How confused.com challenged the meerkats on smaller budgets - Sam Day

01/03/24 • 52 min

Now in this episode, we're talking about one of the most competitive markets in the world - insurance comparison. Anyone who's followed this market will know just how intense it is. And how do you build a brand when you don't have a product yourself, but you're selling someone else's product? Well, it's one of those situations where marketing is all important and advertising can make all the difference to your success.

I'm catching up with Sam Day, who's been the CMO of confused.com, for the past 6 years, who successfully challenged this market and taken it from 4th to 2nd place on very limited budgets. So I want to find out from Sam the secret behind the success of the campaigns that he's run over the last few years, how he's transformed their business and what his plans are for the future.

Links

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
03:53 - Sam’s advice to a young marketer
06:27 - Sam’s greatest failure
08:44 - Management and leadership advice
12:27 - The secret to an extended CMO tenure
19:41 - Getting c-suite buy in with data
22:50 - Consistency
24:26 - Marketing when you don’t have a product
26:01 - Brand vs price
28:43 - Why name the brand after the problem (confused.com)
31:24 - Branding against one of the best branded characters of all time
34:02 - Why there’s no silver bullet for success
37:02 - Spontaneous awareness - how to win an effie
39:50 - Selecting an agency
42:01 - Great examples of populous advertising
44:14 - How agencies should pitch to CMOs
49:39 - What’s next for Sam Day

Links

Timestamps

Previous Episode

Reloaded: How to be a successful challenger - Adam Morgan (2020)

Today I'm revisiting episode 3, with Adam Morgan, founder of eatbigfish and author of Eating The Big Fish, The Pirate Inside and A Beautiful Constraint to find out what it takes to become a successful challenger. Adam shares his tips for creating a challenger brand, transforming your culture and the power of constraints to driving innovation.

In this episode:

Why being No.2 is better
How he turned the anger of his project being shelved into a career-defining opportunity
Being turned down by Phil Knight and where the idea of a Challenger brand came from
The importance of over-commitment and being obsessed with execution
How Tony’s Chocolonely have become a truly challenger brand
How to be a pirate in the navy without getting fired
What you can learn from a catwalk show and how constraints can turn into your greatest advantage
The curse of data and how it leads us to a decline in creativity
The furtile zero and what to do with no budget
Adam shares his worst career moment
Why the meeting is never really the meeting and why the Japanese fall asleep in meetings
The one thing Adam has never told anyone before

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Next Episode

Les & Sarah’s big review of the year

One of the most popular episodes of all time was my first with Sarah Carter and Les Binet, so I'm bringing them back to do a review of 2023. We talk about what makes Les cry and if AI is going to take over our jobs.

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Timestamps