Interview Summary

Daniel Fox, the podcast editor, interviewed several tutors and staff from Cambridge Marketing College during their annual tutor conference at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford. The central topic of discussion was where these marketing professionals sourced their information to stay up-to-date in a world overloaded with data, misinformation, and disinformation. The interviewees shared a wide range of resources, including specific websites, industry publications, traditional news media, podcasts, social media platforms, and even textbooks, emphasising the importance of understanding the broader business, political, and social context in which marketing operates.

 

Key Points

  • A diverse mix of digital and traditional sources was essential for staying informed. Digital sources mentioned included smartinsights.com, forbes.com, mckinsey.com, Marketing Week, LinkedIn, and various blogs and newsletters.
  • Traditional media, such as the Sunday Times and BBC radio programs, were still considered staple sources for high-quality, reliable news and analysis.
  • LinkedIn was repeatedly cited as a primary source for marketing-specific news, industry discussions, and accessing a repository of knowledge from a professional network.
  • It was deemed crucial for marketers to stay informed about broader world events, including politics, business, and sociology (the PESTEL framework), to understand the macro-environmental factors impacting their organisations.
  • Marketers needed to actively look for opportunities presented by external changes, not just threats, such as the rise of mobile payments streamlining the customer journey.
  • Informal sources of learning, such as following influencers on TikTok and learning from students of a different generation, were also valuable.
  • Specialised sources were recommended for specific fields, such as CIPR Influence and wads.co.uk for public relations, and The Reg for a technical perspective on marketing.

 

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-generated.

 

Daniel Fox, host (00:00):
Hello, I'm Daniel Fox. I'm usually the editor of this podcast, but today it's me with the microphone as we go behind the scenes at the Cambridge Marketing College's annual tutor conference. Now, as you can probably hear, I'm not in the college, I'm not in the studio. I'm actually standing in the very impressive airspace hangar at Imperial War Museum in Duxford. Now, right in front of me, I am looking at a true icon of the skies Concord 101, not only a supersonic plane, and it gives me the goosebumps to look at it and say these words at the same time, but this is the actual fastest plane. Even today, it still holds the world's speed record of 1,450 miles an hour. It's never been beaten ever. So in the spirit of Concord, today will be a brisk podcast as we talk about information. Now, knowledge is power, as Thomas Jefferson would frequently say, but where is best to get our information from?

(01:04):
We're all being overloaded with information, some of it trustworthy, some of it misinformation, some of it more sinisterly is disinformation. So where do our tutors go to keep up to date? What do they subscribe to? What websites do they visit? Well, let's find out.

Annie Dawson, tutor (01:21):
Hi, I'm Annie Dawson. I'm a tutor on the apprenticeship programme, but I also tutor for level six CIM qualification.

Daniel Fox, host (01:29):
Annie, you are firing up your computer for the first time in a day. What websites are you going to for information?

Annie Dawson, tutor (01:35):
Okay. So my information mainly comes from smartinsights.com, and those students who are listening to this and who know me, they'll have known that that was my answer. So smartinsights.com is brilliant. It's got loads of templates. It's got white papers. I think you need to subscribe to it, but it's free. I'd thoroughly recommend having a look at it. Second site I use is forbes.com. A slightly higher level, but really, really good insights into some of the most relevant sort of stuff that we need to know about. McKinsey.com is also really, really good. So you get lots of really good models from there and a good discussion on them. And then very, very, very boringly, and I know you'll all say this, but I also read the Sunday Times and okay, I don't read it cover to cover, but the business and analysis part of it is like for me, that's where I got all my current stuff about what's going on in the world of business.

Daniel Fox, host (02:25):
How does that information that you find help you in the world of marketing?

Annie Dawson, tutor (02:31):
So basically it just gives me my insight. It gives me some of the truths about what's going on in the industry. It just helps me put together bits and pieces that maybe I've already heard some information on and it just helps me form my views and my opinions of where I see things happening. And it helps with the macro environmental side of the world as well. So you can think about all the different impacts and therefore whether or not that's actually going to impact you as an industry.

Richard Kendrick, tutor (02:58):
I'm Richard Kendrick and I teach marketing. So there's a couple of areas that will give reasonably good, unbiased information. So you can use LinkedIn, Marketing Week if you're in B2C or you're looking at big brands. And then there's companies like the Inbox Club who will often present stats as part of something they're trying to sell. There's Baton Hall. They do very good social media insight on a monthly basis. And then there's LinkedIn. Often if you've got a good contact base or you're following the right people on LinkedIn, you'll get a whole repository of knowledge.

Daniel Fox, host (03:34):
Talk to us about Marketing Week, because that is a publication that lots of people will know about, but maybe won't know what they kind of do and the kind of stuff they cover.

Richard Kendrick, tutor (03:43):
Marketing Week is like your glossy industry update magazine, if you like. They mostly specialise in top end B2C big brands. So if you want to know what Happy Egg Company or Tesco's or Sainsbury's are coming up with their latest campaigns, they often have a big focus on somewhere like John Lewis, then it's great. From a B2C point of view, from that big broadcasting type of marketing, it's very good. But from a B2B or a niche SME type type of marketing, it's just not the right resource for you. You'd need to go and find more appropriate resources.

Daniel Fox, host (04:17):
Thinking about news, where do you get your news from?

Richard Kendrick, tutor (04:20):
Usually LinkedIn. If it's marketing related, then LinkedIn. Quite often if you're looking at the Financial Times or BBC, it will give you top line news about what's happening in business in general. And then it's up to you to apply your own marketing knowledge or your entrepreneurial skills to then work out how that's going to affect you in the long run. Quite often if something's appeared on BBC, it's already been talked about by lots of people involved in it on LinkedIn. AI is a really good example. Usually you'll get one big headline thing slapped on the BBC, but actually lots of people have talked about the detail about it on LinkedIn already.

Laurie Warren, tutor (04:58):
Hi, I'm Laurie. I'm one of the teachers here at Cambridge Marketing College. Quite weirdly then for someone who's in marketing, personally, I try and stay away from social media as much as possible because I became addicted at one point. I think I was audit too much. And so actually I don't use it away from work very often. I try and stay away from it. I do listen to a lot of podcasts and I do read a lot of books.

Daniel Fox, host (05:22):
For marketing information, your one stop shop, where would it be?

Laurie Warren, tutor (05:26):
It'd be the college. I get a lot of information from the college from their social media page, updates, newsletters that I get, their podcast. I do listen to Daniel Rolls, who is the digital marketing podcast. I listen to him quite a bit to get updates on new digital media and technology.

Daniel Fox, host (05:46):
What have you learned from a podcast?

Laurie Warren, tutor (05:48):
I've learned that don't always trust AI.

Daniel Fox, host (05:53):
Touche. Thank you, Laurie. Terry Nicklin, Stalwart of Cambridge Marketing College. I think that's a compliment. Hello.

Terry Nicklin, Fellow (06:02):
I don't know.

Daniel Fox, host (06:03):
Let's talk about where you get your marketing news from.

Terry Nicklin, Fellow (06:06):
Well, I think it's really important for marketers to get to keep up to date and marketing is changing constantly. I would even say the pace of change is accelerating. So it's really important to understand what's happening in the worlds of business, politics, sociology, all the things in a good old pestal framework that people will have heard of, and specifically in commercial life. So I think online clearly these days is probably most people's first port of call. There's so much information available. The trouble is, of course, that on the internet, everything is there and the good thing is everything's there and the bad thing is everything's there. So you have to be selective. I also personally prefer some traditional sources though. I mean, broadcast media is really still, I think, my staple source. And I always tell my students that really, if you catch one of four BBC programmes in the day, that's the today programme on radio four in the mornings, one o'clock on radio four, 5:00 PM on radio four, and news night on BBC two.

(07:05):
If you catch just one of those in a day, you'll keep up to date with all really the key world news that you need to know as a marketer.

Daniel Fox, host (07:12):
Why do you think it's important to have your finger on the pulse of things like politics when you work in marketing?

Terry Nicklin, Fellow (07:19):
Well, so many things change. I mean, I think in terms of the impact on an individual organisation, you do have to look at all of these, what we call the external influencers, the environmental factors. And you have to decide for yourself, are they relevant or not? Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. I often see if people do a prestill analysis, they will often come up with things like war in Ukraine, Brexit, these kind of issues. And then you have to say, "Well, okay, but what specifically is it about those things that make your job at your company more difficult or open up opportunities?" And you have to look for both. And I do find as well that people are often much more sensitive to threats, that they're much better at identifying things that could be a problem. I think because we're sort of naturally tuned to do that.

(08:04):
They have to try harder to find the things that are opportunities. So things like the advent of mobile payments, payments using a mobile phone. It's a great opportunity for marketers because it means you can join up that customer journey from becoming aware of a product or brand right through to buying it in minutes or seconds now, whereas it used to be weeks because you had to wait till you next went to the shops and remember the brand or phone the company to get a brochure or something. Nowadays, it's much more seamless and friction free, the customer journey. So I think pace of change is increasing. The ability to be impacted by external organisations, external changes. Just look at the change that's happening with Twitter, Stroke X, or last couple of days, Instagram, all those things, they can all impact greatly on your organisation. So you need to sort of be aware of what are the key factors.

Keith Rowland, Tutor (08:53):
I'm Keith Rowland. I'm one of the tutors at Cambridge Marketing College. I teach the marketing manager apprentices and I teach the CIM level six diploma in marketing. Well, I think there are formal and informal sources of information. So obviously in terms of formal sources of information, there are textbooks and they do say that they hide a lot of knowledge in books, so that's a good thing to do. And you can go to lectures and webinars and things from the chartered industry, marketing worship, company and marketers, various other sources of marketing knowledge to keep up to date with formal sources. There are informal sources as well, and that might include watching things on TikTok from opinion leaders, influencers. I particularly follow a guy called Rory Sutherland who's got a lot of very wise things to say. And just talking to apprentices and students, you can learn a lot from them.

(09:47):
I mean, learning doesn't just have to be one way. And these people are a different generation to me, so they have different life experiences to me, and it's absolutely fascinating to exchange knowledge with them.

Daniel Fox, host (10:00):
Give me one recommendation, one place to visit for marketing news or information.

Keith Rowland, Tutor (10:06):
Textbooks. That's got to be the one. And in fact, the Cambridge Marketing College companion guides are absolutely wonderful. I remember a time before we had those when you had to use the great thick textbooks, and they were expensive and extremely heavy in more senses than one, and hard going sometimes. Whereas the Cambridge Marketing College companion guides are distilled. It's exactly what you need to know and no more, no less.

Daniel Fox, host (10:38):
A change of rooms for our next contributor and a familiar voice.

Kiran Kapur, CEO (10:42):
Hello, Daniel.

Daniel Fox, host (10:43):
Kiran Kapur, CEO of Cambridge Marketing College. I am very curious to know where you go for marketing knowledge and information.

Kiran Kapur, CEO (10:50):
Where do I personally go? I absolutely love the McKinsey Quarterly, which you can get free, which I really like. Paid for, I tend to go to somewhere like The Economist, doesn't specifically do marketing, but it's really good for sort of business background and that sort of information. Otherwise, I absolutely adore the IT magazine called The Reg, Biting the Hand That Feeds IT. And it's surprising the amount of marketing they do in there. And what I love is it's done from a different perspective. So if you want a perspective, a technical person going, "What is all this drivel about brands?" The Reg will have covered it. And actually, I think it's really good to get the rebuttal sometimes.

Daniel Fox, host (11:32):
Let's talk about podcasts. You obviously love podcasts. You make one, but what do you listen to and what have you learned from them?

Kiran Kapur, CEO (11:39):
I mean, I learn a huge amount from doing my own podcast, as you know, Daniel, because quite often we're talking about the contributors and who we're going to get on. And if there's a gap in my knowledge, I could get a contributor on it. It's absolutely brilliant. Podcasts that I listen to, my current absolute favourite that's just come back on is the radio for When It Hits the Fan, which is two PR people talking. And it is fabulous. David Yellen, ex editor of The Sun and Simon Lewis, who was PR support for the Lake Queen. Absolutely brilliant. Their take, their views, their insights are just amazing.

Daniel Fox, host (12:13):
And it's really close to marketing. I think the episode they're doing this week is on crisis communications around the BBC. So it's worthwhile listening.

Kiran Kapur, CEO (12:21):
Absolutely. And they cover an amazing range. I mean, last week they did the Princess of Wales's new video and also what was going on at Downing Street. And then I think covered something to do with one of the industries, can't remember which one, but it's just great. There's always usually three subjects that they cover and they just have their own take and their own insight.

Owen Davis, 1st for Awarding (12:41):
Owen Davis, I'm head of operations for First For EPA. LinkedIn is a treasure trove at McKinsey's as well. Signing up for the McKinsey's update, seeing different trends, different things that are happening. I'm a product manager originally. So again, I'm on a number of different product manager channels, lots of great information through there. And it's literally just keeping my eyes open looking for insight, I would say. I'd say LinkedIn is probably the biggest source, and then you end up down a rabbit hole of various publications.

Alan Anstead, Fellow (13:13):
Hi, I'm Alan Anstead. I'm one of the college tutors and I teach public relations and communications. First of all, I think it is very important that practitioners in public relations, communications, and of course marketing, keep up to date with what latest stories, case studies, and there are many different sources that I use. And I find that I spend at least every day, 15, maybe 30 minutes just looking for information. Favourite sources, let's start with Ofcom. It's brilliant for data. It's got reports on how people in the UK are using social media, where they get their news and information from, what the trends and changes are related to that, but it's not the easiest to get into is the Office of National Statistics. They've got a lot of data there, but to be honest, you need to be a bit of a statistician to be able to get that, but it is there.

(14:13):
For public relations specific sites I go to regularly, then CIPR Influence. It's run by the CIPR. They call it a magazine, but it's kind of a blogging site really in its structure. And it's got lots of blogs by lots of different people about different things. Many of them quite current, contemporary things they're talking about. Sometimes there's a little bit of selling a particular agency, but it's a sometimes. Another person, this time a person who puts out a lot of information and collects it is a guy called Steven Waddington, wads.co.uk. And Steven used to be his past president together with his wife. They both at different times, presidents of CIPR and he has a brilliant newsletter, comes out every week. Another one, PR moment. There's a couple of different websites where they have different people that will write about public relations and what's going on at the moment.

(15:15):
And may as the last one have my own website. So every week I write an article about something contemporary, sometimes something that people may disagree with in the world of public relations. And I put it on a website called BiteSize Comms, which is on my website is cornflowercommunications.co.uk. And you've got a whole year's worth now every week of writing if you see something that might get you going, as well as it being contemporary. Have a look at that as well.

Daniel Fox, host (15:47):
So a whole load of great suggestions of where to get trusted and insightful information from, not just on the world of marketing, but politics, world affairs, and domestic news. It's all joined up into this wonderful world of marketing. Now, today's podcast came about as a result of a listener question, all this from just one email. So if there's something you'd like to know more about on the world of marketing, or you just want to pick the brains of our tutors, you can email me and we'll see what we can do. Daniel@marketingcollege.com. For now though, from Imperial War Museum, Duxford, overlooking Concord 101, I'm Daniel Fox, and we'll catch you next time.