The Push

Discounting is a common tactic in sales and marketing. It is also an easy way to weaken pricing discipline and damage margin.

This episode explores why brands discount, how the economics are worse than many think, and under what conditions discounting is justified.

We explore famous examples of low-price strategies and their effects on brand perception and profitability, before identifying what companies should do instead.

Specifically, this episode covers: 

One of the most important career decisions a marketer can make is choosing the right company to work for.

Even a talented marketer can still struggle when their skills, temperament, and ambitions do not match the company’s stage of growth. 

Someone who thrives in the uncertainty of an early-stage business may feel trapped inside a mature corporation. 

Someone who excels at stakeholder management may struggle in a company that needs constant experimentation and rapid execution.

In this episode, Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson breaks growing companies into four stages and explores the...

Everyone thinks they’re a marketer.

The CEO has an idea. The finance manager has an idea. Someone's teenage daughter discovered Instagram over the weekend. Suddenly everyone has a revolutionary marketing strategy that will transform the business.

In this episode, Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson draws on stories from marketers across Reddit and LinkedIn, to examine why marketing attracts unsolicited advice, why "good ideas" are often worthless, and how marketers can respond when non-marketers mistake their opinion for expertise.

He covers:

Brand strategy is easily derailed. 

All of a sudden, the whole company invites itself into the room, sales invents three new offer names, the CEO wants the brand to feel “premium”, and nobody can accurately explain what the business does.

In this solo episode, Jack Ferguson answers brand strategy questions from Reddit that cover a spectrum of issues that arise within companies.

He covers:

Most companies blame execution when growth plateaus.

So they start doing more outbound, making better ad creative, creating new landing pages, building sharper sales scripts, and tightening the alignment between sales and marketing. But often, the problem isn’t execution, it's market understanding.

In this episode, Jack Ferguson hosts Buyer Researcher Ryan Gibson to help you understand when poor growth is an execution problem and when it is a market understanding problem. 

Using examples from SaaS, enterprise software, startups, and B2B sales environments, they explore how buyers make decisions, why status quo bia...

In Part 3 of this series, the rubber hits the road.

After breaking down brand diagnostics and strategy in the previous two episodes, this episode moves into what gets built: brand assets, how to prioritise them, and how they compound (or don’t) over time.

Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson is your host.

He discusses:

A Brand Strategy is often dismissed as ‘fluff’ because it’s poorly defined, inconsistently applied, and confused with tactics, communications, advertising, or visual identity.

In Part 2 of this series, we move beyond the theory of brand as a function of memory and why buyers buy to define specific strategic outputs, explain how they’re informed, and model scenarios in which they’re used. This episode presents a unifying idea of brand strategy that holds up for marketers and remains accessible to non-marketers.

This episode covers:

Most definitions of ‘brand’ focus on what a company produces, like logos, names, and design systems, but fail to explain what brand is, how it drives commercial outcomes, and how it is measured.

 In Part 1 of this series, we define brand comprehensively while keeping it accessible to marketers and non-marketers alike. From that foundation, we break down how brand shows up in real buying situations, how it influences decision-making through different memory systems, and how it can be measured through awareness, salience, distinctiveness, and risk. 

In Part 1, we discuss:

Most revenue growth actually comes from rising demand, and brands that recognise early can move to service it.

In this episode, Jack Ferguson breaks down where marketers create the most value inside a business: identifying emerging demand and helping organisations innovate to meet it.

Drawing on Mats Georgson’s Demand Point Constellation Theory, and using examples from Uber, McDonald’s, Intuit, Swiffer, and others, Jack explains how marketers can uncover these demand points through real-world observation and customer insight.

This episode covers:

• What a Demand Point Constellation is and why it...

Buyers don’t experience brands as funnels. They encounter them mid-scroll, mid-conversation, mid-doubt, mid-purchase, to name a few examples. So why does marketing still plan as if people move predictably from awareness to purchase?

This episode's guest Jelena Veselinovic joins host Jack Ferguson to rally against this phenomenon while drawing on 25+ years of marketing experience, including 18 years at Coca-Cola and 3.5 years as Head of Brand Marketing at Miro. 

Now operating as a fractional Head of Brand, she blends classical marketing science with a philosophical background to challenge the deterministic assumptions still embedded in boardrooms. If the...

In this episode, Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson discusses sonic branding and the new opportunities that are emerging for marketers with AI.

Jack recently created a song for his own brand using AI which sparked a bigger conversation about sonic branding, accessibility, and audio ownership. Sound is one of the most underused brand assets available today and smaller brands have more access than ever.

Jack discusses:

- AI-generated music and the associated considerations for brands

- How AI can be used to make broader auditory assets

- Why...

In this episode, Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson hosts Strategic Growth Architect Mats Georgson, former Global Brand Director at Sony Ericsson, to discuss how brands achieve large, sustained growth and how most category-based thinking caps it.

Mats was the first marketer to work on Bluetooth, giving him deep, practical insight into rapid global adoption, and years later completed a research project analysing how 150 brands achieved disproportionate growth. Together, Jack and Mats explore why some brands defy gravity, while others struggle to break free of their category constraints.

Jack and Mats discuss:

...

In this episode, Jack Ferguson hosts Leigh Anne Cappello, former VP of Marketing for Play-Doh and one of the leaders during its 50th anniversary period, to discuss how scent, memory, and brand DNA combined to create one of the most recognisable brands.

From the Play-Doh perfume release to prescience calendars to the penetration of the brand's scent, this episode is an exploration of what it takes for a brand to stick.

In this episode Leigh Anne discusses:

This episode explores disproportionate leverage and how it shows up when immersion is treated as critical brand building work, not a nice-to-have. 

Rather than chasing deliverables or premature answers, your hosts examine immersion as a diagnostic imperative, the strength required to defend it, and the consequences of bypassing it.

This episode is co-hosted by Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson and Brand Identity Designer Tutai Marongere.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

Christmas is often thought of as a seasonal moment.

In reality, it’s one of the strongest examples of brand heritage and cultural embedding ever built.

This episode analyses Christmas as a brand system. It examines how it formed, how it survived bans, wars, secularisation, and media fragmentation, and why its relevance continues to compound without central ownership, governance, or constant persuasion. 

For senior marketers, this offers an opportunity to examine endurance at the system level and understand how meaning persists when channels change, attention fragments, and authority disappears.

This episode bre...

Most brands try to eliminate waste.

This episode explains how this approach is limiting.

We break down Positive Wastage, how it shows up in practice, and why it repeatedly drives brand growth, marketing outcomes, and long-term relationships, even when not intentionally planned for.

Your co-hosts are:

- Brand Strategist - Jack Ferguson.

- Brand Identity Designer - Tutai Marongere.

In this episode:

Building your own personal brand as a marketer matters more than ever. It helps you stay respected, protect your career options, and operate with more authority in workplaces that often default to tactics over strategy.

In this episode, brand strategist Jack Ferguson breaks down how to build a personal profile that strengthens your positioning in the job market.

Jack shares:

• The meeting where he’d finally had enough: The moment his internal positioning collapsed and why it pushed him to build his own brand as a marketer.

In this episode, host Jack Ferguson breaks down the real drivers of revenue growth by going back to first principles. No tactics worship, just the underlying forces that move product.

He talks about:

- How 28 retail launches helped him isolate the true impact of tactics

- You can grow revenue and still lose market share, and why many brands mistake this for promotional success.

- The danger of trying to compensate for weak demand with better creative or more advertising.

- What marketers should obsess over first...

Two marketers who never planned to be marketers break down exactly how they fell into the industry. One came through science. One came through life coaching. Both arrived here by accident.

Jack Ferguson and Ben Reeves are this episode's co-hosts.

Listen in to hear:

Every marketer has questioned whether this career’s really for them; especially after getting blamed, burning out, or being abandoned when times get tough.

Chanel Clark joins Jack Ferguson and shares stories of being pushed out, made redundant on day one of lockdown, and writing $8 ad copy to survive, before turning it all into The Marketing Club, a 12,000+ strong community that’s kept countless marketers in the game.

In this episode:

- Jack talks about why marketing becomes the easiest function to blame, and how to stay credible when the business turn...

Every brand wants to stand out, but few are willing to break the rules to do it.

In this episode, Jack dives into the world of rogue brand building, the unconventional, often scrappy ideas that make brands unforgettable.

He explores how some of the world’s most unconventional brand strategies broke through.

He covers:

 • Bumble’s guerrilla campus campaign that turned curiosity into growth

 • Red Bull’s early illusions of popularity and how they seeded salience

 • Jeep’s illegal-looking parking stunts that embodied its “go anywhere” positioning

And most importa...

Every marketer has lived through a project that started smoothly and ended sideways.

In this episode, co-hosts Jack Ferguson and Ben Reeves discuss scope creep. They share war stories, practical scoping habits, and mindsets that keep you sane when a client says, “Can we just add one more thing?”

If you deal with unclear briefs, have underquoted projects before, or work with clients who expect magical turnarounds, this one’s for you.

On this episode:

Most of us remember Play-Doh from childhood, but few of us realise what makes it truly distinctive. 

In this episode, Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson explores how a product known for its texture built enduring emotional equity through something far less obvious.

He explores:

Friends was a hit sitcom released in the 90s, known for its feel-good humour and iconic characters. The show’s success is a sight to behold, maintaining popularity even to this day. 

Though not only was it loved by millions, but it's also a case study in superb branding. 

In particular, its theme song is the perfect distinctive brand asset. 

In this episode we break this down and discuss why.

Evidence-based brand strategist Jack Ferguson is your host.

He discusses: 

The Push has hit Episode 50 for Season 3!

With 99% of podcasts not making it past Episode 20, we thought this was a great opportunity to stop and reflect.

Listen in as your host Jack Ferguson shares 50 lessons from producing 50 episodes! 

He covers:

Marketing careers don’t stall by accident; they stall because the way agencies hire, reward, and manage talent leaves a lot to be desired.

This episode is co-hosted by:

- Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson 

and 

- Fractal Marketing Agency Owner Gerard Doyle

Here’s what the episode covers:

 With 2 million businesses in Australia and most brands blending into a sea of sameness, is uniqueness even achievable, or worth chasing? 

In this solo episode, Jack Ferguson unpacks what the data says about meaningful differentiation (spoiler: only 5–10% of brands get there), explores why most brands blur together, and introduces the idea of “demand point constellations” as a pathway to true brand growth. 

If you’re a senior marketer wrestling with strategy, stakeholder persuasion, or simply trying to build something that stands apart, this episode will give you fresh angles and practical ways to think about brand value...

Building a brand is hard enough; but when you’re a marketer, the challenge intensifies. You feel the pressure to be perfect, and every misstep feels like you “should’ve known better.” 

Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson and Founder of the Marketing Club Chanel Clark co-host this episode.

In this episode, Chanel shares how leaning into authenticity and vulnerability, rather than perfection, built her credibility, grew the Marketing Club to 10,000 members, and turned simple diary-style LinkedIn posts into a fully booked consultancy and speaking opportunities with Google and SXSW.

The episode covers:

Every marketer knows the value of objectives, they help you prioritise, decide what to push, and what to park. 

But here’s the paradox: the very objectives that keep you focused can come back to bite when stakeholders grip too tightly to the promises baked into them.

This episode is hosted by Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson.

In this solo episode, Jack unpacks a story of working with a professional services client where well-intentioned objectives turned into “but you said we’d have sales by now.” 

From that experience came a shift in how he...

Every marketer has faced it, clients convinced marketing should be a quick fix or a single big idea. In this episode, we discuss challenges with non-marketer persuasion, and why alignment and expectation management matter more.

This episode was co-hosted by Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson and E-commerce specialist Ben Reeves.

They discuss:

For small and medium sized brands, referrals feel like the holy grail of growth; no acquisition cost, easier conversions, and a compounding return on past work.

But what if you’ve done everything right and they still aren’t coming in?

In this solo episode, Jack shares how a referral drought in his own consultancy forced him to look beyond promotion and into service portfolios.

This episode discusses:

When you’re paying your agency big money, how much of that is productive? And how much is pastries, drinks trolleys, and middle-management ticket clipping?

In this episode, Gerard Doyle joins Jack to share the hidden economics of Marketing Agencies. 

We explore:

Differentiation vs. Distinctiveness.
It’s a debate that’s been looping in marketing circles for years; so what’s our take?

In this episode Jack discusses the effectiveness of both concepts and shares how he talks about it with non-marketers. 

In this episode Jack covers:

In this episode, Jack and Chanel discuss burnout, how marketers are susceptible to it, and how tying your identity in a high-growth brand can be addictive, but unsustainable.

We cover:

Every marketer knows positioning is crucial, but explaining that to stakeholders is often met with blank stares or polite nods. 

In this episode, we’ll share an effective analogy that helps stakeholders get it.

We’ll cover:

Whe...

In this episode, Ben and Jack talk about the chaos that comes when every campaign, landing page, or price change is a response to right now. 

If you’ve ever found yourself dropping everything to chase a metric, or wondering why all your “busy” doesn’t feel like progress, this one’s for you.

They get into:

Listen in and see if any of i...

What do you do when you're under pressure to deliver B2B sales.....fast?

In this solo episode, Jack breaks down the exact moves he makes when he or his clients need to drive short-term revenue. This includes practical plays that have been effective.

You’ll hear:

In this episode, Jack sits down with Chanel Clark to unpack a rare achievement in modern marketing: proving that brand drives real business outcomes.

Listen in and hear how:

 – Chanel increased brand awareness for a FMCG company by 12% in 9 months

 – Chanel ran one campaign so effectively, the brand tracking platform thought the data was broken

– To use sentiment tracking to identify (and fix) major messaging gaps.

– To use a “cinema pre-release” analogy to help non-marketers understand the concept of brand.

– To leverage Zoom recordings of customer calls to win internal...

Every marketer’s had a moment they wish they’d said less.

You’re trying to be transparent. Clear. Accountable.

But sometimes, transparency backfires; especially when it gives stakeholders the wrong frame to judge your work.

In this episode, Jack shares a short story about a well-meaning update that led to weeks of misaligned expectations. And the simple language shift that Jack now uses to avoid the same trap.

Jack will discuss:

In this episode, Jack Ferguson and Gerard Doyle break down how marketing agency pitches really work, revealing the hidden costs, internal strain, and showmanship that often wins business, regardless of the agency’s ability to deliver.

Listen in and hear how: