Podcast Interview with Mark Schaefer, Author, Business Consultant & Speaker

Our Managing Partner, Edward Loades, caught up with the international best-selling author, business consultant and speaker – Mark Schaefer.

Podcast image Mark Shaefer

Podcast#11

Edward Loades: Today, we’re joined by best-selling author, business consultant and international speaker of note and all around marketing guru, Mark Schaefer. Thank you very much indeed, Mark, for joining us today.

Mark Schaefer: Well, thank you. Thanks for the nice introduction.

Edward Loades: And your latest book: ‘Marketing Rebellion – The Most Human Company Wins’, questions, the whole framework of marketing and how in many ways you feel that we’re out-of-step with what customers want. I thought I’d dive in straight away with our first question, which is, what are really the central issues that motivated you to write the book? And why do you think now is the right time to put the ideas forward?

Mark Schaefer: Well, this is my seventh book Edward. I never have a plan to write a book or a strategy. I write a book, when I get curious about something, and when I see a problem that my friends and customers are suffering with that I just don’t understand.

Mark Schaefer: And this time as I went around the world, I kept hearing the same theme everywhere I went. From big companies and CMOs, all the way down to entrepreneurs and small businesses and non-profits and universities. People were saying that they felt stuck. That they felt overwhelmed. They were just falling behind. Their marketing wasn’t working like it used to.

And the sentiment was so predominant, that I decided to look well, this is what people are struggling with today. So, let’s really get into this problem and trying to see if there’s a framework to deal with this and my original hypothesis was that technology was moving ahead of us and people weren’t keeping up, and they were feeling overwhelmed. And that’s where they were falling behind.

Mark Schaefer: But as I got into it, I found that sure, technology is moving ahead of us. But even more important and more profound, our customers have moved away from us. And what I observed through extensive research and interviews is that businesses have sort of locked-in to a certain way of marketing or a certain way of doing social media and they haven’t looked up to see what’s happening here.

Where are the customers? Where are the expectations? And there was literally a time last year when I was writing the book and immersed in this research where I sort of lost my breath and wondered.

Mark Schaefer: I don’t know what it means to be a marketer anymore. I mean, it really was that stunning to see how the world was so much different than what most businesses believe. And so I thought, well, I need to figure this out. And the process of figuring it out that became the book. And so I think it’s a book that’s opening people’s eyes and pointing them in a new direction. And the feedback I’m getting is that it’s really helping them a lot so far.

Edward Loades: Absolutely. And for our business as well. It’s been a real eye-opener. And very, would you say it’s, it’s subversive in many ways. I mean, you talk about  technology, and I think that’s, a lot of people would relate to that in that you know, what technology should we be putting into our business?

And judging from, you know, some of the really fascinating anecdotes you put into the book, and more from the perspective of the customer, you seem to have a sort of love/hate relationship with marketing automation in particular. And where do you think, you know, we should be drawing the line in terms of using technology for campaigns?

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Mark’s  new book “Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins” is out now.

If you are a B2B Marketing Expert and would like to voice your thoughts on a range of marketing related areas, please feel free to get in touch with us.

Hailing from an editorial background, a passionate wordsmith and writer, when Jordan's not here burning the midnight oil, he can be either found writing his novel, fulfilling his self-proclaimed DJ skills or lost in a state of rapture on an outdoors adventure.

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