we broke a golden rule and crossed podcast streams with a pair of excellent guests, Richard Shotton and MichaelAaron Flicker, hosts of the Behavioural Science for Brands podcast and co-authors of the soon-to-be released (and definitely-to-be brilliant) Hacking The Human Mind. Richard is, of course, returning for a record third appearance on Call To Action® although we have respectfully honoured his request to not be left alone with Giles. Responsible for opening industry eyes to the potential of behavioural science, Richard is the author of two books that serious marketing types like you and I could not do without – The Choice Factory and The Illusion of Choice. Alongside him today, as is so often the case, is MichaelAaron Flicker, founder and president of (Zeeenno-Sigh) XenoPsi Ventures, a brand incubator firm that helps out all kinds of companies with financial, marketing and intellectual capital. As well as co-hosting their pod, and co-authoring their book, they’ve completed a hattrick of Co’s

This week we tucked in our shirt, straightened our tie and resisted the temptation to nip off for a quick vape behind the pickle-ball court, all in order to suitably impress our guest, one of the world’s greatest marketing academics, Professor Byron Sharp.  A man who would need no introduction (if we weren’t contractually obliged to provide all our pod guests with one) Prof Byron is one of the world’s most respected thinkers in the field of brands and consumer behaviour. Unless you’re deliberately trying to get yourself fired from your marketing role, you’ll no doubt have read his seminal book ‘How Brands Grow’ and, if you’re especially lucky, you may well have learned directly from the man himself in one of his globally prestigious academic roles.  A speaker, a teacher, a thinker and a pioneering researcher, Byron still has the time to be a thoroughly entertaining podcast guest, and is famously happy to share the kind of knee-buckling market truth that the industry fears but also really, really needs. In

This week we’re pushing our withered hamstrings way beyond their wretched limits, all in order to win the attention of our guest, sport and brand marketing super-baller Lisa Parfitt.  In a career that has been, figuratively, one top bin after the other, Lisa has done more than most to give women’s sport a serious platform, particularly when it comes to those all-important commercial relationships.  A star player in the efforts to land the Women’s FA Cup their first brand sponsorship, Lisa can be found on the prestigious pages of PR Week’s Power 100 for her work in pushing for greater representation for women in the sports business.  Having gone toe-to-toe with the inequalities in the game in her time as both a Level 1 coach and director, she now devotes her considerable skills and stamina to creating better, fairer and more sustainable partnerships, sponsorships and culture in the game. In an episode with absolutely no time wasting, even for the occasional glug of branded energy pop, we ponder everything

This week we made difficult phone-calls to Ant & Dec, Torvill & Dean and, accidentally, the Neville Brothers, all in order to explain that the nation now has a new favourite double act – the joint chiefs of Pablo, Harriet Knight and Hannah Penn. Not content with leading Pablo to the very top of the creative charts in agency land – scooping up the Global Campaign Indie of the Year award on two separate occasions – H&H have set about tearing up the dusty old rulebook for agency leadership (especially all those pages about being greedy and horrible). They’ve poured their considerable energies into actually delivering the kind of culture every agency pretends they have, and even launched the Pablo Living Wage, a £30,000 minimum salary for entry level roles that opens up the industry to people who are usually left on the side-lines.  As well as turning Pablo into the creative, and cultural envy of agency world, Harriet and Hannah are also responsible for one of the most successful agency models aroun

This week we tried to arrange a VIP brand event for Call To Action® fans in an abandoned toilet brush factory, all just to prove our cool credentials to Charlie Copsey, the founder of Underground Fan Club. Having conquered the media mountain earlier in her career – working in TV, radio and film with the likes of Johnny Vaughan and her good pal Colin Murray – Charlie realised that her next great mission would be to rescue fan experiences from the desperately dull doldrums they were in at the time. From there Underground Fan Club was born – a studio devoted to producing more memorable, more believable and more exciting experiences between brands, fans and talent. At the heart of the mission is something many marketers bang on about with no clue, or care, about what it means in reality – authentic connections with your most valuable audience, something Charlie is already proving to be much more than the same old brand baloney.  There’s an increasingly long line of brands queuing up for the Underground treatment

This week we kept shouting things like HIT ME! TWIST! GO FISH! WHAT’S A SPADE? In order to win the professional attention, and personal sympathy, of Jo Living – founder of ‘poker for business’ consultancy Aces High. Having noticed that poker was less about bluff and bravado and more about strategy, empathy and teamwork, Jo realised it could be the perfect game for teaching people how to make smarter business decisions. From there she went on to run workshops teaching everything from communication and negotiation, to assertiveness and risk management, all done eye-to-eye through what she calls the ‘contact’ sport of poker. It’s an episode where we try very hard not to say things about ‘laying the cards on the table’ (but probably won’t succeed) covering everything from the real-world value of a poker face to the power of a timely pause.   This episode is proudly dedicated to Adam Living.    Follow Jo on LinkedIn. /////   Timestamps 07:33 - Investment Banking Experience 10:32 - Quarter Life Crisis 15

This week we donned a smelly neon bib, distributed some tiny cones and shouted things like ‘THAT’S NEVER A PEN’ all in order to win the attention of Karen Dobres, one of the sporting world’s most genuine game changers. Advocating for equal budgets, facilities and recognition in women’s sport with all the tenacity of a crunching, shin-pad obliterating tackle, Karen is the co-founder of Equality FC and the Sistership Network. Her new book, soon to hit the shops, is called Pitch Invasion and tells the tale of her experiences as a feminist on the board of Lewes FC, the world’s first (hurray) and only (boo) equal football club. And, with all the creative energy of a box-to-box midfield dynamo, she’s also helped establish the #CallHimOut initiative, has served as a judge on the UN Women UK Awards, managed a counselling service at Polygram Records and, just because she could, helped arrange the installation of a statue celebrating bisexual female pirates. It’s an episode where we chatter ‘in and around’ all things

This week we kept on adding more and more and more irrelevant attachments to our so-called brief, in order to earn ourselves a swift rebuke from the marketing world’s Brief Batman – Howard Ibach. Inventor of the Creative Brief Mastery program, Howard is on a mission to make marketing briefs more meaningful. An advocate for clear thinking, proper collaboration and the single minded-proposition, Howard has been helping marketers all over the world put their bad briefing habits to bed (and then press a pillow over their drooling faces). He’s also an instructor at the Association of National Advertisers’ Marketing Training and Development Centre, the author of the brilliant ‘How To Write An Inspired Brief’ and host of the ‘Brief Bros’ podcast – confirming his undisputed status as the industry’s beefiest brief brain. In this episode, Howard will pick the art of briefing down to its rickety bones, sharing his invaluable expertise on what the perfect brief should say, be and do. This episode is proudly dedicated

This week we have been exclusively watching 'Magic Mike', shaking a Magic 8-Ball and listening to '24k Magic' by Bruno Mars (which is just awful) in order to win the slightly nervous attention of Adam Ferrier, founder of Thinkerbell; the thinkers, tinkers and practitioners of ‘measured magic’.  A psychology brain sat on top of some sturdy strategy bones, Adam is a rare voice of reason in the largely barmy brand world – as well as being the chief sceptic when it comes to the industry obsession with ‘the customer’. He’s also the author of more superb books, including ‘The Advertising effect: How to Change Behaviour’ and supplements all this talk-talking with some serious walk-walking through his work that brings marketing science and creative thinking together.  In this episode Adam shares his expertise on brands who forget how to be brands, why every business problem is a behaviour change problem and the forgotten benefits of simply fitting in. This episode is very proudly dedicated to Anne Young.    /////

This week we went around slurping muddy water from puddles in order to win the sympathy of Shane Stewart – brand man, running man and fizzy drink saviour. Chief brand brain at XOXO soda, Shane has built his career around launching and marketing drinks that do good stuff for your innards, while looking extremely cool on your outtards. Before shaking up the canned drink business with XOXO he helped create a large and loyal community of slurpers for Moju, a ginger and turmeric shot that’s a bit like unleashing a troop of helpfully energetic monkeys inside your tired old brain. And, as well as bringing better branded bubbly beverages to Britain and beyond, he’s even found the time to launch Step by Steppers, a marvellous running club designed to help people dealing with grief to feel less alone. This episode is very proudly dedicated to his Dad. ///// Follow Shane on LinkedIn and Instagram Step by Steppers Run Club Timestamps 03:14 - Shane's Early Career in Hospitality 05:08 - Cultural Significance of Pub

This week we positioned our most powerful fan at the rear end of a corpulent bull in hopes of snaring the attention of legendary bullshit fighter, Alex Smith A strategist who’s set himself the mountainous task of extracting all the nonsense from business strategy, Alex is very much a breath of a fresh air in a field that can, at its worst, smell a lot like somebody’s done a poo… on a dead crab… in the drains of an abandoned laundrette… and then set it on fire. He is the author of a bestselling book on strategy, titled, with Alex’s typical disregard for fluff, No Bullshit Strategy. In those pages – and through Alex’s wildly popular LinkedIn posts – he makes a compelling case for businesses to look more closely at the decisions they make and wheedle out the ‘anti-strategic’ ones that are causing 99% of all pickles. So, in true Alex fashion, we probably could have just said something like ‘he helps businesses get stuff right, more of the time’ instead of all that nonsense about the crab and the laundrette. Ah

This week we released AI from the punishment cupboard in which we’ve been keeping it in order to win the approval of author, marketing super-brain and AI believer Paul Dervan. As the Head of Brand Marketing at Miro, Paul has been busy bolstering his reputation as one of the industry’s smartiest pant-wearers when it comes to marketing effectiveness. Miro is just the latest stop in a marketing career you could only possibly describe as both distinguished and glittering (glittinguished?) and has seen Paul tackle the marketing challenges on behalf of everyone from O2 to Telefonica to the National Lottery in Ireland (scooping, along the way, the title of Ireland’s Marketer of the Year in 2022.) He’s also the author of Run With The Foxes, a superb book about marketing, mistakes and making much better decisions. This episode is very proudly dedicated to Peter Field. Peter has had a huge influence on Paul’s career both as a mentor and advisor. ///// Follow Paul on LinkedIn. Timestamps: 03:45 - First Job and Pr

This week we shredded our vision board and fed it to some ornamental carp, purely to win the approval of author, critic and quite possibly the world first demotivational speaker, Patrick Freyne. Before becoming the enormously popular columnist and critic for the Irish Times, Patrick spent his 20s chasing the rock star dream. But while the life of big hair, hard drugs and tight trousers wasn’t to be, it did give Patrick the time and space required to be one of the creative world’s leading authors, thinkers and sense-talkers. His book ‘Ok, Let’s Do Your Stupid Idea’ is a glorious celebration of curiosity, experimentation and letting your heart lead the way. And now he’s on a mission to dismantle the cult of ‘Big P’ productivity and remind people that ‘maximising your potential’ is a poor substitute for living your life.  This episode is dedicated to Patrick’s wife Anna Carey, who has been his biggest influence. She also has an amazing funny romance fiction book coming out later this year called Our Song. 

This week we deliberately trapped ourselves in a cartoon like the dude from A-Ha in order to cross paths with marketing’s MirthMaster 3000, Tom Fishburne aka The Marketoonist. Apart from your CEO accidentally getting trapped in his own futuristic private bathroom over the bank holiday weekend, the funniest stuff in marketing usually comes from Tom’s brain. The comic genius behind The Marketoonist, Tom has been skewering this highly skewerable business for years – giving a reassuring chuckle to millions of marketers along the way. As well as being a famous side-splitter he’s also an expert eye-opener, with his Marketoonist agency having persuaded mega brands like Google, Microsoft and even LinkedIn of the value of having (and giving) a laugh. And, in his bid to remove the ‘po’ from the face of marketing, he also shares his wit and wisdom as one of the industry’s most in-demand keynote speakers. This episode is dedicated to David and Claire Hyatt from Wales, as without these two Tom’s cartooning may never ha

This week we shrank ourselves down to Dennis-Quaid-in-Inner-Space micro proportions to catch Spencer LaVallee and Graham Douglas, the co-founders of mega-successful micro creative agency Gus. Spencer and Graham lead a creative crew leaner than a wildebeest that got banished from its herd last Tuesday for repeatedly messing around. But size means little when you have big ideas, and the agency regularly rubs shoulders with the behemoths of the ad and marketing world when it comes to gongs and glory. From Gus being named Ad Age Small Agency of the Year, to their campaigns winning top honours at the likes of Cannes, Forbes and the New York Film Festival, Spencer and Graham are a testament that brains can beat brawn in this industry. Especially when those brains are inside the heads of a couple of fellas who’ve had such an interesting journey through it. This episode is dedicated to all the small but mighty creative agencies out there proving that size doesn't limit impact. ///// Follow GUS on LinkedIn Visit