The Push

Hosted by Jack Ferguson

Business Entrepreneurship

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Episodes

128

Latest episode

Oct 2026

Language

EN-AU

About the show

The Push is a podcast for senior marketers eager to hear honest perspectives from peers who tell it like it is. We speak directly to your day-to-day reality and don't bother with superfluous tactics you don't need. We understand that senior marketing is uniquely frustrating. You have to sell the 'why' more than any other department. You're held accountable for results beyond your control. You're forever dealing with non-marketers who 'know better than you'. Stakeholder politics, opinions, and “gut feelings” constantly get in the way. You're so busy dealing with stakeholders, there's little time left to conceptualise new strategies and hone your craft. We bring together senior marketers to candidly share stories, analogies, strategies, and mental models they've used. You can use these conversations to: Explain complex concepts to non-marketers. Get more client buy-in. Explore new strategy ideas. Better articulate your existing knowledge. Explain the 'why' behind your strategy. Keep your own team engaged. Better navigate marketing politics (which are inevitable). Remember that you're not alone in your experiences. No empty buzzwords. No listicles. No generic advice. Whether you’re in-house, agency-side, or a consultant, you’ll leave feeling empowered to speak up and lead with confidence. The Push is hosted by Jack Ferguson, a Brand Strategist with 15 years of marketing and brand experience across 20+ industries.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

October 11, 2026Episode 7530 min

S3 E75: The First 2.5 Years as a Marketing Consultant: Setbacks, Clients, Growth, and Reality

Many marketers are considering starting their own consultancy in 2026. Many are also unsure about the consequences of that decision. This episode details those consequences. Listen in as marketing consultant Jack Ferguson takes you behind the scenes of his first 2.5 years in business. He discusses the difficulties, the wins, the reality, and advice he now has for anyone thinking of starting up. Specifically, this episode covers: Jack’s challenges winning short-term clients as a B2B consultant How many clients Jack has worked with over the past 2.5 years The number of downloads this season of the podcast has generated Why Jack started his consultancy, the expectations he had going in, and how those expectations compare with reality 2.5 years later Two “clients from hell” stories The sobering reality of how referrals work for new consulting businesses The positioning and specialisation mistakes Jack made along the way The Fractional CMO model’s positioning issues The pros and cons of freelancing platforms such as Upwork and Bark Jack and Alex Urquhart’s “podcast co-hosts at first sight” story How this podcast has contributed to winning consulting work What Jack enjoyed about running his consultancy Jack’s views and assumptions that have evolved after 2.5 years of running his business Jack’s advice for marketers considering starting a consultancy of their own Helpful Links Find Jack: On LinkedIn At His Personal Website Follow The Push: On LinkedIn On Instagram On YouTube Music On TikTok

September 12, 2026Episode 7423 min

S3 E74: Crocs, JCPenney, and MoviePass's Discount Vulnerabilities: Cannibalisation, Dependence, and Profit Erosion

Discounting is a common tactic in sales and marketing. It is also an easy way to weaken pricing discipline and damage margin. This episode explores why brands discount, how the economics are worse than many think, and under what conditions discounting is justified. We explore famous examples of low-price strategies and their effects on brand perception and profitability, before identifying what companies should do instead. Specifically, this episode covers: The economic and brand consequences Crocs faced from prolonged reliance on markdowns JCPenney’s challenges when they attempted to reform a discount-addicted customer base MoviePass’s penetration pricing cautionary tale How two people can value the same product differently, with one willing to pay 50% more The sobering maths on the increase in sales volume required to justify discounting Cannibalisation Risks: Margin, occasion-based, and cross-product Pricing methods: Cost-plus, competitive, penetration, and value-based Subtle discounting damage to be aware of, including operational drag and opportunity cost. The questions brands should answer before deciding to discount. This episode was hosted by Brand Consultant, Jack Ferguson. Helpful Links Find Jack: On LinkedIn At His Personal Website Follow The Push: On LinkedIn On Instagram On YouTube Music On TikTok Resources Mentioned: Business Victoria Discounting Guidance Crocs Earnings (US SEC) Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter Jobs To Be Done Framework

July 21, 2026Episode 7314 min

S3 E73: Where Marketers Thrive: The Four Growth Stages and the Marketer Suited to Each

One of the most important career decisions a marketer can make is choosing the right company to work for. Even a talented marketer can still struggle when their skills, temperament, and ambitions do not match the company’s stage of growth. Someone who thrives in the uncertainty of an early-stage business may feel trapped inside a mature corporation. Someone who excels at stakeholder management may struggle in a company that needs constant experimentation and rapid execution. In this episode, Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson breaks growing companies into four stages and explores the type of marketer best suited to each. You will learn: The four stages of company growth and how a marketer’s role changes at each stage How much uncertainty, autonomy, and creative control to expect at different-sized companies How the marketing role shifts towards systems, scale, risk management, and stakeholder management as companies grow The trade-off between higher salaries at larger companies and greater ownership or equity opportunities at smaller companies Why choosing the wrong company can limit a marketer’s performance, regardless of how well they execute The questions marketers should ask before accepting their next role or choosing the next stage of their career Helpful Links: Find Jack: - On LinkedIn - At his personal website Follow The Push: - On LinkedIn - On YouTube Music - On TikTok - On Instagram The Adizes Corporate Lifecycle - Adizes Corporate Lifecyle

June 23, 2026Episode 7215 min

S3 E72: What Marketers Wish They Could Say

Everyone thinks they’re a marketer. The CEO has an idea. The finance manager has an idea. Someone's teenage daughter discovered Instagram over the weekend. Suddenly everyone has a revolutionary marketing strategy that will transform the business. In this episode, Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson draws on stories from marketers across Reddit and LinkedIn, to examine why marketing attracts unsolicited advice, why "good ideas" are often worthless, and how marketers can respond when non-marketers mistake their opinion for expertise. He covers: Why everyone thinks they’re a marketer How marketers can professionally (and unprofessionally) respond to uninformed suggestions Why marketers receive so much unsolicited advice Some of the strangest client requests marketers have received Viable ways to channel stakeholder ideas without taking on much larger workloads The role of evidence, execution, and accountability in marketing decisions What marketers really wish they could say to non-marketers This episode features examples from Reddit, LinkedIn, client work, and the collective trauma of the marketing profession. Helpful Links: Find Jack: - On LinkedIn - At his personal website Follow The Push: - On LinkedIn - On YouTube Music - On TikTok - On Instagram

June 2, 2026Episode 7128 min

S3 E71: Brand Strategy Reddit: Five Companies in a Trench Coat, Brand Drift, and Positioning Problems

Brand strategy is easily derailed. All of a sudden, the whole company invites itself into the room, sales invents three new offer names, the CEO wants the brand to feel “premium”, and nobody can accurately explain what the business does. In this solo episode, Jack Ferguson answers brand strategy questions from Reddit that cover a spectrum of issues that arise within companies. He covers: How to stop brand strategy meetings turning into philosophy club What to do when your positioning, USP, and messaging get a “nobody cares” response from the market How to know whether your positioning is effective The impact of changing a brand name on brand equity How to think of a personal brand vs a company brand Ways in which “premium” positioning falls apart How to know whether you need a rebrand or refresh What to do when sales, marketing, leadership, and customer success all describe the brand differently Brand Architecture issues after mergers and acquisitions Prerequisites to altering brand assets like your logo Helpful Links: Find Jack: - On LinkedIn - Website Find The Push: - On LinkedIn - On YouTube Music - On TikTok - On Instagram - Website

May 19, 2026Episode 7052 min

S3 E70: When Great Marketing Execution Still Fails: Understanding Buyers, Markets, and Risk

Most companies blame execution when growth plateaus. So they start doing more outbound, making better ad creative, creating new landing pages, building sharper sales scripts, and tightening the alignment between sales and marketing. But often, the problem isn’t execution, it's market understanding. In this episode, Jack Ferguson hosts Buyer Researcher Ryan Gibson to help you understand when poor growth is an execution problem and when it is a market understanding problem. Using examples from SaaS, enterprise software, startups, and B2B sales environments, they explore how buyers make decisions, why status quo bias is stronger than many realise, and why customer feedback alone is seldom enough to glean broad market insights. They cover: - How Amazon use qualitative data to break the tie of a GTM decision - The % of revenue Salesforce reinvests back into their GTM - How to get feedback from buying committees you don’t ordinarily get access to - How to know if you have a market understanding problem or execution problem? (incl. real examples of each) - The lead and lag indicators that indicate a company lacks the market understanding to effectively grow - The issues with using surveys for quantitative research - How you can use AI to complement your market research efforts - Low cost approaches to doing B2B market research - Ways to get your company to start investing in market understanding - How to get market and buyer truths - What strong resistance to pricing tells you - How qualitative conversations uncover what dashboards and CRM data can’t - The benefits and drawbacks of relying on sales teams for market understanding - What conditions need to be in place for large B2B companies to change providers - The limitations of relying on customers for market insight Helpful Links: Where to find Jack: - LinkedIn - Website Where to find Ryan: - LinkedIn - Content Lift Website Where to find The Push: - LinkedIn - YouTube Music - Instagram - TikTok - Website

May 5, 2026Episode 6933 min

S3 E69: The Ontology of Brand (Pt 3): Building Distinctive Assets and Smashing Your Brand

In Part 3 of this series, the rubber hits the road. After breaking down brand diagnostics and strategy in the previous two episodes, this episode moves into what gets built: brand assets, how to prioritise them, and how they compound (or don’t) over time. Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson is your host. He discusses: Which brand asset is the most important, and why What Asset Hierarchy is and how to think about it The trade-offs between ease of consumption and distinctiveness When a name change is strategically justified, and when it’s not What separates a strong brand name from a weak one How to think about building vs identifying distinctiveness How to maintain equity during brand refreshes What it means to “smash your brand” Helpful Links: Find Jack: - On LinkedIn - At His Personal Website Follow The Push: - On LinkedIn - On Instagram - On YouTube Music - On TikTok - At The Push Website

April 7, 2026Episode 6830 min

S3 E68: The Ontology of Brand (Pt 2): Strategy Outputs, Decision Infrastructure, and Scenario Modeling

A Brand Strategy is often dismissed as ‘fluff’ because it’s poorly defined, inconsistently applied, and confused with tactics, communications, advertising, or visual identity. In Part 2 of this series, we move beyond the theory of brand as a function of memory and why buyers buy to define specific strategic outputs, explain how they’re informed, and model scenarios in which they’re used. This episode presents a unifying idea of brand strategy that holds up for marketers and remains accessible to non-marketers. This episode covers: How brand strategy operates as a set of outputs that shape decisions across an organisation Scenario modelling across two distinct operating environments: a B2B accounting firm and a high-urgency B2C retailer How an effective brand strategy aligns incentives, operating models, and capability, not just communications and advertising outputs Why most competitive advantage comes from structure, not messaging or creativity A practical test to determine whether something is strategic or tactical The core outputs of brand strategy, how they’re informed, and how they’re used The role of memory, association, and expectation in reinforcing or violating brand strategy Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson hosts this episode. Helpful Links: Where to find Jack: - Find Jack on LinkedIn - Find Jack at his Website Where to find The Push: - Follow The Push on LinkedIn - Subscribe to The Push on YouTube Music - Follow The Push on TikTok - Follow The Push on Instagram - Visit The Push Website Resources Mentioned: - RSPCA Commercial - Budweiser + Jay Z Commercial - 2013 Budweiser Super Bowl Ad

March 24, 2026Episode 6733 min

S3 E67: The Ontology of Brand (Pt 1): How It’s Measured, First Principles, and Why Buyers Buy

Most definitions of ‘brand’ focus on what a company produces, like logos, names, and design systems, but fail to explain what brand is, how it drives commercial outcomes, and how it is measured. In Part 1 of this series, we define brand comprehensively while keeping it accessible to marketers and non-marketers alike. From that foundation, we break down how brand shows up in real buying situations, how it influences decision-making through different memory systems, and how it can be measured through awareness, salience, distinctiveness, and risk. In Part 1, we discuss: What is happening in the mind during a purchase decision The role of working memory in evaluation vs long-term memory in reducing risk Why most brand interactions never make it past sensory filtering The relationship between brand building (long-term memory) and activation (working memory) Sensory, working, and long-term memory, and how each shapes brand outcomes The commercial implications of brand: awareness, perception, and risk reduction Brand Distinctiveness vs Brand Differentiation How category entry points trigger brand recall in real-world situations The practical discussion of how brand heritage affects commercial outcomes Why diagnostics are the foundation of any credible brand strategy The difference between internal (team/founder) and market diagnostics, and why both matter Why most definitions of brand are incomplete, and what is commonly missed A unifying definition of brand grounded in perception, memory, and behaviour The ontology of brand: its tangible existence Hosted by Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson. Where to find Jack: - LinkedIn - Website Where to find The Push: - The Push on LinkedIn - The Push on YouTube - The Push on TikTok - The Push on Instagram - The Push Website

March 10, 2026Episode 6624 min

S3 E66: Where Marketers Contribute the Most Value: Identifying Demand and Innovation

Most revenue growth actually comes from rising demand, and brands that recognise early can move to service it. In this episode, Jack Ferguson breaks down where marketers create the most value inside a business: identifying emerging demand and helping organisations innovate to meet it. Drawing on Mats Georgson’s Demand Point Constellation Theory, and using examples from Uber, McDonald’s, Intuit, Swiffer, and others, Jack explains how marketers can uncover these demand points through real-world observation and customer insight. This episode covers: • What a Demand Point Constellation is and why it matters • How Uber won with the Demand Point Constellation • How McDonald’s discovered the real job of a milkshake • How Intuit and P&G watched customer behaviour to drive product innovation • Why marketers should think like demand detectors inside organisations • Practical ways to uncover demand through social listening, ethnography, and customer conversations Helpful Links: Jobs to be Done Framework Where to find Jack: LinkedIn Website Where to find The Push: LinkedIn YouTube Instagram TikTok Website