That's What I Call Marketing

What does it really take to move from brand marketer to global growth leader?

In this episode Conor Byrne sits down with Orla Mitchell for a candid, commercially grounded conversation about leadership, long-term brand building and earning marketing’s seat at the growth table.

Orla’s career spans senior roles at Nestlé, Kerry Foods, and Mars, where she led global food and confectionery portfolios including the transformation of the gum category and the return of Extra to the #1 position in the US. She later returned to Ireland to join WaterWipes, ultimately becoming CEO and helping scale the brand internationally with sharper strategic focus and disciplined portfolio choices.

This episode goes far beyond career highlights. It’s about how marketing thinking matures from creative execution to enterprise-level value creation.

3:00 – Winning the Marketing Champion Award & what recognition really means
4:40 – From accountancy to marketing: finding the discipline that fit
6:00 – Cutting her teeth in FMCG at Nestlé
9:50 – Being headhunted to Mars & stepping into bigger challenges
13:00 – Dealing with disappointment & knowing when to leave
15:20 – Long vs short term thinking before it was fashionable
17:30 – Entering Mars: business model transformation over “just advertising”
19:15 – Business marketer vs creative marketer
21:00 – The Ehrenberg-Bass moment: science over opinion
24:30 – Creative effectiveness, star systems & why great ads last
27:00 – Test & learn done properly (with action standards)
31:30 – Global roles & navigating “we’re different” market objections
35:30 – Leading the gum category transformation
38:20 – Extra’s growth in the US & penetration focus
41:00 – Leaving Mars & the WaterWipes opportunity
43:00 – Scaling a challenger brand & making tough market choices
46:00 – Marketing as growth co-pilot, not support function

If you lead brands, sit at an executive table, or aspire to do either, this episode is a masterclass in commercially credible marketing leadership.

Thanks to Tracksuit for their support of this episode.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Zappi CMO Nataly Kelly joins to talk about the Sizzle, Systems & Sales Impact of The Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl is advertising’s biggest stage. $8 million for 30 seconds. Cultural noise at maximum volume. Celebrities everywhere. Music in almost every ad.
But once the spectacle fades, one question remains: which ads actually drove impact?

In this episode, we unpack the Zappi Super Bowl 2026 report (check it out here) built from testing every ad live with 20,000 American category buyers and benchmarking them against the top 100 performing TV ads in the US.

We explore:
– Why emotional response alone isn’t enough
– The role of purchase likelihood in predicting sales impact
– How celebrities can amplify an ad — or bury the brand
– Why distinctive brand assets (Budweiser’s Clydesdales, Nerds’ characters) still matter
– The Pepsi polar bear debate and what it says about brand memory
– How health brands like Wegovy, Hims & Hers and Ro cut through
– Why the best Super Bowl ads are part of a system, not a one-night stunt

This conversation goes beyond ranking ads. It looks at what actually moves the needle — and what marketers without Super Bowl budgets can learn from the world’s most expensive media moment. Zappi’s full report is available at zappi.io here.
Chapters
2:25 – What Zappi Measures
4:07 – How the Super Bowl Ads Were Tested Live
5:00 – Celebrity Usage: Amplifier or Distraction?
8:54 – Brand Recall vs Entertainment
10:15 – Super Bowl Ads as Part of a System
12:38 – Music, Multi-Screening & Attention
13:54 – Health Brands, Outrage & Cultural Relevance
16:12 – Why Budweiser Still Wins with Distinctive Assets
18:34 – Pepsi, Polar Bears & the Coke Asset Debate
20:41 – System Over Sizzle: Campaign vs One Night
23:40 – The Emotional Power of Lays
24:35 – Nerds, Product Demonstration & Penetration
27:00 – What Marketers Without Super Bowl Budgets Should Learn
31:56 – Are Super Bowl Trends Changing?
36:50 – Favourite Ad
38:00 – Why Sales Impact Still Matters Most
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Most advertising doesn’t fail because it’s wrong. It fails because it’s dull and dull is expensive.

In this episode of That’s What I Call Marketing, Conor Byrne sits down with Adam Morgan and Karen Nelson-Field to unpack the real cost of dull creative and dull media using hard evidence from IPA effectiveness data, System1 testing, and large-scale attention measurement.

The conversation moves beyond taste or opinion and into economics: why rational, low-emotion advertising can still “work” but only by wasting millions; why some media environments structurally suppress attention; and why optimisation, procurement pressure, and performance thinking have quietly normalised mediocrity.

If you work in brand, media, B2B, finance-led marketing, or any category that tells itself it has to be boring, this episode is a wake-up call.

What you’ll learn

Why 50% of ads struggle to beat a cow chewing grass on attention and emotion
How dull creative drives up required spend by millions to achieve the same outcomes
Why CPM is often a cost per meaningless thousand
How attention volume predicts ROI, memory, and effectiveness
Why great creative fails when media doesn’t give it a stage
How risk, responsibility, and “sensible” decisions slowly drain impact from work
Where AI may actually help creativity rather than flatten it

This episode draws directly on the “Cost of Dull” research programme and explains what it means for marketers trying to balance effectiveness, efficiency, and real-world constraints.

02:27 – What do we actually mean by “dull” advertising?
03:55 – The cow-chewing-grass test and why half of ads lose
06:00 – Attention vs emotion: two ways to measure dullness
08:00 – The Cannes “Ennui” experiment and burning money as a signal
11:10 – What “dull media” really means (and why it’s misunderstood)
13:55 – When great creative is wasted by low-attention environments
16:20 – Is dull creative ever the better option?
17:24 – Trust, facts, and why rational messaging costs more
19:00 – Campaigns vs single ads: where attention is really lost
20:00 – Why mix matters more than hero-only thinking
21:00 – Global differences: creative vs media effects
23:00 – Why B2B marketing is structurally duller and the cost of that
26:00 – The “dull eclipse”: performance mindset, optimisation, benchmarks
28:20 – Procurement, pricing pressure, and creative erosion
31:00 – CPM, wastage, and the illusion of efficiency
34:20 – AI, challenger brands, and testing creativity at speed
37:55 – Risk vs responsibility: how sensible decisions kill ideas
41:00 – What marketers can actually do differently
43:45 – Final reflections and where the research goes next

About the guests

Adam Morgan is co-founder of Eatbigfish and a leading voice on challenger brands, effectiveness, and commercial creativity.
Karen Nelson-Field is Professor of Media Science and one of the world’s foremost researchers on attention, media value, and advertising effectiveness.

If you’re trying to explain to a CFO, procurement team, or board why “safe” work keeps underperforming, this episode gives you the language and the evidence to do it properly.

Content Mentioned in the Episode:
Risk & Responsibility https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuJx2IJjaFw
Cost of Dull Media Report https://21467338.fs1.hubspotusercontent-ap1.net/hubfs/21467338/COMPANY%20MATERIALS/Cost%20of%20Dull%20Final.pdf
Cost of Dull Eat Big Fish https://www.eatbigfish.com/thinking/challengers-and-cost-of-dull
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

François Bazini, CMO of Suntory Beverage & Food Europe is one of the most thoughtful brand CMOs in global FMCG
François shares a rare, inside view of what it really means to be a brand steward in organisations like Danone, BCG, PepsiCo and Suntory. From resisting short-term zig-zagging, to building brands that can withstand private label pressure, this conversation goes deep on the realities of modern brand leadership. We explore why marketers must act as brand CEOs, how tension with CFOs can be productive rather than problematic, and why targeting older audiences is one of the most under-exploited growth opportunities in marketing today. François also unpacks the Ribena turnaround, Schweppes’ response to Fever-Tree, and why most advertising testing is misunderstood. This is a wide-ranging, honest discussion about judgment, evidence, culture, and the long game in brand building.

Topics include: Brand stewardship vs short-termism, marketing ROI, working with finance, global vs local marketing roles, age targeting myths, private label competition, creative testing, and why some brands endure while others drift.

03:25 – Career path: from Danone to consulting and global brand roles
04:55 – What BCG teaches marketers about being fact-based
07:00 – Brand stewardship and avoiding strategic zig-zagging
09:30 – Timeless vs timely brand decisions
11:00 – Marketing ROI beyond short-term sales
12:30 – Marketers as brand CEOs
13:45 – Working with CFOs and productive tension
16:00 – Global vs local marketing roles
20:00 – Ribena: brand decline and recovery
22:30 – Going back to a brand’s peak moment
26:00 – The myth of always targeting youth
29:00 – Schweppes, Fever-Tree and category disruption
31:45 – Targeting over-45s unapologetically
34:00 – Media thresholds and focus over fragmentation
35:45 – Moving beyond marketing mix modelling
38:15 – The limits of advertising testing
41:00 – When great ads fail tests but succeed commercially
42:20 – Competing with private label
43:00 – DAQV: desirability, affordability, quality, visibility
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens when a radio comedian, a senior drinks marketer, and a 2,000-year-old Roman hydration recipe collide?

In this episode of That’s What I Call Marketing, Conor Byrne sits down with Merrick Watts and Ed Stening, co-founders of Posca Hydrate — a sugar-free, hypertonic hydration drink inspired by ancient Roman Posca.

Posca isn’t a nostalgia play. It’s a sugar-free, hypertonic drink inspired by a Roman solution to unsafe water — rebuilt for modern life, modern habits, and modern expectations. That means confronting everything from flavour and formulation to packaging, positioning, and retail resistance.

Along the way, Merrick and Ed unpack a set of ideas that matter far beyond drinks:

Why liquid still matters more than marketing.
Why category creation is harder than brand building.
Why refusing “me-too” formats can slow growth — but protect belief.
And why brands should aim for humour, not jokes.

Merrick explains why jokes age quickly, but a sense of humour travels across audiences, occasions, and time and how that thinking shapes Posca’s tone, creative decisions, and internal culture. It’s not about being funny. It’s about not taking yourself seriously while taking the product seriously.

They also discuss building brand in-house rather than outsourcing belief, measuring brand as a startup using Tracksuit, balancing mental and physical availability, and what it really takes to scale a challenger brand globally without losing the story that made it matter in the first place.

This is a conversation about founders, flavour, brand discipline, and the uncomfortable decisions that come with doing something genuinely different.

3:50 – From radio comedy to drinks founder
5:50 – Why the liquid comes first
7:50 – The Roman origin of Posca
10:50 – Turning history into a brand story
14:50 – Ancient wisdom meets modern science
16:20 – Building brand from the inside out
19:50 – Tone, humour, and taking the product seriously
23:50 – Building a category, not fitting one
29:50 – Brand vs physical availability
32:50 – Measuring
34:50 – Global expansion strategy
38:50 – The hypertonic breakthrough moment
44:50 – Risk and belief
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.