The Joy of Marketing

Freddy Ward is the co-founder and CEO of Wild and before that he was the Marketing Director of HelloFresh. In both roles he was responsible not just for launching a new ecommerce brand but for creating a whole new category.

He explains the steps in category creation from explanation to the customer through to building a brand once competition emerges.

He tells us how a cancelled media booking led to them accidentally finding their most successful recruitment channel.

He also covers the importance of selling face-to-face for learning, on and offline channels, building brand loyalty, creating a moat and finally we talk about recruiting a growth team once it becomes too much for one person.

Victor van Amerongen has been producing TV adverts for 29 years and, according to Televisual Magazine, has produced more adverts than anyone else. He has also specialized in adverts for e-commerce.

We talk about advice for first-time advertisers, budgets, direct response and brand response, spot length, testing, response mechanisms, integrating your TV ad into broader marketing, ideas for creative and budgets.

Victor has been responsible for the first campaigns from dozens of the top e-commerce companies in the UK so it was a great chance to learn from him.

Mark Scott, the co-founder and CEO, that's Chief Emotions Officer of Bella and Duke talks about his mission to improve the health of dogs and along the way building a £15m revenue ecommerce business.

He competes with some of the largest companies in the world with equally enormous marketing budgets but stands out by taking a radical marketing approach.

To show how unhealthy processed dog food is, Mark himself decided to live off processed food for two months to demonstrate the damage to his health.

A real example of how the underdog can win.

Jay Wright took over as CEO of Virgin Wines back in 2008 and has transformed the company into one of the largest online wine merchants in the UK, selling over 1 million cases a year.

He explains how his previous roles led him to naturally take on the role of CMO as well as CEO of the hugely successful company.

We also cover how Virgin Wines successfully recruit new customers through partnership activities, keep those customers subscribing and discuss the company's future plans (*hint it includes beer and spirits)

Josh has plenty of experience in investments, having spent 5 years investing in SMEs prior to joining Coniston Capital.

He gives his opinion on what makes a great brand, the pros and cons of selling products through subscriptions vs. one-off sales, and explains the importance of CAC, AOV and LTV, collectively.

We also discuss the importance of having multiple marketing channels and why, as an investor, Josh does "not want to see any single reliance on one marketing channel," whilst touching on the advantages of user generated content for a business.