The Classical Marketing book, with Anthony "Tas" Tasgal
Funnel Reboot podcast
The world we inhabit today is, in countless ways, an extended echo of breakthroughs made by two extraordinary cultures that came from a compact corner of the mediterranean between the 4th century BCE to the 2nd century of the current era. I’m talking about Greece and Rome, whose influence on contemporary language, thought, and culture is so deeply woven into the modern world that we navigate it every day without noticing. Taking just language, be it English, French, Spanish or Italian, they all use words with origins that tie back to ancient law, institutions, arts and sciences. The...
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Keeping the Revenue Engine Running, with Karl Ortmanns
Funnel Reboot podcast
We often hear marketers talk about how vital their work is to sales. What we don’t hear nearly as often is the reverse: how essential sales is to a well-functioning marketing team. If marketing creates the content, sales provides the context. And that context is what makes campaigns relevant, credible, and grounded in the real world. Sales teams feed marketing the on-the-ground truth—what prospects are actually saying, how they react to new pricing, and how they interpret a company's positioning in different segments. That’s especially clear when a business serving the SMB market tries...
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Brandjitsu, with Michael Dargie
Funnel Reboot podcast
Is your Brand truly memorable? Would a person who bought from you a year ago be able to recall your name or say what they found compelling about you? The reality is that a lot of brands are instantly forgettable. You don’t have to wallow in a world of Meh - you can turn your brand into something memorable - we’re going to hear a process that’s been codified in a book that came out in 2025 called BrandJitsu. . Listen in as we delve into the book’s process, which begins not with a funnel but with a Loop we’ve got to Embrace. We’ll hear how to plumb the depths of our brand...
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Human Centered Marketing, with Ashley Faus
Funnel Reboot podcast
Here’s a question a lot of us are asking ourselves today. How do marketers build genuine, durable trust when the cost of generating massive volumes of AI content is basically zero? How can you argue for making humanly-crafted content in small quantities When it’s so easy to have AI pump it out in big quantities? The hard truth is that humans are wired to notice what other humans do. Meaningful communication with buyers contains elements that just don't scale - this takes more than a trivial amount of work. But that is precisely why you need to do them. A new book came out...
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Analytics that's Metrics Centred, with Allan Wille
Funnel Reboot podcast
Up to the 18th century, making and trading things was harder than it needed to be. You had to deal with a bewildering patchwork of local constants and norms. It was actually the French Revolution & administrators who came out of it that started to codify how we measure things. The standards they adopted were ultimately formalized in 1875 at a Convention whose name you may recognize, the Metre - or should I say Meter - Convention. The Standard set at the convention spread beyond France to most of Europe, removing friction in commerce and everyday life. Engineers could spec...
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Just Evil Enough, with Alistair Croll
Funnel Reboot podcast
In 1985, Robert Fulgham published a book that has gone on to sell 7 million copies. That puts it in league with nonfiction books like the biographies of Princess Diana, Nelson Mandela & the Diary of Anne Frank. In "All I Really Need to Know I Learned In Kindergarten," Fulgham lays out a handful of rules we all internalized on our way to adulthood. They include… Share everything. Play fair. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. You’ve probably noticed the...
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Scar Tissue, with Danny Covey
Funnel Reboot podcast
For any professional, life often presents unexpected challenges that test our resilience and strength. The Ottawa-based marketer we’ll hear from today, has had an extraordinary journey, For those born with congenital heart defects like Danny Covey’s, surgery isn’t an if, it’s not even a when, it a HOW MANY. Without undergoing them, they have no hope of living to adulthood, Danny has had eight of these life-threatening operations. But throughout all that, he’s displayed unwavering courage. His emotional and physical scars have shaped him, but they have also given him...
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Website Wealth, with Philippa Gamse
Funnel Reboot podcast
One of the best known events in the modern Olympics is the High jump. Since its dawn in 1896 all jumpers used the same technique. They would run towards the bar, then begin their vault by putting one leg over, or trying to go head-first over the bar. But someone came to the 1968 Mexico City games, who couldn’t win on physicality, but who did have a hack no one had thought of. That person was 21 year old American Dick Fosbury, who you wouldn’t find anything notable looking back at his track career. Back in high school he’d struggled to master all the motions used...
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The Path to AGI with John Thompson
Funnel Reboot podcast
Artificial General Intelligence is a term that most of us have heard, a good number of us know how its defined, and some claim to know what it will mean for the average marketer. Here’s what OpenAI’s Sam Altman said “It will mean that 95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly and at almost no cost be handled by the AI.” What nobody knows for sure is when it will be here. Some said that GPT5 would herald the dawn of artificial general intelligence. This episode is airing In mid-2025, and GPT5...
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Books for the Summer Break
Funnel Reboot podcast
Hey, Glenn here. It’s the middle of summer when I’m recording this; a time we don a pair of shades, a beach towel and a good book. Funnel Reboot usually shares talks with marketing book authors, but for this show I’m going to share some reads that go a little farther afield. Come along with me through six books that are all amazing. The subjects range between business, humanities, technology and science fiction. Chapter Timestamps 0:00:00 Intro 00:01:44 The Discoverers 00:12:43 Blindsight 00:19:05 How Big Things Get Done 00:24:12 Private Truths, Public Lies 00:27:41...
info_outlineWe as consumers do a lot of things just because the people around us are doing them. For proof, look no further than some historical examples—from the 17th-century tulip bulb craze in Holland to doomsday cults and prepper movements in the lead-up to Y2K. Buying fads such as pet rocks, fidget spinners, Beanie Babies, and NFTs all show how easily prevailing thoughts influence individual behavior.
The science behind this is well understood. The evolutionary drive to fit in with our peers is very strong. When a group of people’s purchases are plotted as a histogram, we always see the majority of them clumped near the centre - we see it so often we came up with a term for it - the Bell curve.
So even when people think they are expressing themselves, showing individuality by their brand choices, they are only veering slightly away from the norm.
Hey, Glenn here—welcome to Funnel Reboot. Our guest today—who I really do think has positively impacted marketers’ careers—argues that marketers are just as susceptible to conformity as consumers are. We get caught up in prevailing marketing practices when doing our job, while ignoring better marketing options. That’s a recipe for mediocre results.
Our guest is the author of three marketing books and the co-founder of an eight year old digital agency that has attracted clients whose annual spend ranges from thousands to millions of dollars. What does he credit for this marketing success? The time he’s spent on the edges of the Bell curve - doing things that most of us view as too far outside of our comfort zone. And he says to be a better marketer, you too should reject the orthodoxy of conventional marketing.
Unorthodox is the name of his latest book, and I’m glad to welcome back for a second time, Gil Gildner.
All people, products and concepts mentioned are available on the Funnel Reboot site's shownotes page.