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PODCAST

Embracing Marketing Mistakes

Welcome to Embracing Marketing Mistakes, the world’s leading irreverent podcast for senior marketers who are tired of the polished corporate b*llshit.Join Chris Norton and Will Ockenden, founders of the award-winning Prohibition PR, as they sit down with industry leaders to dissect the career-ending f*ck-ups they’d rather forget. The show moves past any pretty vanity metrics to uncover the brutal, honest truths behind marketing disasters, from £30,000 SEO black holes and completely failed companies,

business marketing

All Episodes

46:10

EP 107: Award-winning ads stopped driving growth...

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/04/21

Steve Harrison has spent over 40 years in advertising. He rose to Creative Director at Ogilvy, then founded Harrison Troughton Wunderman, building one of the most awarded direct marketing agencies in the world and winning 18 Cannes Lions. In this episode, Steve argues the industry lost effectiveness when it stopped focusing on selling and started chasing societal impact. He explains why award-winning work stopped delivering commercial results and why purpose messaging rarely stuck with consum...

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7:18

What Losing a £10K Tape Taught This Journalist

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/04/16

Veteran tech journalist Spencer doesn’t hold back in this refreshingly honest episode filled with media mishaps and marketing missteps. From confidently predicting the iPad would never take off to losing £10,000 worth of BBC footage in a single stairwell accident, Spencer shares the kind of hard-earned lessons that come from real-world chaos. It’s a funny, cringe-worthy, and surprisingly relatable look at how fast things can go wrong behind the scenes. You’ll hear what really happens when pro...

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63:15

EP 106: Ant Cousins Explains Why Handing Empathy to...

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/04/10

In this episode of Embracing Marketing Mistakes features Ant Cousins unpacking a moment where trusting AI with empathy nearly caused real harm. Ant Cousins is Vice President of Product at Meltwater and has spent over 25 years working across defence, public safety and AI. He previously advised the UK Ministry of Defence in Iraq and Afghanistan, worked in counterterrorism and strategic communications, and later led AI efforts to combat misinformation. Broadcasted live, the conversation capture...

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3:04

The Costly Hiring Habit That Nearly Broke Sarah...

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/04/09

Ever hired someone just because you clicked with them? You are not alone. In this candid episode, our guest admits to recruiting based on personality instead of business needs. The result was duplicate roles, major skill gaps, and tough decisions that still sting years later. From letting go of an “amazing assistant” before the pandemic, a decision they still regret, to realizing the need for complementary skills over similar personalities, this is an honest look at one of entrepreneurship’s ...

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3:56

How My Coca-Cola Site Tour Ended in Disaster -...

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/04/02

Marketing mistakes happen to everyone, even the so-called experts. We’ve seen everything from press releases that accidentally went viral for the wrong reasons to brand names so complicated even the CEO couldn’t spell them. But there’s something weirdly therapeutic about sharing these messes. One guest summed it up perfectly. If you’re only testing stuff you already know will work, you’re not really testing. The risk is tiny when something flops. The reward if it works is huge. So why are so ...

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55:31

EP 105: The Email That Destroyed 30 Years Of Customer...

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/03/31

One email rewrote “lifetime” loyalty and turned Carnival’s most devoted customers against the brand. In this episode, neuromarketing pioneer Roger Dooley breaks down the background to that decision, the Royal Caribbean photo-op disaster, and how AI could have stopped both. For twenty years, Roger has been inside the rooms where these calls are made, teaching companies how real human brains work in marketing, loyalty and crisis communication. He shares how, until recently, only big brands wit...

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6:34

How A PR Exec Survived Lads’ Mags, a Riot, And A...

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/03/26

What happens when the person paid to pitch stories decides to live them instead? We pull back the curtain on 90s Soho PR, where relationships were built over ringing landlines, long lunches, and last-minute invitations, and where the distance between press release and personal risk got uncomfortably thin. From beer brands and lads’ mags to editors who wanted proof you’d done the crazy thing you pitched, we trace how a career at the edges turned into a catalogue of hard-won lessons. The ride ...

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56:05

EP 104: Why Liquid Death and Guinness Highlight Their...

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/03/24

Behavioural tactics collapse more often than marketers admit. Phil Agnew joins us again to expose the shortcuts that fail, the ones that hold up under pressure, and the science senior marketers can actually trust. Phil is the creator and host of Nudge, one of the most respected behavioural science podcasts in marketing. He is known for turning academic research into practical tools used by senior marketers, founders and brand leaders. His work blends storytelling with evidence, backed by real...

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8:15

We Printed 50,000 Catalogues... With the Wrong Phone...

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/03/19

Ever had that stomach-sinking moment when you realise you've made a massive, irreversible mistake? Try 50,000 glossy brochures printed with the wrong phone number. One poor marketer handed over a random pensioner’s number to the public, then had to hire temps to stick the correct digits on every single copy by hand. It only got worse from there. Mail merge cock-ups that sent rival names to customers and a sixty grand exhibition display with a typo you couldn’t cover up with gaffer tape. Bruta...

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46:34

EP 103: From Fax Nightmares to AI: Staying Future...

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/03/17

A single fax almost caused a multimillion pound pricing collapse. Yet the story is only the starting point. This episode goes much deeper into how marketers cope with relentless technological change and why so many professionals feel overwhelmed. Allister Frost is the former Head of Digital Marketing Strategy at Microsoft and one of the first people inside the company to shape its early digital and performance marketing approach. He now writes, teaches and speaks globally about staying future...

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6:03

What happens when creativity outpaces strategy?

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/03/12

On this episode of Embracing Marketing Mistakes, I’m joined by Gareth Turner, founder of Big Black Door and former Head of Marketing at Weetabix. Gareth has over 23 years of experience in food and drink, having led marketing for brands like John Smith’s, Bulmers, Lurpak and Arla. From buying a racehorse for John Smith’s to launching Bulmers fruit ciders and leading the viral Beanz on Bix campaign, his career is packed with bold ideas and brilliant lessons. Gareth opens up about one of his big...

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60:17

EP 102: How Kevin Chesters Helped Make Britain’s...

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/03/10

One advert wiped out a supermarket product in six weeks, and Kevin Chesters was right in the middle of it. He saw the disaster coming, ignored the warning signs and watched the whole thing collapse in real time. Kevin Chesters is a seasoned strategist with more than twenty five years in top flight marketing, including leadership roles as Chief Strategy Officer at Wieden+Kennedy London, Dentsu McGarryBowen and Ogilvy, plus a spell as Head of Strategy at BT. His track record gives him serious ...

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4:02

We almost made political history on Twitter, until...

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/03/05

I’m joined by Stuart Bruce, who is internationally recognised as the PR Futurist. He is a thinker, strategist and hands-on practitioner in modernised public relations, communications and corporate affairs. Stuart specialises in AI, communication technology (CommTech), measurement and evaluation, and crisis communications. He helps organisations embrace digital transformation and future-proof their communications in a changing world. In this episode, Stuart tells the story of how he tried to b...

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58:53

Stop Wasting Social Spend: 12 Social Media Trends...

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/03/03

Marketers are fighting on too many fronts. Budgets are tight, algorithms change daily and AI is flooding every feed with low grade content. This episode cuts through the noise and lays out the 2026 social landscape with absolute clarity. Chris and Will unpack the 12 trends shaping how brands win this year. The conversation covers AI brand bots, the rise of live shopping, the collapse of SEO into AEO, Google Lens changing buying behaviour, micro influencers outperforming big names, and the gro...

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8:27

Hold My Buffalo: Samsung's Aussie Adventure Gone Wrong

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/02/26

Joining the conversation today is Richard Noble, Head of European Public Relations at Audible. With years of experience managing brand reputation and navigating high-pressure PR situations, Richard understands how quickly things can go wrong when communication within a company breaks down. Today, he shares a story that highlights just how chaotic things can get, complete with a touch of Australian absurdity. A hilarious and cautionary tale about a PR disaster at Samsung Australia when two wat...

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54:43

Ep 100: 450,000 Emails and a Waterboarded Exec: The...

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/02/24

A hundred stories in, and the sharpest truths are hiding inside the worst moments. We mark our rather large milestone with a definitive countdown of six unforgettable marketing screw-ups. From an automation update that unleashed 450,000 emails on VIPs in under an hour to a six-figure exhibition stand misspelling “software,” we explore what really fails in campaigns: governance, proofing, and the quiet processes no one posts on LinkedIn. We also pull back the curtain on the risks of live med...

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7:56

When Exposing Bad Hairdressers Costs Eight Hours of...

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/02/17

Let me introduce you to Ann Wright, a journalist, BBC producer and PRCA-approved media trainer with years of experience behind some of the UK’s biggest live events and investigations. She’s had an impressive career, but not without a few wild turns and difficult lessons along the way. While working on "UK's Worst Hair Disasters", Ann went undercover at a Norfolk salon with secret cameras to expose their terrible braiding service. What she uncovered was shocking: staff openly smoking marijuana...

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10:18

The Secret Spelling Mistake That Cost Six Figures

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/02/12

In this episode, we’re joined by Rachel Massey, Director of Marketing at Huthwaite International. She talks us through one of the most stressful moments of her career and what it was like to deal with it in real time. We dig into a cringe-worthy marketing mistake involving a high-profile exhibition stand with "sofware" misspelled across the entire structure, leading to three days of anxiety while hiding the error from company executives and thousands of visitors. • Six-figure exhibition stand...

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52:28

EP 99: Why PR Needs a Complete Rethink in 2026: Sarah...

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/02/10

She went globally viral. Overnight, she faced death threats, abuse and media frenzy reaching across continents. This is the story of how PRCA CEO Sarah Waddington rebuilt, refocused and reshaped the PR industry in the middle of chaos. In this episode of Embracing Marketing Mistakes, Sarah Waddington CBE breaks down the viral moment that changed her life, the hidden pressures of PR leadership and the uncomfortable truths about misinformation, trolls and industry standards. We cover her journey...

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5:35

Even experts fall into their own marketing traps.

Embracing Marketing Mistakes ·

2026/02/05

Katie Tucker is a marketing strategist who helps teams truly understand their customers so they can build products that sell. She works with companies of all sizes, offering practical support, training, and discovery sprints that cut through the noise and get results. But even she’s made the kind of mistake she warns others about. Despite her expertise in customer discovery, she once created a family travel course without doing proper market research, assuming her personal experience and enth...

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161 results

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