Show Notes
Send us Fan Mail Marketing runs on comfort blankets. The Sharp Cut cuts them up to see what’s inside. This week, with Black Friday five weeks out and someone already writing the 40% off email: the idea that a discount wins you new business. Here’s the spine. A discount rents you this week’s sales, mostly from your own customers. When the price goes back up, the rental’s over. So every promotion has to pay for itself while it’s running. This week: → Who actually buys on the deal. Ehrenberg-Ba...
More from Sleeping Barber - A Marketing Podcast
Send us Fan Mail Marketing science says buyer behaviour barely moves. Futurists sell the opposite: change, disruption, the thing nobody saw coming. Can both be true? Marc and Vassilis brought in someone who can referee it. Jo Lepore built the foresight function inside Mars Wrigley and then McDonald’s, co-founded a network for people doing that work at some of the world’s biggest companies, and now leads foresight at Dig Insights. She also hosts the podcast Looking Outside. Her starting point ...
Send us Fan Mail Marc and V are back with the Barber’s Brief: the good, the bad, and the overhyped from the last couple of weeks, with data, a few opinions, and Great Creative getting the last word. This week: → Apple built itself a kill switch for ad tech. iOS 26’s Safari can quietly block hundreds of identity and data vendors, the list lives in a private repo, and only Apple knows the rules. Everyone’s calling it a privacy story. It’s a power story, and the real lesson is one we keep coming...
Send us Fan Mail Everybody in this industry is arguing about what AI does to an agency. Almost all of it is agencies talking to themselves about their own cost structure. Clients are asking something else entirely. So Marc and V put the real question to two of the people growing Canada’s agency business while the ground moves under it: if you are not selling hours, what are you selling? Mélanie Dunn is President of Plus Company Canada and CEO of Cossette. Karine Courtemanche is EVP of Plus Co...
Send us Fan Mail Marketing runs on comfort blankets. The Sharp Cut cuts them up to see what's inside. This week: brand love. Start with motorcycles. In 2015, the happiest owners in the entire category rode Victory, ahead of Harley. Two years later, Polaris shut Victory down. The happiest customers in the category could not keep the brand alive. That should bother anyone who spent a career being told marketing's job is to make people love you. So Marc and V take the believers at their word and...
Send us Fan Mail Marc and V are back with the Barber's Brief: the good, the bad, and the overhyped, with data, a few opinions, and Great Creative getting the last word. This week: Your marketing team already got smaller. Nearly half of B2B teams have shrunk because of AI, almost none of it through layoffs (Wynter). Meanwhile most execs who cut roles for AI now regret it (Orgvue) and plenty are quietly rehiring (Robert Half, Klarna). If the cuts and the reversals are both invisible, how would...