Buyers don’t experience brands as funnels. They encounter them mid-scroll, mid-conversation, mid-doubt, mid-purchase, to name a few examples. So why does marketing still plan as if people move predictably from awareness to purchase?

This episode's guest Jelena Veselinovic joins host Jack Ferguson to rally against this phenomenon while drawing on 25+ years of marketing experience, including 18 years at Coca-Cola and 3.5 years as Head of Brand Marketing at Miro.

Now operating as a fractional Head of Brand, she blends classical marketing science with a philosophical background to challenge the deterministic assumptions still embedded in boardrooms. If the world behaves probabilistically, effective marketing must evolve accordingly.

We cover:

• How Honey’s overnight collapse is the best case study on brand promise risk
• Why Costco removes marketing traps and caps margins
• How Coca-Cola institutionalised product as their brand core
• How Newtonian cause-and-effect thinking misreads buyer behaviour
• Why marketing is better understood as shaping conditions rather than controlling behaviour
• How brands lost narrative authority to reviews, creators, and AI
• Why deterministic marketing is both disrespectful and ineffective
• How to build brands that thrive upon contact with reality

Helpful Links:

- Determinism

- Quantum Mechanics

- The Quantum State of Branding Article

- Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam Video

Where to find Jack:

- LinkedIn

- Website

Where to find Jelena:

- Rewire Your Mind Substack

- LinkedIn

Where to find The Push:

- LinkedIn

- YouTube

- Instagram

- TikTok

- Website

In this episode, Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson discusses sonic branding and the new opportunities that are emerging for marketers with AI.

Jack recently created a song for his own brand using AI which sparked a bigger conversation about sonic branding, accessibility, and audio ownership. Sound is one of the most underused brand assets available today and smaller brands have more access than ever.

Jack discusses:

- AI-generated music and the associated considerations for brands

- How AI can be used to make broader auditory assets

- Why hearing is one of the most stimulus-efficient channels humans have

- How audio is becoming more accessible for smaller brands

- Magnum’s ASMR strategy

- Why the opportunity is with hearing compared to the other “always-on” senses

- Many real-world brand examples and case studies

Jack’s Links:

- LinkedIn Profile

- Jack’s Personal Website

The Push Links:

- Follow The Push on LinkedIn

- Find The Push on YouTube

- Follow The Push on TikTok

- Follow The Push on Instagram

- Visit The Push Website

Resources Mentioned:

- Pizza Before The Hut

- Dominos Phrase

- Keno Jingle

- Microsoft Startup Sounds

- Magnum ASMR

- Rivers Advertisements

- Toyota's Sonic Branding Guide

- AO, Let’s Go Jingle

- McDonald’s I’m Loving It Jingle

- Suno

In this episode, Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson hosts Strategic Growth Architect Mats Georgson, former Global Brand Director at Sony Ericsson, to discuss how brands achieve large, sustained growth and how most category-based thinking caps it.

Mats was the first marketer to work on Bluetooth, giving him deep, practical insight into rapid global adoption, and years later completed a research project analysing how 150 brands achieved disproportionate growth. Together, Jack and Mats explore why some brands defy gravity, while others struggle to break free of their category constraints.

Jack and Mats discuss:

- How brands grow via Demand Point Constellations

- How the iPhone leveraged demand points to grow

- Launching Bluetooth and the story behind its overwhelming success

- How Mats saw a client quickly jump 20% in revenue without advertising

- Uber’s Demand Point Constellation

- How to escape the gravitational pull of a category

- Why innovation is hard for marketers and what can be done about it

- Why few brands grow primarily through gaining market share

- The problem with comms and advertising being asked to do things they can’t do

- Why marketers need to think like detectives

Helpful Links:

Mats’ Demand Point Constellation Thesis

Links to Jack:

Jack's LinkedIn Profile

Jack's Website

Links to Mats:

Mats’ LinkedIn Profile

Mats’ Website

Links to The Push:

The Push LinkedIn Page

The Push on TikTok

The Push on Instagram

The Push on YouTube Music

The Push Website

Referenced in Episode:

Blue Ocean Strategy

Ehrenberg Bass Institute

Apple losing its App Store trademark case

Category Entry Point

Jobs to be Done Framework

In this episode, Jack Ferguson hosts Leigh Anne Cappello, former VP of Marketing for Play-Doh and one of the leaders during its 50th anniversary period, to discuss how scent, memory, and brand DNA combined to create one of the most recognisable brands.

From the Play-Doh perfume release to prescience calendars to the penetration of the brand's scent, this episode is an exploration of what it takes for a brand to stick.

In this episode Leigh Anne discusses:

• Why the Play-Doh perfume product was created
• The considerations that went into Play-Dohs 50th Anniversary
• The numbers behind Play Doh’s distinctive smell penetration
• A product that didn’t have the desired commercial impact because Brand DNA wasn't considered
• How marketers can use prescience calendars for stronger cultural relevance
• Moments of failure are often the strongest opportunities to build lasting customer relationships.
• Design Thinking and its benefits to marketers
• How Play Doh started off as an accidental innovation
• How to utilise Brand DNA and Brand Essence to improve commercial outcomes
• How large organisations can create safe spaces for real innovation (without betting the company)
• Why prototyping, learning in public, and “getting it wrong” often leads to better brand outcomes
• Her unique business model and why she operates that way

Links to Leigh Anne and Jack:

- Leigh Anne's Blog

- Leigh Anne's LinkedIn Profile

- Jack's LinkedIn Profile

- Jack's Website

Links to The Push:

- LinkedIn Page

- Website

- YouTube Page

- Instagram Page

- TikTok Page

Referenced in this Episode:

- Brand Sense by Martin Lindstrom

- Watts Wacker

- Georgina Melone

- Gary Serby

This episode explores disproportionate leverage and how it shows up when immersion is treated as critical brand building work, not a nice-to-have.

Rather than chasing deliverables or premature answers, your hosts examine immersion as a diagnostic imperative, the strength required to defend it, and the consequences of bypassing it.

This episode is co-hosted by Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson and Brand Identity Designer Tutai Marongere.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

• Why Tutai deliberately told a client the work would take “as long as it takes”
  
  
• How Tutai did three months of immersion without producing a single output, but then created an output that ended all debate instantly
  
  
• How Jack sees immersion as a way of articulating the unsaid
  
  
• How Tutai believes dreaming about a brand became his signal that the work was finally ready to be done
  
  
• How Tutai sketched a concept on a fogged-up shower screen as the result of immersion, not inspiration
  
  
• How Jack uses recorded customer interviews to reveal truths that transcripts and summaries consistently miss
  
  
• Why both Tutai and Jack believe that “when you know, you know” is a real diagnostic threshold, not a creative cliché
  
  
• Why both Tutai and Jack believe the brand work that lasts is always found in the details

Helpful Links:

- Find Jack on LinkedIn here

- Find Tutai on LinkedIn here

- Visit Jack’s personal website here

- Follow The Push on LinkedIn here

- Follow The Push on YouTube here

- Follow The Push on TikTok here

- Follow The Push on Instagram here

- Visit The Push website here

Christmas is often thought of as a seasonal moment.

In reality, it’s one of the strongest examples of brand heritage and cultural embedding ever built.

This episode analyses Christmas as a brand system. It examines how it formed, how it survived bans, wars, secularisation, and media fragmentation, and why its relevance continues to compound without central ownership, governance, or constant persuasion.

For senior marketers, this offers an opportunity to examine endurance at the system level and understand how meaning persists when channels change, attention fragments, and authority disappears.

This episode breaks down the ritualistic architecture underneath Christmas. It explores the structures that organise behaviour, repetition, and memory over time. More importantly, it shows why brands do not need to invent architecture of this magnitude themselves. They can identify, attach to, and strengthen existing cultural architectures to gain leverage, relevance, and resilience without relying on perpetual novelty or escalating spend.

This episode was hosted by Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson.

In this episode, Jack discusses:

• A clearer way to think about brand heritage as a system, not a story or origin myth
• How Coca-Cola strengthened Christmas’ ritualistic architecture for sustained commercial advantage
• How changing rituals in the West create new points of cultural leverage for brands
• The language and structure that recognises and explains cultural embedding
• Ritualistic architecture and how it creates repetition, memory, and defence over time
• How brands can attach to existing cultural systems rather than manufacturing meaning from scratch
• Identifying where your brand could embed, even without scale, ownership, or permission

Helpful Links:

- Find Jack on LinkedIn here

- Follow The Push on LinkedIn here

- Follow The Push on YouTube here

- Follow The Push on TikTok here

- Follow The Push on Instagram here

- Visit The Push website here

- Visit Jack’s personal website here

References:

https://www.marketingweek.com/mcdonalds-bigger-than-jesus-christ/

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/consumer/explore/brand/Coca_Cola

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

Saturnalia

Sol Invictus

Kalends of January

Feast of Fools

Feast of the Ass

Washington Irving

Charles Dickens

Coca-Cola AI Christmas Ad

Haddon Sundblom

The Party Barrel Origin Story fo

Most brands try to eliminate waste.

This episode explains how this approach is limiting.

We break down Positive Wastage, how it shows up in practice, and why it repeatedly drives brand growth, marketing outcomes, and long-term relationships, even when not intentionally planned for.

Your co-hosts are:

- Brand Strategist - Jack Ferguson.

- Brand Identity Designer - Tutai Marongere.

In this episode:

• Jack shares how positive wastage shows up when you build things without forcing outcomes including meetups that weren’t profitable, and being truly social on social media.
• Tutai shares how attending a rain-soaked business event trying to sell logos led to a complete reframe on his entire business creating far greater value than the original goal.
• Jack shares how brand growth often comes from indirect exposure rather than being directly engaged with, using examples like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater soundtracks, Play-Doh’s smell, and default system sounds to explain how salience is driven.
• Tutai shares how a two-minute human interaction on his first day at a job turned into years of client work and ultimately introduced him to Jack.
• Jack and Tutai discuss how being overly outcome-focused kills upside, and how openness and participation creates brand growth that cannot be planned but can be allowed for.

Helpful Links:

- Find Jack on LinkedIn here

- Find Tutai on LinkedIn here

- Visit Jack’s personal website here

- Follow The Push on LinkedIn here

- Find The Push on YouTube here

- Follow The Push on TikTok here

- Follow The Push on Instagram here

- Visit The Push website here

Building your own personal brand as a marketer matters more than ever. It helps you stay respected, protect your career options, and operate with more authority in workplaces that often default to tactics over strategy.

In this episode, brand strategist Jack Ferguson breaks down how to build a personal profile that strengthens your positioning in the job market.

Jack shares:

• The meeting where he’d finally had enough: The moment his internal positioning collapsed and why it pushed him to build his own brand as a marketer.

• How marketing differs from finance, ops and accounting: Closed systems vs open systems, and why marketers navigate entropy, culture shifts and demand cycles instead of neat levers.

• How to shut down “does this tactic work?” questions: Reframes that stop you accepting a frame that undermines your expertise.

• How to position yourself within a company: Building internal buy-in, establishing standards, and preventing others from treating you like an order-taker.

• How to job-proof your career: How to grow your profile and make your personal brand a market signal.

• How the informal job market works: Why 70–80% of roles never hit Seek or LinkedIn, why senior roles are usually filled long before they’re advertised, and what this means for you.

• Why great marketers don’t apply for jobs: How to build yourself into someone who gets the tap on the shoulder.

Helpful Links:

- Find Jack on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackfergusonmymm

- Follow The Push on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thepush

- Follow The Push on TikTok here: thepushmedialab (@thepushmedialab) | TikTok

- Follow The Push on Instagram here: Instagram

- Visit The Push website here: For Senior Marketers...By Senior Marketers | The Push

- Visit Jack’s personal website here: Brand Strategist + Marketing Consultant — Jack Ferguson