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Episode 166

Two-Thirds of American Marketers Would Fail a Basic Marketing Test with Mark Ritson

More than 40% of American marketers can't define positioning. And 84% of those same marketers rate themselves as above average. Both can't be right.

This week, Elena, Angela, and Rob are joined by Mark Ritson, marketing professor, consultant, and creator of the Mini MBA. Mark walks through new Ipsos research on marketing knowledge, explains why formal training is the single biggest predictor of marketing competence, and shares the one concept every marketer should prioritize.

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Topics Covered

• [01:00] Ipsos study reveals the US marketing knowledge gap

• [04:00] Why formal education is the top predictor of marketing success

• [08:00] Where marketers can find good training today

• [13:00] Market orientation as the most important concept to learn

• [17:00] How AI will reshape marketing careers and roles

• [24:00] Byron Sharp and Mark Ritson's upcoming Cannes Lions session

• [27:00] What the rise of AI means for the agency world

Resources:

2025 Adweek Article

Mark Ritson's LinkedIn

Today's Hosts

Elena Jasper

CMO

Rob DeMars

Chief Product Architect

Angela Voss

Chief Executive Officer

Mark Ritson

Founder of MiniMBA

Transcript

Elena: Hello and welcome to "The Marketing Architects," a research-first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co - hosts, Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects, and Rob DeMars, the Chief Product Architect at Misfits & Machines.

Rob: Hello.

Elena: And today, we have a special returning guest. It's been exactly — this is crazy — 100 episodes since he was last on the show, and that first episode remains our most popular of all time. Mark Ritson is here. He's a renowned marketing professor, consultant, and columnist. He's the creator of the Mini MBA, a multiple - time award winner. He's taught at London Business School, MIT Sloan, and of course, our very own University of Minnesota. Go Gophers.

Go, Gophers. And that's why we love having him on. Welcome back, Mark.

Mark: Hey guys, good to see you all. Hundred episodes. Wow. Look at that, eh? Didn't it go quick?

Rob: I've got a theory on why our last one was the most popular, and that is it's the only episode we've ever had where Elena had to do a disclaimer to tell parents, "Hey, if your kids are nearby, have headphones on because there's some colorful language here." So I think that is probably a good reason why we had such good listenership. So please, Mark, curse like a sailor on this episode.

Mark: Well, look, I'm here for you, Rob. I get hired to give these talks every now and again, and the guys organizing it will go, "Go for it. We really want you to shake things up," right? So I go for it, and afterwards they go, "That was a bit strong," you know?

Elena: We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news, always trying to root our opinions in data, research, and what drives business results. I'm gonna kick us off quick, as I always do, with some research, and of course, the research today is from Mark Ritson.

You partnered with Ipsos to measure marketing knowledge in the US, and you wrote about it in a piece for "Adweek" titled "Two-Thirds of American Marketers Would Fail a Basic Marketing Test." Ipsos surveyed a representative sample of American marketers and gave them some simple undergraduate-level multiple-choice questions. Things like, "What is positioning?" "Can you name the four Ps?" And the results were not pretty. More than 40% don't know what positioning means. Two-thirds can identify a quantitative research method. Meanwhile, 84% of those same marketers rate themselves above average, and the one variable that most explained the gap was formal training. Marketers with formal training were more than six times more likely to pass. They were also more influential, strategic, and happier in their career. So Mark, thanks again for joining. I wanted to start with these results. When these came back, were these surprising to you, or was this more confirmation of what you had suspected about the US?

Mark: Look, I think they were slightly worse, but only slightly. It was interesting — we worked with Ipsos because we needed someone that could get a representative sample and was independent, you know. And they were pretty sure that the test was too easy and that we'd do all this work and we wouldn't have anything to show, basically. And I kept reassuring them these questions — like, "Which of these is a quantitative method?" and "What does positioning mean?" — would sort the wheat from the chaff. And yeah, you know, it did. It's probably a little worse than I thought. But yeah, it pretty much confirms what we thought. The two big results, the two big surprises, were really how much the educational factor was the big driver, especially in the US. So we went fishing for a lot of variables, you know what I mean? Whether you're a specialist, B2B, B2C, male, female, seniority — they really didn't do much in the American sample at all. It really was just a tale of one variable, which was education. And then the other cool thing was Ipsos were doing a big bit of research on marketers as part of that survey. And so we got all that other data that were never part of our hypotheses, which is — you know, if you're trained, you're obviously more confident, but you're also more likely to stick around in marketing, you're happy with your career, you're more strategic, you work in a more influential team. So we got a whole bunch of other stuff that was really a bonus, you know? So the only thing we didn't get, of course, is the actual proof — which is a fair limitation — that training in marketing really makes you a better marketer. It kind of points in every possible direction. You know more, you're more confident, you're more influential. We just, until now, don't have that data.

Elena: We're gonna soon have data from a couple of client companies, longitudinal data showing the impact of training on their productivity and impact, and then we'll kill that point as well. But yeah, I think the research was good. I think it sort of nailed it. We certainly got a lot of grief from people about the research, but that's because of what it was pointing to, not because of the research itself. I think that's always a good sign when some people are annoyed by it.

Mark: You need a debate, right? I mean, the interesting thing is what they're annoyed about. They're annoyed about me saying training in marketing makes you better at marketing. That drives people crazy, right? And I made the point in my talk — we did the talk in New York, and I made the point that only marketers would have this debate. You know, online there's a bunch of people going, "Oh, look at this debate about marketing training." I'm like, it's not a debate. It's a signal of how dumb we are, right? That we're debating this point. "Does training in the thing you do make you better at the thing you do? I don't know about that. Is that really true?" It's such bullshit that we've built such a moronic, Philistine discipline. You know what I mean? And that was part of the reason for doing the research, to have the debate more openly.

Elena: One other part of the research that I thought was scary and interesting was how many marketers rated themselves as above average when so many were failing a basic test. What do you think it says about marketing as an industry that so many marketers can be so confidently wrong about their basic abilities?

Mark: I think it's an explanatory variable, right? I think if you think you're good at something... I used the analogy in New York City, which I didn't use again, of teenagers — teenage boys having sex. They all think they're pretty good at it, right? Because they really don't know anything about it. You know what I mean? And I see all these people wincing and I thought, "Note to self, don't use that analogy again." Do you know what I mean? Even though it's quite a good one. Yeah, I think the ignorance is part of the insurance, yeah? If you think you're good at something — actually above average — training isn't necessary. There's a humility in being trained and learning your skills that if you don't have that humility, because you think you're better than most people, you don't need to do it, right?

Elena: So you've done this survey in a bunch of different countries? Is the US truly farther behind than others when you looked at this?

Mark: So we've done UK, US, Canada, and Australia. The Americans are — I would say — pretty average in a horrendous way. I was in Toronto last week. The Canadians were worse than the Americans, which made it a lot of fun for me, because I do like Canadians, but they do have that little sense of superiority over their southern neighbors. So I think I must have mentioned in a 40-minute presentation about 85 times, "Obviously American marketers are slightly better than you." And obviously they're useless, you know what I mean? And you could see them — they literally, they physically winced every time I said it, you know? So they were even worse. But look, I think the headline finding across the four countries we did it — and we'll do it in France later in the year — it isn't, you know, "The Canadians are two points worse than the Americans." It's that two-thirds of marketers don't know what positioning is, right? Can't spot a quantitative method, can't calculate penetration, and the reason for that is they've never been trained in the thing — not only that they do, but that they profess to be experts in. Do you know what I mean? Only our discipline has this issue. Only our discipline. About a third of marketers have some form of formal training in marketing. Not good enough. Just not good enough.

Elena: Well then, practically — for, you know, we have a lot of marketers in the US listening to this — since formal training is such a predictor of marketing knowledge, what would you recommend marketing leaders do so their teams know the fundamentals? Because clearly most marketing teams don't have this knowledge. Where would you recommend they go? What should they do?

Mark: Look, I think you can shop around here. In the US, the AMA does a pretty good job of running fundamental training and always has. So your first port of call is the AMA. Ehrenberg-Bass, if you wanna go down the dark church — there's a pretty accessible training path now with Ehrenberg-Bass. I wouldn't call that a fundamental training, I'd call that a fundamentalist training, but it's a way to go. We offer the Mini MBA online in 40 countries. The thing is, we're not talking about doing two years and $100,000 at grad school, right? No one's talking about that anymore, right? That's not gonna happen. But there's a big middle ground between watching a Gary V. video and going to Stanford for an MBA, yeah? There are still short courses you can do that will give you a grounding in segmentation, in positioning, in research design, in pricing — and guess what? It will make you phenomenally better at your job, more valuable, and more likely to be around in 10 years' time because you actually know what you're doing. There's an agenda here with AI. I do believe we'll have a lot fewer marketers in the future. I don't know how many fewer. But one of the things you wanna be doing if you wanna survive in that new era is probably know something about marketing. Do you know what I mean? It'll help your odds of still being around, I think. So yeah, look, I don't think it's a radical message, despite the various crazy accusations that were flung around at me. "How dare you do research? Your research is shit." "How dare you sell training to people." "How dare you say education is required if you wanna be an expert in marketing?"

Rob: So what do you say to those people that are smack-talking, going, "Hey, you know, knowing textbook definitions doesn't make you a good marketer"? Like, how do you respond to that?

Mark: There's a very deliberate agenda from people that have no training in marketing who find this research confronting and threatening and everything else. They look at outliers. So you get quotes like, "I know loads of well-trained marketers that are no good at marketing, and I know such and such who's had no training, who's the CMO, is an exceptional marketer." Well, yeah, there are outliers. There are always outliers. Look at the big, fat red line between having a bit of training in something and being better at it. You know what I mean? Like, why are you resisting this? You know what I mean? So I felt it in Canada the most, because in Canada they've really lost their discipline, I would say. They've got to a point where a dominant group of CMOs aren't trained, and so when you get to that point, the culture of the discipline starts to turn on itself. You know, you've got your product marketers and your performance marketers — there isn't any marketing left within marketing — and I got a real sad sense from the Canadians that I spoke to that they were really like, "What do we do? We've lost that kind of headland." And I don't think many other countries are that far away from it, you know? I'll give you the example with the four Ps, because I've got a lot of shit about, "Oh, he's talking about the four Ps. It's 60 years old. We've moved on." So it's a good example of what goes on. This "modern marketing" BS — "marketing has changed" — it's a very clever ideology for saying, "Look, I've got no training in marketing. But don't worry, everything's completely different now, so you don't need training in the past. It's all about the future," right? Now, that's partly true. Marketing is changing. It's always changed. It's always changed. But again, we're the only discipline that turns around and goes, "Ah, look, you don't need to worry about how we used to build houses as an architect. Just start building from here." Do you know what I mean? So we've rejected our history, and if you look at the four Ps, the whole point of McCarthy's four Ps was McCarthy saying, "These are the four levers we pull as marketers." This is where our power and our control and our input comes from. Now you've got this 25-year tailwind of idiot marketers going, "Ah, there are other Ps like productivity and people and platforms and passion and purpose." And they didn't know what the four Ps were or why they were invented, and now what we've got is what we've got, right? We've got 80 to 90% of marketing focused on one of the Ps — the promotional P — because nobody bothered to listen to what Jerry McCarthy was saying 60-odd years ago, which is: don't forget product, price, place distribution, and promotion. These are all the ways that we can have impact, and because we had this inane discussion about other Ps, what we ended up doing is losing most of our discipline. Most marketers aren't involved in price anymore because they're into purpose and passion and platforms and pointlessness. And so it's a really sad thing to see, and I don't want the discipline to go any further backwards. And yeah, I mean, I want to sell training. Of course I do. But I also want some marketers to be smart and confident and know their discipline. We're a 100-year-old discipline, you know what I mean? And that history is important, and it makes you better if you learn it. You know? That's the point.

Rob: This might not even be a fair question because there probably isn't just one thing, but — you brought up the four Ps — if you could force every marketer to at least learn one concept, what would it be?

Mark: It's probably market orientation, right? So when you train marketers, you start with market orientation if you know what you're doing. Benson Shapiro and Ted Levitt and everything else — and people, the names of people that most marketers have never heard of that invented their discipline. The point of market orientation is it sets you on the right path. You're not the consumer. What you see in your ads, how you react to your price, how you look at your product performance isn't just incorrect — it's wildly wrong — because it's your baby. Yeah. You can't see an ad the way a consumer sees an ad because you've spent three months working on it. And if you look at most of the big insights on marketing and advertising over the last 10 years, they all come from market orientation. The idea that, for example, you should run adverts for longer because they get more effective after two years or even three years — marketers don't get that because they're not market-oriented enough. They look at their ad and they're bored with it because they've been staring at it for three months. You know what I mean? Why was brand purpose such a stupid thing? Because consumers don't care what a toothpaste brand thinks about Black Lives. You know what I mean? It's not an issue for them. It doesn't come up. It does if you're working on the toothpaste brand, and it's the only brand that you're involved with. But when you turn it around and look at it from a market orientation point of view, the consumer has 3,000 brands in their lives and they don't have brain cells for how your beer brand is gonna approach the ecological challenges in the Amazon. It's not relevant to them. It's not gonna drive them. If you ask them they'll say that it does, but it doesn't.

Rob: Wow. That's really, really a great point. Have you not noticed, Rob? "Oh, look, all the purpose stuff has disappeared. How is that possible?"

Mark: It's possible because everyone's gone, "Oh, you know what? That's kind of flavor of the month and it's gone now, and now we'll move on to something else." It clearly didn't drive the ROI everyone thought it would. No, I mean, there were a couple of things wrong with it, right? It was all about me, the brand, which is not what positioning is — it should be about the consumer. They all look the goddamn same, right? I did an article for "Adweek" about Walmart just annihilating Target, because Target spent — if you remember — those six or seven years arsing about with all those different agendas, and everyone turned on them because they supported an agenda, then they didn't support an agenda, and meanwhile there's Walmart, just pounding the same "Save money, live better." Boom, boom. Consumers going, "Yeah, that sounds all right." It's a classic case study of what was going on over the last five years.

Elena: Yeah. We were very familiar with Target because Minnesota, you know, front lines of all the Target changes. And Mark, I always — I love using your "open your fridge and ask yourself which one of these brands did you buy?" I use that way too often.

Mark: It works. It works, Elena. It's the only way to get them to see it, right? And to be fair, I think it's an Ad Contrarian line originally that I nicked off him, but it's true, man. It's the only way to get a lot of these guys. You can actually do it with formal research. Kantar did a lovely bit of research where they showed that if you ask consumers, "How important is the way that a company treats its employees? How important are its environmental credentials?" — 70%, 68%. And then you turn it around and you go, "You've just bought this bag of chips. Tell us why you bought the bag of chips." And those things never come up. Like 3%. You know what I mean?

Rob: Yep. I love that. All right. So you mentioned AI earlier. When you think about — you know, if marketers don't even have the fundamentals down — how are they even gonna use AI to begin with to help them with their marketing? Do you think AI is gonna make that knowledge gap even bigger?

Mark: Yeah. I mean, there's a couple of things there, right? It is a revolution. I mean, you don't need me to explain that. But I think we're all in the place now where we realize the implications are gigantic, and they're only just beginning. I think it will mean fewer marketers. How many fewer is an interesting question, right? And I don't think anyone really knows. The Anthropic 65% data says two-thirds of marketing tasks are AI-able. I'm not sure that's not a good estimate. I think it might be pretty close, right? So it's gonna have a big impact. What do we learn from that? Well, first of all, as we said earlier, be the marketer that actually understands marketing — that would be helpful. We're still gonna need human marketers because we still need managers. We'll still need a brand manager, for example, to manage the brand, because that's the job — it was always, since the 1930s, pulling all the other stuff together. So there's always gonna be room for the humans there, right? And ironically, I think the ideal marketer for the 2030s is someone that knows marketing and also knows AI, and I think that's the combination you want. You want someone that understands positioning but can very quickly use synthetic data and manipulate the AI tools to essentially do it. I was doing it yesterday. I mean, I had one of my many AI moments. I worked for a large food company yesterday in Melbourne, and I don't think I can talk about it, but we were working on tinned seafood, yeah? And I just — it was more of a flippant comment. I looked at the positioning, and then I looked at what they called their tinned seafood product, and I'm like, "I'm not sure anyone knows what the hell that is, and it's a hell of a thing to go with if we're not sure we know what it is." And so I started throwing out all these other bullshit suggestions of what it could be. Because in a room of tinned seafood marketers, I'm the one with the most expertise because I'm the least involved in tinned seafood, yeah? And I sat on the plane and I ran synthetic data through Claude. We ran conjoints with different packaging and naming options. And literally as the plane took off, I just plugged them all in and I ran, I think, 10 different trade-offs. And by the time we landed and I plugged it back in again, we were — and this is no exaggeration — there was a $9 million uplift in profit from one of the combinations. Now, is that 100% accurate? No. Is it directional? Yeah. It might be $12 million, yeah. It might be six. It doesn't matter. You know what I mean? Like, we've just run three months' worth of data for nothing, while I was drinking gin and tonics on a plane, right? And I sent the report through to the team and I'm like, "There you go. There's 7 million bucks, maybe 12, right?" And look what it is. It's a combination of two things. It's obviously Claude being able to handle pretty basic synthetic requirements. So we're not asking Claude, "What do you think?" now. We're saying, "Claude, run synthetic conjoint. Run the following trade-offs. This is the sample I want. This is how I want you to do it. Now run it and report back." So it's a marketer that knows their basics of — in this case, conjoint research design — plugged into a really good bit of AI. And I think that's the point, right? That's what we want. We want great knowledge of marketing plugged into AI, moving fast, replacing the need for swathes of money and people. And I think we're in an exciting time. Pete Weinberg, who runs Evidenza in the States, he always does this — he does these amazing talks for clients and they're like, "Oh my God." And then right at the end he says, "And this is as bad as AI will ever be." And then he sort of jumps out of a window onto a jet pad and flies off into the sky. But it's the key point, right? We're a couple of years in and I'm running half a million dollars' worth of conjoint with a gin and tonic on a plane, and it's pretty good. It's pretty good already, right?

Angela: It's a wild new world, that's for sure. I know we have those guys on in a couple of weeks or something like that. Yeah, we're loving the synthetic data. Mark, last time you were with us, you shared that you believe marketing isn't science, but that science is marketing — meaning that if you look at marketing's social, reflective, and creative dimensions, it's not gonna fall into traditional scientific paradigms. And yet you do like the rigor of something like Ehrenberg-Bass. But your point at the time was that we look for too much precision, and when we put too much precision in marketing, that's where we go wrong. I'm curious — has your stance on that shifted at all? And if not, I'd love to hear why you think marketing effectiveness is a better framing than marketing science.

Mark: So a lot of marketers — and again, I love the rigor of a lot of this evidence-based stuff — I think we're a long way short of a science, right? But I love the rigor. The downside is you see a lot of marketers who are paralyzed to go and do any empirical work because they're like, "Oh my God, I don't know whether this is right. How do I get the right sample? Maybe is correlation the same as causation?" And it's like, "Dude, it doesn't matter. Get your ass into the market — or it might, you know — get your phone out and run some synthetic data." It's an imprecise, dirty, approximate business. Do you know what I mean? And the enemy is not having any data and not thinking about consumers. So yeah, at the high, high level — I mean, I operated at that level a long time ago, I was never convinced we had scientific value at that point, right? But certainly at the practitioner level, don't worry about it. I mean, what's the greatest single research method? If such a thing existed, it would be ethnography, right? It's the best of them all. Get your ass into the place where consumers are buying and consuming your product. Shut the fuck up and watch and talk and learn. There is not a marketer in America that would not benefit from getting their ass out of their office and getting out there and just being among consumers, right? Who don't know who they are and don't treat them with respect. Do you know what I mean? I had good mentors when I was a younger marketer who would take me out and do just that, right? You know what I mean? Baban, who's now the CEO at Bulgari — when he was boss at Tag Heuer, he was always pissing off in London into jewelers and pretending to be a Swiss middle-aged businessman buying a present for his wife, and he just wanted to see how they talked about the watches. It should be addictive, you know? I mean, Bernard Arnault — my biggest boss at LVMH, the owner really, the chairman — every Saturday and Sunday, both days just in the stores. That's all he did. It's all he does to this day. He'll be in a store this Saturday talking to the sales associates, walking around. That's what he does. It's too good. Yeah, it's too good. So yeah, for me it's about accepting — there are, you know, all of these idiots that discover, "Ooh, correlation, causation. Aha, an airplane with holes in it. Aha, now I've got a very basic introduction to statistics, right? And now I'm gonna play the science game. I'm gonna put a white coat on and be scientific and all that." Man, I did the philosophy of science at the University of Pennsylvania 30 years ago. I spent my time in Van Pelt Library. I understand all of this, and I've come out the other end and — it's important to be rigorous, but it's important to be practical as well, and we need to get on with it. You know what I mean? I'm a big fan of Andrew Tyndall. Tyndall got a whole bunch of abuse about his very good data on analyzing the Effies and all. It's like, whatever. Carry on. Someone wrote like 2,000 words about what was wrong with it, and I was like, "Yeah, whatever." It's really good, insightful work, and it offers marketers, I think, a really good set of applicable constructs. Let's move on. Do you know what I mean? Let's move on.

Angela: 100%. I remember when we were talking last time too, that conversation about science versus effectiveness also led us into — well, as you call it — the dark church. And we started talking about Mr. Byron Sharp — Professor Byron Sharp, we should say. And you mentioned to us that 10 years ago, you strategically positioned yourself against him to make yourself more famous, which worked quite well. I agree with that. And you've always had genuine respect for Byron, as do we, and it sounds like there's an upcoming event at Cannes that I know many of us would love to attend. You and Byron are gonna sit down together, right? Tell us about this session that you guys are planning.

Mark: We got approached by Cannes — I think it's fair to say — with an idea, which was we do a thing together on the main stage or wherever it is. And I said, "Look, I'll do it. I'm gonna be there anyway. You've got to ask Byron because he's more honorary than me." And he was up for it too. But then — I mean, they've gone with this title, which is "Things We Agree On," which seems to have taken some of the heat out of it, which is maybe the point. But I'm sure it'll turn into an argument very quickly. But no, we talk quite a lot — I talk quite a lot with Byron — so on the back channels, and we generally agree on most things. Not all things. So yeah, one of the things at Cannes will be Byron and I having a — I don't know, whatever it is that we're gonna do. We haven't talked about it yet. But there'll be some form of discussion. So yeah, no, it'll be interesting. I'll be genuinely interested to see where he is on a couple of different things. They don't change their stance very much. The thing I would like to do is talk about DBAs with him — distinctive brand assets. We're in a really shitty place in the sense that there's very few things more important than distinctiveness if you look at the literature. But we've got a lot of different words out there. So we've got the fluent device from — and fluency from — System1. I grew up in the fashion world, and I was always into codes and codification, and that's what I've been teaching for 20-odd years. You've got your distinctive brand assets. Others are calling it distinctive assets. You've got the old literature, which is how well-branded is something. And it all means the same thing, and it's very confusing for younger marketers. So my point to Byron — and also to System1 — was we should have a Treaty of Versailles where we agree on one of the concepts and we just line up our language. And of course, that means it's gonna be distinctive brand assets because Jenny's not gonna use someone else's term, which is fine. Which is fine. It's probably the best concept, right? But the point is, let's expunge everything else. But again, I started writing about this and everyone's like, "Well, who are you to decide what the language is?" And I'm like, "Well, you know, it's not really my concept. I just think we should tidy things up." Because if you're a 23-year-old brand manager, you're reading four or five different concepts and you don't know what they are. You know what I mean? So yeah, you can't win. But I — that's one thing I'd like to get out of Cannes is just a unification around DBAs and distinctiveness. Ehrenberg-Bass don't help here because they rebranded distinctiveness as mental availability, and they didn't let on that they did that, but they did it about seven or eight years ago. They discovered distinctiveness — sorry, saliency was where they started, right? But salience had too many different meanings, so they shunted it across to mental availability. So they've been inventing a little bit of an untidy house too. So it would be nice to sort it out.

Angela: I would bet that will be one — if not the most anticipated session — of the year. I'm sure everyone is hoping for some spicy debate, but also good — to your point — to hear where there's more alignment than not on belief systems and whatnot, and what you guys feel are the most crucial components for brand growth. Last question I have for you here, Mark. Any spicy takes on where you think the agency world is headed?

Mark: Yeah. I mean, I think it's tricky. I'm very interested in the WPP results. It looks to me like — and it's not just a WPP thing, it's a big agency thing — everyone's looking at top line being down 6, 7% off a year ago, but the margins are down a lot more. So I think the real focus for the next year or two in the agency world has to be on that pricing point, right? There's a lot of competition, there's a lot of efficiencies. The price for production and media is going to drop, right? That, I think, is the area that we should be looking at. And again, we're largely commodified, right? In the world of Publicis versus WPP, that seems a lot more flat than when I had JWT out there. Do you know what I mean? So I think it's an interesting time to look at how profitable will this industry be as we go through this general technological revolution. That's the area I think I'd be focusing on. And clients are already starting to say, "Where are the savings going?" Because obviously it's costing less to do this. "Do I get that money back or not?" And I think that's a very interesting topic that we'll see play out over the next few years. So yeah, that for me is the big one. It's a massive transition in comms right now, right? There's been nothing like this one. So where we land by the early '30s will be a fascinating point.

Angela: I know. I think I had read a while back — I don't know how far back this was — that Forrester had predicted that US agencies would lose, I wanna say, like 8% of jobs to automation by 2030, and I about did a backflip over that number. I think we would all just be really excited about only 8% if, uh...

Mark: Forrester have no idea what the hell they're doing, right? Like — what did I write about them recently? I said they have a strong reputation for just making lots of shit up and then getting it wrong. Do you know what I mean? As your example illustrates, right? I think Forrester have the source credibility of a turnip. You know, I mean, the metaverse caught them all out, right? And Forrester was — you know, McKinsey, Forrester, a lot of them — all took their clothes off and jumped out of a window about the metaverse. That's an interesting moment to recall who, if anyone, kept their marbles and looked at the metaverse and went, "I'm not sure," right? Because all those big predictive firms proved they don't know anything. Anything, right? And it starts with McKinsey right at the top, right? They're so full of shit, it's off the charts.

Angela: Well, we are certainly in a time that is hard to predict, so I'm glad I'm not having to be the one putting numbers on paper, but —

Mark: Well, Angela, you're too smart to do it, right? You're not sitting there going, "Oh, I think it's 8%, right? I think we'll have 8% of jobs."

Angela: I'll go with your two-thirds number. We'll go with that.

Mark: Two-thirds is — I'll give Anthropic a little bit more credit than Forrester or McKinsey, right? And even then, to be fair to them, they were saying two-thirds of tasks are eventually gonna be replicable, right? Whether that means two-thirds of marketers — that's a different question. And, you know, when we get to two-thirds — there's a lot of known unknowns there, right? But yes, it is a paradigm shift that we're about to go into and that's exciting and also threatening. I feel bad for kids because — probably like you three — I always wanted to do marketing, and I always knew I wanted to go into the industry. And the industry was, in the late '80s, definitely there. Whether I could do it was a different question, but it wasn't gonna disappear on me like an iceberg and a polar bear. But now — you know, if you're 23, 24 — you don't know if marketing is the career to go into, not because you don't love it, but because it might not be there for you. And I feel for that generation because that's not fair on them.

Angela: A lot of industries facing it, I think.

Mark: That path of going to private school, doing accounting, getting a good job — you know what I mean? That path's not there anymore. Do you know what I mean? Like, and in some ways that's probably a very positive thing. Do you know what I mean? But I look at all these sort of kids that are being primed by their upper-middle-class parents to go down a route of 20th-century success, and they're sending their kids in exactly the wrong direction, right? Like my nine-year-old cheats at school, repeatedly in various ways, and she's in a much better place than her studious friends who are worried about their entry scores to get to a university. The world is gonna change and I don't know how, but the traditional motorway systems that took us through life — you know, they were very stable for a long period of time. People that were born 20 years before me and 20 years after — we all went down the same freeway, right? It's pretty much played the same way. But not now. Not now. It's, um, it's a really interesting time.

Elena: For me, it was being a copywriter or supersizing milkshakes. So I think I would single-handedly bring your marketing survey down.

Mark: What was great in Canada — when we got the questionnaire out, a lot of very good marketers were like, "Dude, this exam is pathetic. It's so easy." You know what I mean? Like, "What are you talking about?" And it was the contrast with the guys that were like, "You know..." I mean, it's kind of embarrassing, with everyone else going, "Yeah, I have no idea what any of these things mean." It's a really interesting dynamic. I got abuse literally in the room before we started. People came up and said, "I've seen your questionnaire. Frankly, it's an embarrassment. They're so simple. You could've asked them much more." You know. And then everyone else not knowing their ass from their elbow. Do you know what I mean? That's basically the state of marketing right now.

Elena: Well, speaking of you quizzing American marketers, Mark, we wanted to wrap up with something kind of fun, which is we wanted to give you a little quiz on American culture and see how you do. So I will say, I tried to do the opposite of this on Australian culture, and I did very poorly.

Mark: That's not on you, Elena. That's just Australian culture — it isn't very interesting or very big. Come on, it's a very young country, and it's not that exciting. It's Texas, basically.

Elena: All right. We'll see how you do. Okay. Question one: What specifically do Americans celebrate on the 4th of July?

Mark: Independence Day. Is this the level we're going at?

Elena: We're gonna get harder. It's gonna get progressively harder. Elena? I'm just checking here. Well, it's the Declaration of Independence. Okay. Okay.

Okay. What do the red and white stripes on the American flag symbolize?

Mark: Ooh, they're not the States. Oh, I don't know. See, now I've got in trouble. See, I'm on question two and I'm struggling.

Angela: To help Mark feel better, we should have put Rob against Mark.

Rob: That's actually true.

Mark: If it's not the States, it must be — what else geographically? I don't know. I don't know.

Elena: The 13 colonies that declared independence. The original colonies. Right? I didn't know that. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. What is the largest ancestry group in the US?

Mark: By like, you know, genetic population?

Elena: Yes.

Mark: Ooh. That's an interesting one too. I would go with German.

Rob: Oh, you're good. I would've gone with Irish. That's awesome.

Angela: Yeah.

Mark: No, there's a lot of Germanic stuff around. I know — I remember I read years ago, the problem with American teeth, the reason why you have to get them all straightened, is you've got English jaws and German teeth, which is a bad mix. You know what I mean?

Elena: Oh my gosh. Yeah. I inherited that for sure. Okay. What's the most popular sport in America?

Mark: Ah, that's gotta be football. American football.

Elena: Yep. Yep. All right. Almost done. What is the most spoken language after English?

Mark: Spanish. Gotta be Spanish.

Elena: Correct. And finally, what do Minnesotans call a casserole?

Mark: Oh, hotdish.

Rob: Oh!

Elena: You nailed it!

Rob: Good job.

Mark: I went deep in Minnesotan culture. I had Minnesotan girlfriends. I went to the hockey. I had tickets for the Wolves. I was into my hotdish. I had a lot of hotdish. I never liked it, but —

Rob: Oh, did you ever have the tater tot hotdish?

Mark: Tater tots —

Angela: Yeah.

Mark: The tots were bigger, you know, and the corn dogs at the state fair. No, I was in deep in Minnesota culture. I could go back and start it up again right now. I tell you, I left — I could not get laid. I could not get laid.

Angela: We talked about this last time you were on. Yeah.

Rob: You did mention that before. That clearly stuck with you.

Mark: I would've lived in Minneapolis for the rest of my life. The dating scene was complete — it was like being in Iceland or somewhere.

Rob: I would think that accent, you know...

Mark: No, no, it's a myth because when you pretend to have an accent, it works. When you've actually got an accent and you don't understand what the hell is going on in the cultural bedroom maneuvers, it's all completely different, trust me. It was a real cultural difference. We'll see if we leave that in this time. Last time that didn't make it to the final cut.

Me not getting laid and bedroom maneuvers. No, you gotta leave that in, man. That's the highlight. That's the big one, right? I left that state with no idea. Like Bob Dylan — he's a Minnesotan. I left that state with no idea what the hell was going on. Do you know what I mean? Loved it, but I was like, "I still don't understand half of that shit."

Elena: Oh my gosh, funny.

Mark: The women that were into me, I thought weren't into me, and the ones that I thought were into me, weren't into me. It was like we were speaking a totally different language. I was like, "I gotta get out of here. I literally don't know what's going on."

Elena: We're complicated.

Mark: Yeah, man, I could still — I'd be there now supporting the Vikes with three grown-up Minnesotan kids, and I'd have at least 95 kilos more to go, based on my consumption of hotdish and Minnesota beer. Leinenkugels. I was drinking about 45 Leinenkugels a day, so that would — yeah, that would definitely have got me there. That would've — I'd probably be dead by now if I was in Minnesota. Leiny's.

Elena: That's our Wisconsin friends that popularized that.

Mark: Is that right? I mean, Leiny's was my favorite. What was the great local beer then if it wasn't Leiny's back then? Ah, yeah. But Grain Belt was — Leiny's had it for me. I thought it was a much better beer. I do like an American beer, but now it's not brand-based, right? It's now just — oh, I'll tell you an interesting craic. I had a long, enduring chat with the guys at Anheuser-Busch in New York recently. I've really pushed them hard. I don't know whether they'll listen to me. They've got the anniversary of Budweiser coming up, and I'm like, "Don't make a nostalgia ad. Roll out your library of ads, digitally update them so they look fresh and clean, and buy new media and put them back out again. Show me — like if me and Rob see an ad from like 1995 for Budweiser, you know what I mean? That's nostalgia, right?" So I think I got the president kind of over the line. His wheels were spinning, right? He's like, "So you're saying, don't do a nostalgia ad — actually roll out the ads again." And I'm like, "I know they'll work better than any shit you make now."

Rob: It's like the Disney vault, you know, bringing 'em back.

Mark: Yeah, I mean, think about what they have, right? And think about the traffic-stopping moment when you go, "Hang on, they've spent new media money on a 30-year-old ad and they're rolling it again." It would be amazing, and it would work, right? I don't know how — I've pretty much pushed as hard as I can without being annoying, so let's see if they do it, but it would be a real coup. Because, you know, when Amazon redid the "thrill ride ladies," you know, for Christmas — I asked their CMO, "Why did you do it?" And she said, "We saw you talking about it at Cannes, and we started going, 'You know what? We could do that.'" And I was like, "Yeah, that's a good moment for me." Whether she's bullshitting me or not, I don't care. I'm taking it.

Rob: You'll take it.

Mark: I'll take it. I'll take it. So yeah, I would love it if they did that. It would just be so cool, right?

Elena: Well, Mark, thank you so much for joining us. You did better on our quiz than American marketers did on yours.

Mark: Oh, look, I did better on your quiz than Americans would do on your quiz, right?

Rob: For sure.

Elena: Probably. Probably.

Mark: Anything final you wanna — do you wanna plug your LinkedIn, Mini MBA?

No. Look, it's all good. What would I plug at the moment? I mean, look, the message we've come out of the training with has been pretty consistent. I've deliberately not directly sold Mini MBA in the presentations, and we've talked about the other vendors of training, because I think it undermines the argument and it's fair. You know, if you're a marketer listening to this and you haven't got a decent formal training, listen to me. Go and find the one that suits you. You're talking six, eight, 10 weeks of online learning, whatever it might be, or a three-weekend short course. It'll feel a bit weird for about two minutes, but we know 95% of our marketers that do the program — and they're quite senior — come out of it and, you know, they all say it's made them better, and most of them go, "I just wish I'd done this 20 years ago." It really transforms you. So seek out good training and do it. It will make you better. However good you are, it will make you better, and the chances are you're not very good. You just think you are.

Elena: I'll give it a testimonial. I took the Mini MBA, really enjoyed it. Members of my team have taken it, so I'll plug that. And I did it on top of work and everything, and I had a great time and learned a lot. So encourage everybody to take it. Okay, great. Thanks so much for joining us.

Angela: Thanks, Mark.

Rob: Thanks, Mark.