Sneakers and Strategies
Join marketer Nick Kastner to discuss the latest topics in marketing. Across each episode, Nick covers the latest in marketing, interviews with regional and national marketers from across the United States, and even discusses some of their favorite sneaker options.
Agile Marketing Principle 8: Long-Term Marketing Success Benefits from Operating at a Sustainable Pace
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In this episode, Nick covers probably one of the most important principles: understanding how to operate at a sustainable pace to generate long-term marketing success. Agencies and marketing teams alike struggle from burnout because in marketing - the iron burns really hot. Learn the red flags of marketing burnout and how to protect your team - and culture - at all costs.
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Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy...
Agile Marketing Principle 7: Build Marketing Programs Around Motivated Individuals and Trust Them to Get the Job Done
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In this episode Nick goes hard in the paint discussing the importance of motivation and trust with your marketing team. Agile marketing is really about people and giving them the freedom and structure to be successful. Nick provides a number of tips and tricks to ensure that you're giving your team the autonomy they need to succeed.
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Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications just northeast...
Agile Marketing Principle 6: Organize in Small, Cross-Functional Teams Where Possible
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In this latest (and late) episode of Sneakers and Strategies, Nick catches listeners up on life and explains why agile works best when you have the right teams (and people) in the room.
Also, listeners are invited to Forum Communications' first ever webinar hosted by Nick Kastner on how recent changes to Google search results are impacting businesses in regards to website traffic, analytics, and how brands can operate in this new environment. The webinar will be held on Tuesday, September 30 at 11:30 am EST.
You can register for the...
Agile Marketing Principle 5: Take Chances and Learn from Your Failures
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What does it look like to have the safety of failure on your marketing team? Many organizations struggle with the idea of failure not realizing this is how they learn. This week's episode is all about learning how to grow from failure, actual encourage risk, and being smart along the way.
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Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications just northeast of Atlanta, GA.
Agile Marketing Principle 4: Plan Only to a Level Sufficient to Ensure Effective Prioritization and Execution
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Careful building big-bang campaigns with long planning times. In agile marketing, the goal is to ensure that we are delivering value quickly and to do that - we have to plan accordingly. This week covers the 4th principle provides some ideas on how to ensure your plan isn't over-cooked from the get-go.
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Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications just northeast of Atlanta, GA.
Agile Marketing Principle 3: Embrace and Respond to Change to Enhance Customer Value
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No marketing plan is perfect, but learning to learn and adjust frequently is one of primary jobs of a marketer. After a week of adjusting to change - this week Nick discusses this very topic and the importance of focusing on the customer and not your plan.
Support the show
Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications just northeast of Atlanta, GA.
Agile Marketing Principle 2: Seek Out Different and Diverse Points of View
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Sometimes our marketing teams become echo chambers for our leadership. They start to sound like our CEOs or marketing directors and struggle to create anything new. Agile marketing works to prevent that by encouraging diversity of opinion and point of view.
This week's episode dives into that topic with 5 points that you can use today to ensure that your team creates value in everything they do.
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Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the...
Agile Marketing Principle 1: Transparency
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Continuing on in season 3 on agile marketing, Nick talks about the importance of transparency in marketing across the organization including your relationship with leadership and your marketing agency.
Support the show
Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications just northeast of Atlanta, GA.
BONUS EPISODE: Instagram SEO
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Over the past year, Google has found new competition in terms from ChatGPT and other AI platforms. But, that's not all. Marketers are finding that Instagram and many of today's most popular social media platforms are also operating as search engines. In today's bonus episode, we skip over agile marketing to discuss tactics and how your organization can take advantage of Instagram as a search engine through optimization.
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Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the...
Agile Marketing Value 5: Responding to Change over Following a Static Plan
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No marketing plan survives a full year. In this week's episode Nick covers how agile marketers manage change. Rather than reacting to change, agile marketers respond to it in a calculated fashion to make sure their organization finds success in an ever-changing environment.
Support the show
Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications just northeast of Atlanta, GA.
Agile Marketing Value 4: Cross-functional Collaboration over Silos and Hierarchies
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In this week's episode, Nick tears down hierarchy and provides guidance on how to shift from worrying about the highest paid person in the room and building marketing and business strategies that focus on collaboration across your team.
Support the show
Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications just northeast of Atlanta, GA.
Agile Marketing Value 3: Learning through Experiments and Data over Opinions and Conventions
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In this week's episode, Nick targets the opinion of everyone in marketing to ensure your organization is focused on using data and experimentation to drive real value. This is the third episode in Season 3 focused on discussing the Agile Marketing Manifesto and how it can help your organization win.
Support the show
Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications just northeast of Atlanta, GA.
Agile Marketing Value 2: Delivering Value Early and Often Over Waiting for Perfection
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This week Nick talks how to make sure that your focused on delivering value fast in an even faster moving marketing environment.
Support the show
Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications just northeast of Atlanta, GA.
Agile Marketing Value 1: Focusing on Customer Value and Business Outcomes over Activity and Outputs
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In the first episode of Season 3, Nick introduces the Agile Marketing Manifesto by discussing the history of agile project management and the first of the 5 values of agile marketing.
During this season of Sneakers & Strategies, Nick will walk you through the 5 values and 7 principles of agile marketing and how they directly can apply to marketing for your organization.
Support the show
Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum...
Media Dependency Theory
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On my way home from work two weeks ago, I thought I had a great new theory. I didn't - because in 1976, two American communications scholars developed a well known theory in mass communications called Media Dependency Theory. 1976?!?! Anyway, in this episode, I discuss media dependency theory and it's application in 2024 - as well as its relation to recent events with AT&T and Meta (Facebook / Instagram).
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Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director...
Is This What We've Become? Super Bowl Ads 2024
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In this episode, brand and digital marketing veteran Nick Kastner discusses this year's Super Bowl ads, the good and the bad, Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management Super Bowl ad review, whether the ads are worth it, and the latest sneaker release from Nike.
Support the show
Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications just northeast of Atlanta, GA.
What's Up Next in SEO for 2024
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2023 brought a number of critical changes to marketing - specifically in the areas of scale, SEO, and artificial intelligence. In this episode, Nick discusses a recent article in Search Engine Land by legendary SEO Bruce Clay (https://searchengineland.com/seo-predictions-2024-436574) and his view of SEO in 2024 as well as the absence of the podcast over the past few months.
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Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum...
Episode 9: An Interview with former Coca-Cola executive Pat Magill
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In our latest episode, Nick spends some time with marketing expert and former Coca-Cola executive Pat Magill. From McDonald's to Happy Meal toys (and Teenie Beanie Babies), Pat has spent his entire career in marketing execution in the restaurant and foodservice industry. In this interview, Pat discusses his career, his new venture and volunteerism at the University of North Georgia.
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Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum...
Episode 8: Google's Product Review Update (AKA the "small business killer") and the SB Dunk Low x Fly Streetwear
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In this episode, Nick goes off the rails (and script) a bit discussing the latest Google update, his frustration with the update, its impact on small businesses and on a lighter note - his latest favorite upcoming release from Nike.
Note: Small businesses who DO NOT list all products in certain industries on site, reviews on site, or build custom products are most negatively affected by this latest algorithm update. It does not impact all small businesses - just those that primarily sell custom products or do not list products in...
Episode 7: Super Bowl LVII Ads with Erin Williamson
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This week we have our first guest since Episode 1 - Erin Williamson, senior account manager at Forum Communications. During the Super Bowl, Erin and I traded a ton of texts about the game and the ads. In this episode, we discuss the ads during Super Bowl LVII and whether the spend is really worth the effort.
Support the show
Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications just northeast of...
Episode 6: ChatGPT
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Nick talks about ChatGPT, its rise and how it will impact marketing both now and in the future.
Support the show
Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications just northeast of Atlanta, GA.
Episode 5: Marketing, Sales & Development and the Jordan 1 Chicago Lost and Found
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On this week's episode, we discuss marketing and its relationship with sales and development and the upcoming release of the Nike Jordan 1 Chicago Lost and Found.
Support the show
Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications just northeast of Atlanta, GA.
Episode 4: Strategy and Kyrie
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How do you develop a marketing strategy? Where do you start? Also, how do you manage relationships with your team and even influencers in the era of cancel culture? All of that - plus a conversation about Nike dropping Kyrie in this episode.
Support the show
Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications just northeast of Atlanta, GA.
Episode 3: Brand Archetyping
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Following a 3-month course I taught for a regional community foundation, I'm kicking off a 3-part series discussing marketing and strategy starting with brand archetyping. He also briefly discusses the Air Max 1/97 Wotherspoon.
Support the show
Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications just northeast of Atlanta, GA.
Episode 2: Google Analytics 4
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In this episode, Nick discusses Google Analytics 4 - Google's latest iteration of the web's most popular analytics platform.
Support the show
Follow Nick online at @professoroflife on X and Instagram, or find him on LinkedIn. Nick serves as the director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications just northeast of Atlanta, GA.
Episode 1: Video Content and Authenticity - an interview with AJ Parker
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Join us on this first ever episode of Sneakers and Strategies - hosted by Nick Kastner, long-time marketer and director of brand and digital strategy at Forum Communications.
In this episode, Nick is joined by AJ Parker, founder and owner of AJ Parker Media. Nick and AJ discuss creating video content, the importance of authenticity, and some of the latest considerations in developing video content across platforms as well as AJ's latest pair of sneakers - Nike Polaroid Dunk Lows.
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