Measure ROI or Work in PR | E99 with Jordan Stachini

Why are marketers still arguing about ROI in 2025? 🤯 “ROI is reductive!” “You can’t measure brand!” Meanwhile…budgets are getting slashed and CFOs are sharpening their scissors.

In this episode, we’re joined by Jordan Stachini—founder of Co & Co and proud member of the “least-fluffy marketers” club—to cut through the noise. We get real about what ROI actually is (and isn’t), how to report it without strangling creativity, and how to keep your budget safe when the money people come calling.

We get into:
 ✅ “All sales are conversions—but not all conversions are sales.” How to set objectives and measure the right thing at each stage
 ✅ Holistic > siloed: why channel-by-channel ROI gets marketers in trouble (and how to report at the right altitude for board, C-suite, and team)
 ✅ When you don’t have revenue access: scrappy ways to start measuring today (yes, even if it’s manual)
 ✅ Offline → online is one journey: activations that earn digital reach (and why tying every post to a till receipt is a trap)
 ✅ Founder taste ≠ ICP truth: keeping opinions out of your metrics
 ✅ Talking to CFOs without losing your soul (or your budget)
 ✅ “Champagne results on lemonade money”: setting realistic ROI expectations
 ✅ AI vs human creativity: Billy bookcase content vs bespoke craftsmanship—and why connection still wins
 ✅ Regional ads that slap (Hooch in Ancoats) vs ones that flop (Magnum in Piccadilly Gardens)—and the ROI lesson behind both

If you’re done with ROI theatre and want a practical playbook for proving value without dumbing down your marketing, this one’s for you.

We’re Ruta and Emma, the marketing consultants behind Blame it on Marketing. 

If you’re in B2B SaaS or professional services and looking to do marketing that actually drives revenue and profit, we’re here for it.

Visit blameitonmarketing.com and let’s get this show on the road.

Transcript

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Give me a million pounds and we won't bother talking about the results. I'm pretty sure most people would then want to know what's happened to their million quid. That is ROI. what do we do with the marketers who don't want to measure ROI? they can go and work in PR. marketers get into heat with their CFOs when they start breaking things down. if you're going out and saying that to a CFO, the CFO is going to cut the lowest performing channels. there is no world in which the CFO should be deciding where marketing is spending their we want to make one and a half million pounds We only spend like 30 grand a year on marketing. I was like, oh, your ROI must be incredible. then it obviously, turns out it's not. I believe that everything that marketing does, does come down to numbers. Otherwise, why the fuck are you doing it? Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Blame it on Marketing. And today we're covering a topic which we're deeply passionate about, but have never actually done an episode. Have never done an episode on and that's ROI or ROI. We've got a wonderful guest with us today, Jordan Stachini, I believe, if I'm not miscorrect, Stachini. Okay, Jordan Stachini, and we will throw it over to Jordan to introduce herself. Mega, thank you, girls. So yeah, I'm Jordan Stachini. I'm the founder of a marketing agency in Manchester called Co & Co. So we well, we tout ourselves as the least fluffy marketing people that you will ever meet. And I think our little prelude onto this call will probably testify to that. But yeah, we focus on three main areas. So strategy, branding, and offline activations. But the thing that underpins everything, obviously, is what we're about to talk today is ROI and measuring it and ultimately you can do whatever you want as long as you can find a way to measure it. She's a lady after our own hearts. Yeah. Some music to our ears. So Jordan, before we get into the episode, we always love to start with a fuck up. So something that is your deepest, darkest marketing fuck up that you're prepared to share with everyone. Yeah, I mean, God, where do I start? No, there's not been that many, but the one that lives rent free in my mind is one that and it's probably the same for most people. It's very early on in my career. I was a marketing exec in a in-house company. And one part of my role was kind of booking third party media. I mean, I'm talking about back in the day when you would pay like to send emails to other people's email databases and stuff like that. So it's, you know, I'm of an age ladies. However, that was Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. make me feel as as ancient as I am. So yeah, I was doing that. And we did a lot of marketing overseas, especially in the in like the Middle East, and the Far East. So I was booking a campaign with a Hong Kong publisher, and it was already quite expensive. And I'd really had to kind of state my case as to why I think we should do it. And I basically really messed up on the exchange rate. And what I thought was 2000 pounds is actually 20,000 pounds. And I signed the contract that basically meant that we had to go ahead with the campaign. yeah, that's the one that lives rent free in my mind. But it's one of those that it never happened again. And now I think everybody that knows me would say that I am an absolute perfectionist when it comes to the detail of things. I will spot things. I was looking at something yesterday and I can spot like, unalignment of a creative from like 10 feet away. I think that really, yeah, literally. So I think that really kind of spurred on this like attention to detail. And it's something that I now, you know, kind of harp on about and I'll probably drive everyone mad with about the detail and you know, spotting it. But yeah, that's the one that instantly screams back. the front of my mind and as I say yeah lives lives ramp free in my head. Yeah. But also like back in the day, it was a little bit trickier, wasn't it, to do like your exchange rate? like, no fucking Google. I almost made an assumption Jordan, that it was before we were like, could all just get a live exchange rate from Google, but we couldn't. an exchange rate, you know, app really on my phone. But in fact, I don't even think that was on my phone. I think that was a website that I used, a converter. But anyway, I got a decimal point wrong somewhere. And yeah, but it's never happened again. We had a story from someone who used to work at Royal Mint and they would take over these coins to, I think it was China, wasn't it? um And somehow the marketing person got left with evaluating all the metals and the coins and then having to do the customs, know, because it's like gold and whatever and the weights and whatever. And we were just like, no, this is not it. No, no, definitely, no, definitely not. But apart from that, I can't think of anything that I've done that that, you know, it's like a proper fuck up. Like that's like a proper, I can remember thinking I've got to go and speak to my boss about this now as well. And I've got to tell him what I've done. Yeah, but you know what, as well, I think one of my things that I say to my team now is if you fuck up, the sooner you tell me, the sooner I can fix it. Mm. be pissed off that you fucked up. I'll be pissed off if you try and cover it up or you don't tell me. And I find out another way, which is, you know, something that's happened to me in the past with somebody that, you know, they were essentially the account manager for one of the clients. And, know, you can't be close to everything. Can you? And basically I found out too late in the day that there'd been a massive fuck up that she tried to cover up. They hadn't told me about. And then at the point that I did find out about it. couldn't do anything to fix it. you know, as much as I might be like, why the fuck have you done that? I'll never be angry if you tell me. If you don't tell me, I'll be fucking livid. Yeah, it's like I won't be angry, I'll just be really disappointed. Which is the worst. Yeah. you. But yeah, I think it just comes down to owning it, doesn't it? Like we're all human, we all make mistakes. So you just got to own it when you do it. And it's always bigger and worse in your head, isn't it? So you've just got to get it out of your head and own it. And you only learn that way, you know, learn more from your failures and you do your successes. So you've got to make mistakes. Totally. So onto something that might be a mistake. Interesting segue. So the weird thing that I keep seeing, I don't know if you guys see it as well, is this like real pushback on LinkedIn with the marketing community around return on investment and people saying we shouldn't be... Well, yeah, it's revenue and return on investment. Like we shouldn't be measured. We shouldn't have our KPIs as things like pipeline and revenue and ROI does... know, like a disservice because it may, it just like reduces what we do down to like numbers. Like what is that about? And what do you ladies think about that? from my perspective, I'll tackle this in two parts. First of all, I believe that everything that marketing does, does come down to numbers. Otherwise, why the fuck are you doing it? It's just a nice picture otherwise. So that's the first bit. So it does come down to numbers. However, what those marketeers are missing and what those businesses are missing that they work for is that they are seeing essentially revenue and therefore sales as the only metric of conversion. And actually, a bit like how, and I say this, I've said this a thousand times on a thousand podcasts, but I'll say it again, you know, a bit like how all jacuzzis are hot tubs, but not all hot tubs are jacuzzis, all sales are conversions, but not all conversions are sales. So yes, revenue is one metric. That is one thing that you can measure conversion on and ROI on. But so is increasing website visitors. So is organic social engagement. So is footfall into your shop or your activation. So are a million different things. you know, I think marketeers that say we shouldn't be measured by the revenue that we're generating. You should, but that shouldn't be the only thing that you're measured by. And actually the first part of ROI and understanding it is what is your objective? Is your objective to drive more traffic to your website? Is it to drive more football? Is it to increase online engagement with your organic social? Then that is what you measure. You'll put money into it. You will. estimate what you think you're going to get out of it, and then you'll measure what you actually get. And that is return on investment. You've invested in something and you've had a return. So I think those marketeers are, maybe have been battered too much by salespeople or a very intense sales environment. yes, revenue is always going to be a measurement of marketing and it should be because marketing and sales are completely intrinsic and they are linked and joined at the hip. But that is not the only thing that you should be measuring yourself on and that if you don't have those other avenues, if you don't have those other channels working for a different result than sales, then you don't have a marketing strategy, you have a sales strategy. So a marketing strategy is lots of different things happening over a period of time, peaks and troughs, you you don't have everything hard all the time saying the same thing. It's about, you know, recognizing the different levels of the funnel, what channels do better where, what language does better. and ultimately asking people to do different things at different stages. Yeah, I really liked that point that you made. It's a distinction between just ROI of marketing when it's ROI of the things you're spending money on, essentially. So if you're trying to increase your traffic via SEO and you've spent an X amount over the last few months, what does that then result in in terms of the outcomes? I think the best way that or the best person I ever heard talk about it was a guy and his name always escapes me. I'm absolutely terrible with names. And it's the guy who was he was ex creative director or lead creative at Innocent, the smoothie guys and then he went to surreal, know, the serial guys who do like the cool serial stuff. And obviously both of those brands have got a really kind of strong tone of voice. They're organic social is really playful. It's really kind of disruptive in their markets, if that's what you can call it. And they really speak to the audience and they kind of own who they are. And I was listening to a talk that he did for social chain and they were saying, you know, how do you get away with doing this? And they said, because we have never ever once tried to link what we do on organic social with what goes through the till. That is just not what we do. What we're doing is we're trying to increase eyeballs, we're trying to increase engagement, and we're trying to increase essentially our eyeball share in the market. That is what Organic Social is for. We've never once tried to see, have we sold a box of cereal because we did this post? And that is the best way to do it. Yeah, because I think as well, like the trap that a lot of people fall into, and I think this is the fault of the fucking funnel, is that people go, oh, I do this thing where I like, spend all this money on these activities at the top that are like brand awareness or like increasing eyeballs on things, whatever you want to call it. And then it should shake out down the bottom as like X number of deals or X amount spent at the till or whatever it is. And so because of that, people have got this, this obsession with tying absolutely every single activity back to like the back to revenue. Um, and they don't think about it in the, in that context, Jordan, I think it is just people going, yeah, well, I've been told we're not allowed to do this unless I can show the ROI, but they don't think about ROI in that broader context, which is dangerous. how many salespeople, business owners, whoever, ultimately, who's making the decision of how marketing spend their money, if they're not marketing people, it's amazing how in one breath, they don't see any merit in anything other than sales driven marketing activity. Yet, if you were to say, okay, fine. So let's say, for example, that You're getting all of your leads are converting from sales from your database, right? So when you say to them, okay, fine. So what we'll do next month is we will only send stuff to the database. We'll turn the website off. We'll turn the organic social channels off. We'll turn PPC off. We'll not do any more PR. We won't try and build any type of community. And then let's see how the emails that converting sales do. I guarantee I would put my house on it that they would fall massively because all of that ambient stuff. happen needs to happen to fill this fucking funnel that we're all absolutely obsessed with. But ultimately it does. you know, life isn't linear anymore. The amount of content that you come into contact with on a daily basis is in the millions. So you have to cut through. So if that isn't even more of a reason to make sure you were all over the place and doing everything you can with multiple messages and different calls to action and tapping into people at different stages of the funnel, I don't know what is. It's like the difference between being a salesperson at Salesforce and a salesperson at bumfucknobodyknowscrm company. When you call them and you're like, it's me from Salesforce. They'll be like, Salesforce, okay. Like they don't even have to be interested, but they'll give you a hot second to like be like, oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think the other side of it is as well. So why some marketers going back to the original question, having pushback on the kind of ROI and revenue tracking is because we used to live in a heavily, at least me and Emma, in a heavily VC, spend what you can to get whatever you can world. And then when that kind of wound down quite substantially now, when you go back and look at the ROI, you're like, shit, that is not good. So you start hiding it because you don't want people to see that you were blowing money on God knows what. So I think there's also that. It's like a shift to efficiency, but we can't really talk about previous stuff because it was not efficient. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, time moves on, doesn't it? And even our ability to measure things is different. And I was having a conversation with someone recently about, don't think you can make this distinction now between like offline and online, because you don't have a say whether your offline activity stays offline. You don't. So, you know, let's say that we create an activation tomorrow for a brand in the middle of Manchester city centre. How are you gonna promote that? Okay, you could do that offline. So let's say you do that. Let's say you manage to promote it offline. Let's say you manage to get 100 people there without anything ever going on the internet. What happens then when someone takes a picture of that or someone takes a video of that and then puts that online and then you gain more traction because their community are bought into them and what they're saying, you cannot, you cannot have. distinction anymore between online and offline. Something might start offline and something might start online but at some point it will cross the boundary. It has to just because of the world that we live in. Yeah. And also it's that, it's that bit that I still think a lot of marketers are trying to unravel in them. Like a lot of us are still working through this, which is that like, okay. So that like the example is that Canva, like in the big billboards they did that were like, can we just make this logo a little bigger? And then they are every, it's everywhere online. And it's like, you know, that's a very clever way of getting people to post online about you for free. Because you're tapping into something that the people in the industry that you want to sell to are fed up of hearing. You are tapping into someone's, well, you know, it's very basic, isn't it? Loves and hates. You tap into those two things, you will sell. Why Marmite is so successful? Because it's the only product that can tap into both at the same time. But Canva did that. Canva said, first of all, it's saying to the graphic designers who think they're above Canva, or make this logo a bit bigger. That's what anyone on Canva would say. But then it's saying to the designers that do use Canva, I hear that. I get told that by clients. So yeah, we totally get it. So yeah, it really spoke to a community as all the best things do. yeah, and I really don't think it would have been as successful without the fact that it was so photographable and so postable. Like it would have never worked in the same way because it's a very niche ad, know, like the chance of a marketer who works with Canva who gets asked these questions going buy one is very small compared to online. back in the day we would have called it's just like, we would have said that was like a PR stunt, wouldn't we? We'd have gone, oh yeah, you've done something in person so that it's photographable or that it ends up in the news, you whatever it is. And that, and that I totally get people needing to do that because it goes back to the point, which is that buying now is messy and you have to, you have to stay in front of people's eyeballs constantly. you, so not every, And be relevant and not everything you can do can like, I don't know, you can't spend money on everything. So if you were going to do something bold like that, that is photographable, it's going to end up on social for free. You've, mean, canvas case you've won, but nailed it. Yeah. speaking of online, offline, and then the merge and the blend of it all, let's talk about ROI per channel, because we talk about this quite a lot. And I feel like a lot of marketers get into heat with their CFOs or their, whoever's managing their budget when they start breaking things down. uh So yeah, when they start breaking down, like, okay, Organic, this is the ROI. Paid, this is the ROI. And we all know they're all contributing to one another and they're all mixed. And if you're going out and saying that to a CFO, the CFO is going to cut the lowest performing channels. How are you dealing with that when you're talking about ROI, working with your clients? How are you kind of going after that more holistic, I guess, ROI approach? That's a bigger conversation because there is no world in which the CFO should be deciding where marketing is spending their money. that is a conversation I have had with people before. It's an education piece all of the time. You can't sit there with the CFO and explain and break it all down for them because they're not going to get it the same way that we wouldn't get it if they started breaking down all their incredibly exciting Excel sheets and their accounts and see software and everything else. There isn't an answer to that other than you have to create a culture within a business or with your clients about where it is, where there is an understanding and appreciation and respect of what everybody does. is no, finance operation sales should not be dictating what marketing do. So I give this ROI talk quite a lot. And one of the slides says, you you wouldn't let the sales team cut your hair. So don't let them cut your marketing spend because it's the same thing. They know as much about marketing as they do about cutting hair. They have heads, so they know as much about it as they do with hair, hopefully. So, yeah, there's no answer to that other than it's an absolute systemic problem that you would have to resolve. no, there's no overall like big answer, but let's say you go into a company and now you're now there internally as like the director of marketing and you're going through the channel performance and you're kind of budgeting for the year and you're speaking about this with the CFO CEO. What are some of the tactics that you would use like in those first conversations and like when you're quite new to maybe help with understanding and you know, help to kind of not granulise things so much that. So I would never drive every single channel back on that level to a channel. So we do do this for one particular client where we basically advise on what their spend should be every month and from a, they're a very heavy sales business. So when we're talking about the marketing that is going to directly attribute to sales or the channels that we're going to use directly attribute to sales. then what we do is we give them an overall spend and we give them an overall target. Now, where those needs come from and how they're broken down, that is completely up to us and where we decide to allocate that budget. But that is how I would do it. I would keep it as holistic as you possibly can. And it's marketing, right? Our job is to know how to speak to different people. So what does the CFO want to do? He wants to know what goes in the saucer machine and what comes out the back of it, you know? So keep it as top level as you can. with some metrics in there that they can call back to. But ultimately, how those metrics are made up should stay in your toolbox. Yeah. I mean, we've talked about that a lot, haven't we, Ruta? It's like, there is a level of reporting that's for the marketing team. There's a level that's for your C-suite and then there's a level for your board. And, you know, as you go up the food chain, you know, it should get, I guess, higher and higher level. Yeah. Rather than like in the granular detail about, you know, how specific channels are performing. best way I ever heard it described is exactly like that. The higher up you go, the less information they're going to be able to retain. So you have to imagine your level is an A3 piece of paper and the top is a post-it. So how do you get to that? And actually you should start at the post-it. You should start at what is the absolute headlines of this that I need everyone to buy into and then build detail down. But yeah, you're 100 % right. Every layer of that chain needs a different type of information. And I would say arguably less and less the way it goes up just because of everything else that they're going to be dealing with and care about, to be honest. right? Like they won't have the marketing context to digest it all in the way you'd want them to. do find like what's really useful. If you get pushed back on the pushback on this, because we do all the time, right? You go into a board meeting or a C like your senior leadership team meeting and people are like, yeah, but I don't get why you wouldn't say that. Like how can we measure the ROI of the website? And you're like, shut up. and, the, I honestly, one of the most useful, things that I, I show people a lot and everyone hate, like lots of people hate on Gartner. But there is a B2B, in particular in B2B, there is a B2B Gartner diagram that shows the buying journey. And I show people it and I just say, and it's just a fricking mess. And I just say to people like, marketing has to cover all of this. And this is the reality, right? This is an established piece of research. This is the reality that we're operating in. And if we pull the plug on one of these things, the ecosystem falls apart. 100%. and, and that's that. like, so it is hard because I do, I have worked with founders that stick their nose into everything who like, don't believe in like, I don't know, a particular random piece of marketing. you know, like when you meet someone and they're like, I don't believe that SEO is real. And you're like, okay. And then you get into these awkward, you sort of almost dig yourself into these awkward conversations that you don't really want to be having. Yeah. tools like that I find are really helpful, just like really showing people like, you know, or even talking them through how they buy. Like when you buy something, do you buy it like this? Is it a linear process? Probably not. also if they're not the audience pointing that out so we had someone we had someone We had someone a while ago and we do a lot of work in the property sector It was my background before I started so we just naturally have a lot of people in that game and then We working on this new this launch of this new building and we've been really involved in it down to it was a heavily branded You know kind of offering business, but that really fed into kind of the layout what was in the building, everything else. So we were really involved in that. And we did all these CGI's and everything and I was presenting them to the board and everyone's nodding along and everything else. You think, oh yeah, this is a good day. This one's gone well. And then a man who must have been about 67, he was like, yeah, yeah, I get it. He went, but I hate it. I mean, I would just never live there. And I went, brilliant, good. you. it's not for you. And I said, and if you sat here and said, that's really nice. I'd move in tomorrow. would go and scrap everything you've done. said, but you know, have you got, I was really trying to be careful and gauge his age. said, you know, have you got children? Have you got younger people in your family that are around that kind of 18 to 24 bracket? Yeah. What would they think of it? they think it was great. Perfect. Then that is perfect. It's not about, it doesn't, you know, and this is, this is really one of the problems I think that you might find this as well that you find with like, and founder owned businesses is because they started it and it's their child. you know, sometimes most businesses come out of a need for something, don't they? So at one point in your life, you've needed this thing. Now, if the business carries on, you probably move out of that period of time of needing it and therefore you're not the audience anymore. But it's really difficult sometimes with founder owned businesses for them to detach. And you have to explain that no one gives a fuck what you like because it's actually not for you. And if we built about your business. Like that's that's that be all and end all right. Like care about your product and what it could do for them and if it's better than the next guy. So I find that with founder owned led businesses, that is really difficult. oh Yeah, it's really hard. And I also as a founder owned business, I get it. Like I am, I'm probably guilty of it, you know, myself. But yeah, you know, it's ultimately half of our job, right, is holding up that mirror and giving these. sometimes difficult takes on things. So what do we do with the marketers who don't want to be measured by ROI who don't want to measure ROI? they can go and work in PR. or in like deep, deep corporate where their job is like spell checking something, you know? I just feel like this is like my whole thing when I talk about like no fluff, no bull, because I think a lot of people, and we see this with, you know, people that come to interview for us on the face of it, you think, God, they do like really cool stuff. And you know, everything you see the the actual execution of it, you see, looks great. That is 1 % of it. And actually, by the time you get to that, you're so fucking sick of looking at it, that it's not exciting to you anymore. You know, they don't see the 99 % that is spreadsheet and process and meetings and just, you know, trackers and everything else. You don't see that. I think a lot of people get into marketing with this misconception that it's going to be, well, effectively you're just going to be on Instagram or TikTok all the time. And it's just not that like there has to be strategy behind it. You can't just go out, point, shoot, and you know, hope for the best. So I think those people, and you know, I'm tongue in cheek about PR. think it has a place, but I think it's massively involved and that's probably a conversation for another day. I think that those people that are in marketing that don't want to be measured, then don't be in marketing. Don't be in marketing because it is something that has to have an impact one way or another. Otherwise, what the fuck are you doing it for? Yeah, even if you're junior, I think that's an excuse that a lot of people use. Like I've worked with some people who are quite like, you know, like mid or like maybe marketing manager, but there's a head of or there's a director of and they just completely like the slopey shoulders come out and they're like, the numbers have nothing to do with me. And then when you really try to like walk them through the numbers and help them to understand their responsibility in that they're like, no, I'm just here to, I'm just here to execute. don't want to be seen to be doing badly and no one wants to be seen to be doing badly. But then if you turn that on its head, in marketing you have such an opportunity to make such a big measurable impact on things that if you're doing it right, you should be showing it from the rooftops. Those same people would probably wax lyrical about a campaign that went brilliantly and did what they wanted to do. Okay, we all have that, but we also all have absolute shitters. Like we just do. It's just the way that the game works. But you can't not have accountability in marketing. You can't. Mm. It's also like, I feel like for me at least it would be really disorientating because you wouldn't know what's good and what's bad. So you're just doing stuff at that point. Maybe some people are okay with that, but I'd just be like, I am ungrounded right now. I don't know what's going on. do you know if you're getting better? How do you measure your understanding? How do you know if you're driving anything forward? It's always about testing that and it is. And again, those people could be in cultures and environments where it's not supportive and the buck is passed around and it's that kind of culture which get out of that culture that isn't the culture that anyone should be working in. to say the numbers have nothing to do with me or I don't want to be measured, then you're in the wrong job. And what about on the flip side, what about CEOs that think that kind of marketing ROI is intangible or this mysterious thing that shouldn't be calculated? not met one yet. They're always, they're normally the other way where they're like, you know, we have to measure everything. And then that's normally where you get a marketeer going, well, you can't measure this and you can't measure that, but you can, you can measure it. So I haven't ever met a CEO or anyone who's gone, or you can't measure marketing. I've met plenty that don't see the fucking point in it. But never any, as I say, that are happy to turn it all off tomorrow. yeah, I've met, yeah, there's been a lot that have been like, or I have met quite a few that are skeptical about what ROI means. So they're like, ROI, it's a marketing thing. But actually you're like, no, when it's the purest sense of ROI, I mean, when it's the revenue, you know, divided by the sales. Yeah, that is like, when it's that, they are like, I'm not sure that's a good measure. And you're like, okay. I know, but I if you said to the same people, if that's how you feel, that's fine. Give me a million pounds and we won't bother talking about the results. Just give me a million quid. I'm pretty sure most people would then want to know what's happened to their million quid. That is ROI. Yeah. And it's the same, it's the same group of people who will also say, we've worked like people like Ruta and I will go in, we'll work out that their budget should be probably like three times the amount it should be based on their ROI. And based on, you know, other, other factors, but ROI is a big one, you know, that helps us work out what your budget realistically should be. And then they'll laugh you off the table. They'll be like, no, no, no. One of my most infamous client stories is I They were like, we want to make one and a half million pounds like back. We only spend like 30 grand a year on marketing. And I was like, your ROI must be incredible. And then it obviously, turns out it's not. And yeah, they needed to, can't even remember what they needed to spend. It was outrageous. love the concept of people thinking that they can basically spend nothing and get loads back. it's like, if that was true, wouldn't every business be successful? it be all be billionaires? Like, it doesn't make sense. people want champagne results for lemonade money. That is, that is what they want. And don't we all, fucking hell don't we all. You know? Yeah. I'd love to go and buy a house for two pounds. Do you know what I mean? It's just, it's just not how things work. So yeah, I think there's a lot of delusion out there. Hmm. How, what would you do, Roota? What's your- If a CEO was like, marketing ROI doesn't exist or like it's not measurable. Yeah. Leave. Run. You know what, you know what, actually, I would be like, okay, let's say they have salespeople, how much did that salesperson bring in last year and how much did you pay for them? Okay, that's the ROI of that salesperson. We can do the same thing in marketing. if there's a comparison like that, um I would probably use something like that. And otherwise I'd just be really questioning their maths credentials. yeah, like. you got a business? At some point, I'm just like, at some point, you know, when you're talking to some people, you're like, nothing I can say will ever touch this. Like I'm out of power here. Yeah. Yeah. what about the people, I guess this kind of like leads on from the people who maybe think it's intangible. What about the people who think they've got no access to measuring ROI? you know, you know, we understandably, Ruch and I do encounter marketers who are not allowed to, obviously, especially when it comes to revenue and pipeline, they're just completely excluded from the conversation. So if that was the situation you found yourself in Jordan, like. Where would you start, like to start talking about ROI? So I guess, I mean, there's a million different answers to that, isn't it? But let's say we've got that scenario where you've been brought in as a marketing person and you're not at the table to understand what the revenue is just as a start. What can you do? What can you influence? What is in your universe? So at that point, start measuring. Just start measuring because if you can start measuring and showing the results that you're getting, then somebody somewhere is going to do the maths on it. And then it's either going to be brought to you as a good thing or it's going to be brought to you as a bad thing. But you have to kind of join the dots for people, I think. So what can you influence and what can you can control? If you can start measuring what you're doing and really the way to measure is you have to look at your journey. So what are you actually doing and what are the touch points? And then at those touch points, how can you measure them? It's difficult to say how can you measure marketing, it totally depends on what you do in the platforms you use in the journey, all of that kind of stuff. So what's your journey? Where are the touch points? And at those touch points, how can you make a measurement? How can you take a snapshot in time of what is happening there and just start collating that information for yourself with nothing else? Because you can still work out your own ROI. You still know as a marketing person, okay, we're spending 10 grand on this or a million pounds on this or 100 grand on this and we're getting X. So you can work out your you know, kind of micro ROI of your department. Then it's about taking that a step further and going, okay, this is what we're doing in this department. How is that having an impact on, on the business? And there's no way around that. You have to push yourself into those conversations and situations. Sometimes if it falls on deaf ears, it falls on deaf ears, but you can only control what is in your sphere. So start, start controlling your own universe. And on that micro level, start having your shit together and your numbers together because When the time comes and it will come because someone will do the maths at some point, you're ready to go. Yeah. Cause it is so often, especially at the moment, feel like with everything that's going on in marketing, like a lot of marketers feel like it's very easy to be replaced by AI or whatever it might be that's coming in and taking your job. But if you actually have that data collated, you've got a really fucking good argument for like why you should be in the business, why you should carry on, maybe why you should even have more resource than less. I always think the first thing I ever do when I talk to somebody who's like, I can't measure anything. I'm like, you got a website, you got Google analytics, you're all right. Yeah. Like you can use that as the very, at the very least you've got that. basic level than that, if you've got a website that form fills, for example, are being sent to an email address, then okay, it might take you all day. You might manually have to do it, but you can manually count how many inquiries are coming in from a campaign that you've done or whatever. yeah, it might be really rudimentary and basic. It might be really complex, but you can measure something. Sometimes by starting at that really basic level is the only way that you can build up and it's sometimes the best way to do it know, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time and start, you know Just start small and go up from there. But it's interesting what you say about AI because I get asked this, know quite quite a lot and I You know, I'm in more I guess of a creative space in that what we're doing is is quite creative However, I think no matter who you are in marketing, there will always be a place for humans because the one thing that AI cannot ever replace is connection. Now, when that comes to a creative execution, you know, the connection that you can create in a piece of copy, in a visual, anything that can only come from a human understanding another human. The camera example we talked about before worked great because the person who came up with that idea was connected to and understood. the people that they were talking to. AI can't do that. So you're never going to be able to replace human connection and just that feeling that you get sometimes. know, there's things we've done before. I'm like, I don't really have any basis of why this is the right thing to do. It just is, like it just is, and you can't replace that. And, you know, again, probably more from a creative perspective. But the example I always give is that we could both, all three of us now could go to Ikea and we could all go and buy a Billy bookcase for 90 quid. It would be fine. It'll be a bookcase. It do what we need it to do. We're not bothered that everyone else has got it. We're not bothered that it doesn't look any different. It'll come straight off the shelf. It's, you know, and it will do a job, right? We could also all go out and commission a bespoke shelving unit from a master craftsman and they would all look completely different because we've all had our own input into it. They'll all cost significantly different, but there'll be more than 90 quid. It will last long, it will have a story, it will be a talking piece. Creatives, humans, are the bookcase created by the master craftsman. AI is the Billy bookcase. And that is just the way that it is. And there will always be a place for it. There will always be a place for a cheaper, more affordable option. There will also be a place for quality and something that people will remember and talk about. No one is going to sit here in a hundred years time talking about Billy bookcase. They're just not. But they are going to talk about a piece that maybe was made for their grandparent or their great grandparent that is still in their house and that they treasure and have a story and have had the books on of their family for however many years. So there is a place for it, but it's not going to take us all out, in my opinion. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm just like, not yeah, I can't do it yet. But actual human connection, obviously, it cannot do because it's not human. So we're gonna hold on to that. We like to wrap up all our episodes with a little bit of marketing gossip. So something that you've seen that you love, that you hate, something that is living in your mind rent free right now. Okay. so I've done quite a few of these takedowns on LinkedIn that have got me in hot water, but also I'm right in what I'm saying. So what irks me at the moment or what have I seen? So I'll tell you what that really kind of bothers me is when you see like regional, what should be regional advertising done badly. So there was a campaign that ran up here. was actually one that I talked about on LinkedIn and it was Magnum, know, the ice creams, they did it. And they ran a couple of ads. One was, I don't know if either of you are familiar with Manchester at all, but there is an area called Piccadilly Gardens, right? Which might sound lovely. It isn't at all. You don't want to go through there. In fact, I would walk around it to go to wherever I need to go. And it's notoriously not a nice place. They put up a billboard in the middle of summer, maybe last year or the year before, and it was about magnum. And was basically about enjoying a magnum in Piccadilly Gardens. And it was just so evident that nobody on that marketing team had even bothered to research where it was, let alone been to Manchester. And everyone was looking at it going, I'm fucking mad, you wouldn't eat a magnum. You would not eat a magnum in Piccadilly Gardens. And then they did a similar one last year, I think it was. where it was like it said something about, and this is the one that I wrote about on LinkedIn, something like the best thing since 1980 whatever. And it just made no sense. And you know, I did a post about it and people were going, people were actually referring to an FA Cup game between United and City and that had happened. And you know, is it this, is it that? And it wasn't, it was just the year that Magnum came out. And you know when you think, what are you doing? Like, what are you doing? Yeah, yeah. But then on the other side, Hooch, know, the drink Hooch, like the Bacardi Breezer type thing. They did a campaign recently where it said, and again, this will mean nothing to you as people that aren't from Manchester, but it will to manks. You know, there when Ancoats had Sankis and not sourdough. And that's about a place that, you know, Ancoats was a really kind of gritty, grungy, you wouldn't want to walk around there on your own at night, you know, in the nineties. It's where Sankeys was, which was his big nightclub, obviously Selly Hooch. Now, Ancoats is one of the most expensive parts of Manchester and it is very yuppie for want of a better word. And it's actually where nobody from Manchester lives because it's just not, it's just not really for, you know, for locals. But that was a perfect piece of regional advertising because everybody that's a man knows about Ancoats. They know the story of Ancoats. They know Sankeys. Sankeys is like an absolute national treasure up here. And that's it done really well. You know, people outside of Manchester are not meant to get it. They're not meant to understand it. But like the Canberra, it's talking to people that really do. And I think I love things like that, that really talk to an audience. But when it's done in a really lazy or, you know, whitewashed way, I just, why? Like you had that money to do an outdoor advertising campaign and that's how you chose to spend it. It's just. you did. Yeah. And it gives marketing people a bad name at the end of the day. So yeah, that's probably what gets on my nerves. Hmm. I'm going to keep my eye out now for local advertising, like localized advertising, because I don't, maybe I probably like subconsciously notice stuff, but I don't ever look at it with that lens. I think I'm like, oh, no, not more marketing. don't, I don't feel like you live somewhere where there's just tons and tons of advertisement either though. it's tough. Yeah. Probably not going to do a local for you. Yeah. but like, I dunno, next time I go somewhere where someone might be bothered to spend some advertising money, I'm going to pay attention. don't know where you guys are, but they did it down in London as well when Ikea opened their shop on Oxford Street or Regent Street. I can't remember where it was. So Ikea opened their first like high street store, right? And John Lewis came out with an outdoor campaign that was like when you prefer quality over flat pack or something. But it was basically a very subtle dig at the fact Ikea were opening a shop on the high street. Now, I again saw this on LinkedIn, people in London getting very irate about it and everything else. To me, it meant nothing. Like, you know, we don't have an IKEA on the high street and it's just, it just, that wouldn't work here. But I really liked that it spoke to that audience, you know, those, those people within that city that it, that it was relevant to because every, every other type of marketing. is becoming so much more individualized and so much more focused. It has never been easier, and this is one of my gripes with PR, is that it has never been easier to speak to individuals on mass ever. Like it really is. You can speak to an individual on mass now super, super easy in a way that you couldn't before. So, you you can really create a narrative with a person, but people could also create their own narratives. People aren't reliant anymore on marketers or PR people telling them the story. You're really lucky now if you can. tell people what you want the story to be and then they tell it back to you in the way that you want. So when you see these like regionalised campaigns that wouldn't work anywhere else other than exactly where they are, I just think they're brilliant. I think they're really smart and I think that they really, you know, they speak to people and that is what marketing is meant to do, is meant to speak to people. Well, this has been a wonderful conversation. If you were an ROI skeptic and you still are one at the end of this, I don't know what to say to you. Great conclusion. Just, are you okay? Like, come on. do you need a cuddle? Do you need to work in PR? I don't know.