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John Miles has spent forty years in marketing, brand, and strategy. He runs the New Zealand Marketing Association and just released his first book, Sod It, Just Do It, built around a seven-step decision framework distilled from decades of watching organisations overthink themselves into inertia.In this conversation: why leadership change is the single biggest risk to brand consistency, what Gap and Jaguar got wrong, why One NZ's rebrand worked, and why AI won't replace the human judgment brand decisions still require.Timestamps00:00 The biggest danger to any brand is a new CMO00:28 Inside Sod It, Just Do It: why ninety-two pages, not four hundred04:03 The cost of indecision (and why it's an epidemic)04:46 Leading the NZ Marketing Association through COVID07:14 Getting to market in five days07:57 Differentiation: how One NZ turned complaints into a brand story11:24 Step two: research the fuck out of it11:45 What Gap got wrong13:45 Jaguar's rebrand and the cost of losing the product18:39 What "product" means in a services business20:10 Fifty years of NZ advertising: where marketing lost its nerve23:21 The Bud Light case and the pub test29:43 What organisations are avoiding right now: AI33:21 Where to find the bookAbout the guestJohn Miles is CEO of the New Zealand Marketing Association and author of Sod It, Just Do It. Book: soditjustdoit.comAbout Ben on BrandWhere leaders discuss the strategies that drive business growth. New episodes weekly.
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Accounting software is a category people love to hate. The admin is painful, the language is alienating, and for most small business owners the whole thing sits somewhere between a chore and low-level dread.
MYOB read that as a brand opportunity. With 34 years of heritage behind it, and Xero having pulled business owners away from the accountant-led model, MYOB built Solo: a mobile-first product for Australia's 1.6 million sole operators. The people running a business on spreadsheets, paper receipts, and a bank account they share with their personal spending.
The win came from listening to real people. Sally Davies, GM of Solo and Embedded Finance, walked the Inverloch Christmas markets and stopped at every stall, asking owners how they worked and what hurt. That is where the real problem surfaced: people turning over good money who did not believe they were running a business. No brief would have found it.
Sally Davies and Lia Pacquola, who leads strategic comms, join Ben to walk through what they did with that insight. The endorser brand decision. Running Solo like a startup inside a 34-year-old company. Naming a mental state instead of a feature set. And why a Valentine's Day campaign about loneliness moved a piece of accounting software.
What this episode covers:
Why a category people dislike is a brand waiting to be rebuiltHuman-led research, and the problem a spreadsheet would never findThe endorser model: what Solo carried from MYOB and what it deliberately left behindImposter syndrome as positioning, validated across 550 sole operatorsAI as practical utility, not a branding exerciseEmbedding comms alongside product from the first day, not after the buildFinding the human tension on any budgetChapters:00:00 The category people love to hate
02:43 Meeting Sally and Lia at ComsCon
04:08 Their roles at MYOB
05:17 34 years of heritage: asset and weight
07:07 Where accountants fit with Solo
08:20 A category under disruption
10:12 Marketing to the owner and the accountant
11:44 Social channels and influencers
12:02 AI as a proof point, not a slogan
13:58 Focusing on the user, not the feature list
14:23 The customer who doesn't think she runs a business
17:01 Building Solo like a greenfield startup
18:53 The endorser brand decision
20:50 How Solo is performing
23:43 The Valentine's Day campaign
26:10 Naming the imposter state
28:50 Brand or product: what drove the result
29:44 Soulmates: community by design
31:17 One takeaway for any brand
32:22 Doing it without a big budget
33:40 The Inverloch markets method
35:49 Ben's closing thoughtsBen on Brand. Where leaders discuss the strategies that drive business growth. Hosted by Ben van Rooy, CEO and Founder of Human Digital.
New episodes weekly. Subscribe for more on brand strategy, marketing, and the decisions that define them.
#BenOnBrand #BrandStrategy #B2BMarketing #MYOB #MarketingPodcast #SmallBusiness #CustomerInsight #BrandBuilding #Fintech #AIinMarketing
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