In this episode, we discuss the three big lessons we learned over the past year of running the podcast: the strategy and timing behind of building brands, the importance of aligning strategy with data driven execution and how creativity can be the ultimate differentiation.

The gaming ecosystem is a US$160 billion market, and an opportunity for brands to capture an engaged audience. In this episode we speak with Indy Khabra, co-founder of Sydney based Gaming Marketing Consultancy, Livewire. Indy talks about the characteristics of the gaming audience, and how startups can get started in capitalising on this huge marketing opportunity.

The power of internal communications in creating company culture and communicating a compelling vision is often overlooked in startups. In this episode we speak with Kata Juvonen, Global Internal Communications Manager at Smart.io about the importance of internal communications strategy and execution. Tune in to find out the three roles internal communications plays in companies of any size and scale.

If you couldn't fail, what would you do? Deborah Goldingham, Regional Head of Marketing at PageGroup, and one of APAC's TOP50 CMOs, shares this mental models on risk taking, explains why bureaucracy and ticking boxes kills brands and her approach to bringing brands to life. She explains how startups can exercise their creative muscles by focusing on customer needs and learning to become aware of blind spots. Don't miss this insights-packed episode!

Cutting through the clutter to reach the right audiences has become harder than ever. With most startups already engaged in the usual paid marketing activity, how can you garner earned attention? In this episode, we speak with Ben Hartman from Octagon, a global creative agency focused on sports and entertainment, on how startups can get started with influencers, talent and sponsorships. Tune in!

Growing through key strategic partnerships can be critical in the startup growth journey. But how do you make decisions on which partnerships to pursue? Do you go after a few big ones or align yourself to many partners? How do you get started, and what do you need to consider to successfully strike win-win partnership agreements? In this episode we speak with Pankaj Sharma, who has over two decades of strategic partnership experience, to uncover what it takes to win through partnerships.

In this episode, David shares the importance of aligning your go to market strategy with the unit economics of your business, and introduces the “Spears, Nets, Seeds” framework for customer acquisition. We discuss both the lessons learned from growth strategies of successful companies such as HubSpot, Salesforce and Xero, and the problem with following best practices.

Will the world become a better place with my product? In this episode we explore this question, and other key factors of B2B marketing for startups. Our guest, Lars Bjorge, speaks about his mental model around building B2B Enterprise relationships, and outlines examples from companies on how they overcame scepticism and his go to market framework of cold, warm and x factor. With B2B marketing, relationships are everything. But how do you build them? Tune in and find out!

In the second part of our two part brand building episodes, we focus on brand building tactical execution: how to translate concepts into campaigns, the importance of prioritising channels over budgets, balancing media with production and the problem with following best practices.

Startups are generally great at short term sales activation, but not as good when it comes to long term brand building. In this two part episode, we explore the components of a good brand building strategy: setting goals, defining audience and messaging and exploring creative territories.

What does it take to grow early stage businesses? In this episode we speak with Usman Sheikh, Managing Director of High Output Ventures about his experience balancing product and marketing for seed-stage startups. How do you get started with growth? How do you build a marketing model based on the right commercial returns? What does Usman wish someone had told him 15 years ago? Tune in as Usman shares his practical experience having helped scale multiple startups in the last 15 years, and provides actionable marketing examples from some of HOV's portfolio companies.

Distribution power of the internet and democratisation of tools for production have given birth to the creator economy, where the barriers to entry are super low and the benchmark for success higher than ever. In this episode, we discuss how increased competition drives commoditisation in almost every industry, why true product innovation is increasingly rare and how you can differentiate through marketing and brand building.

In this week's episode, we discuss the importance of onboarding and customer support for retention and why this is good strategy, and share insights from R/GA's latest research on loyalty that shows how great customer experiences have become table stakes and how communication is far more important than convenience when it comes to building relationships.

In this episode, we discuss on how true human insights and a strong founder ideology can drive irrational margins for startups. When should startups shift from pitch mode to brand building? Oliver shares his insights and perspectives based on his years of experience across marketing and brand roles at Zynga, App Annie and Grab.

How did a Swiss fintech startup used "radio test" effectively for a rebrand exercise? How does a "portfolio approach" and thinking of good content as investments help startups grow organically? In this insights-packed episode, we discuss with François Briod the transition from performance marketing to brand building, using SEO and localised content effectively, the challenges with brand salience in a transactional business model and the evolution of fintech industry.

How would your marketing change if you didn't have access to any data? In this free flow episode, we discuss why personalisation is overrated, how retention beats acquisition, our shared dislike of buzzwords and trends, and the concept of "extreme positioning" using single words.

How could a rebranding exercise help achieve $2.7m in annual revenue? In this episode we speak with Ksenia Larina, Head of Marketing at Lemon.io. She shares the story on what triggered a complete rebranding and naming change for the developer marketplace Coding Ninjas to Lemon, the challenges and opportunities of getting outside help, the inspiration from Mailchimp's copy guidelines, the lessons learned along the way and how they ended up achieving 40% year on year growth and 60% higher traffic despite launching in the middle of a pandemic. Don't miss this episode!

How do you figure out what to measure? How do you define the "metrics that matter"? Join us this week as we talk about the difference between measuring business impact, marketing effectiveness and optimisation metrics. We share tips on how to build useful dashboards for different stakeholders and growth stages, while avoiding "data puke". We also look into issues around data reliability and explore tools & techniques to measure marketing effectiveness.

Did you know that you need to influence on average 7 different stakeholders within an enterprise company before you can close a sale? We speak about marketing to enterprise buyers with Kerry Lau, an experienced B2B marketer who spent over a decade in leadership roles within IBM. She shares the frameworks and tactics for creating a demand generation pipeline. We also discuss the importance of marketing and sales being joined at the hip to solve the jigsaw puzzle, and how partnering with bigger players can help scale startups open doors.

In this episode we speak with Antti Toivonen about storytelling and what startups can learn from filmmakers. We discuss storytelling and character development techniques, and provide insight into how storytelling can be used to communicate better with customers. Antti highlights the importance of being human, and why it pays off to be stupid sometimes.