Episodes

In this episode, Christopher Lochhead talks about value, and how it is 100% dependent on people’s perception. That is to say, nothing has any intrinsic value until someone believes it has value. You can also learn about one of the greatest stories about how an entrepreneur and category designer created value, that is to say, the perception of value for a product that left a lot of people scratching their heads. Gary’s Pet Rock Gary Dahl and his pet rock is an amazing study on how people assig...

In this episode, Christopher Lochhead talks about language. Specifically, a concept that most entrepreneurs and marketers don’t know much about: Languaging. Languaging and Creating Context Languaging is the strategic use of words and language to change and create the future. As any category designer worth their salt should know, how you frame a category could make or break them. Having a great context for your category is a must if you want to be ahead of the pack. What better way to add a s...

In the last episode, Christopher popped the hood on digital products, more specifically about NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens. As you may know, a 10-second GIF recently just sold for $6.6M. This was due to NFTs. Now, there are other companies and celebrities jumping in on it. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, is now auctioning off the first tweet for $2.5M, as of this taping. Rock band Kings of Leon is set to be the first band releasing a record as an NFT. These cyber collectibles are taking off...

In October 2020, a 10-second video clip sold for $67,000. Just recently, that same 10-second video sold for $6.6 Million. This selling of a piece of digital art changed the future… and most people didn’t even notice. This new category design could have profound implications in the art world of art – and soon, everywhere else! So in this episode, Christopher Lochhead talks about digital-exclusive products, how it can be the next mega-category, and how it can affect your business and brand in the...

This episode talks about the Category Design Scorecard and how you can use it to spot a Category Designer. It also breaks down how you can evaluate a company’s ability to create a new category or redesign an existing one. Christopher and his Category co-pirates, Eddie Yoon and Nicholas Cole, just unveiled this new Category Design Scorecard. It is based on a tremendous amount of primary research, and they can’t wait to share it with all of you. How the Category Design Scorecard Came to be The ...

Stories are incredibly powerful. It is legendary. People fall in love based on the stories they tell themselves about each other. People go to war and start countries over stories. Furthermore, when stories are used to design a category and a brand, it creates massive enduring value. In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, we talk to the guru of the business of story himself, Park Howell, to educate us on how to construct legendary marketing stories and how story marketing and category design...

On this episode, let’s talk about producing legendary results in the context of CMO tenure. According to the Wall Street Journal, based on research from Spencer Stewart, the median tenure of a CMO was only 27 and a half months in 2019, which was down from 31 months in 2017. This is in stark contrast to the CEO’s average tenure of 88.4 months or about seven and a half years. CFOs have roughly 63 months or nearly five and a half years. Success is about producing legendary results. So on this epis...

In this episode, let’s talk about one of the dumbest social media marketing lies out there: you have to be everywhere on every platform and you need to put out a hundred pieces of content today. This is terrible advice and it will exhaust you and your marketing team and will piss off your prospects and customers. Ultimately, it will not help you become a category queen and king. Bio: Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play B...

Today, let’s talk a little more about your career. My brother from another mother and co-creator of our new newsletter category pirates, Nicholas Cole has an interesting insight: “you are what you subscribe to.” Christopher thinks he’s right. So in this episode, find out what media Christopher consumes that he finds life-changing. “The content we subscribed to, the content we consume, it affects how and what we think about. Our thoughts affect our actions and our actions affect our outcomes, b...

Advertising is a powerful thing in the world of business. Whether you have a start-up or a successful company, you still need an effective advertisement to propel your brand forward. Silicon Valley’s secret advertising weapon, Rick Bennett, is here with us today to give pieces of advice about advertising and marketing. Also, he talks about how being wise and having good decisions help us as human beings. Technological Intimidation Rick says that the best thing to do when advertising is to avoid...

In 2019, CNBC reported that 27% of Americans “would have to borrow or sell something to pay for a $400 emergency. Further, Nation.com reports in 2018, 4% of American adults reported not having enough food and by July of 2020, that figure had exploded to 11% and they say it will probably continue to increase as the pandemic worsens. Most recently, Pew Research finds that one in four American adults have had trouble paying their bills since the coronavirus outbreak started. So the reality is, thi...

Many people reached out to Christopher and asked for more episodes on category design. In future episodes, he will dig into a specific category and/or brands, and analyze what’s going on and how that can be illustrative for the rest of us. So for this episode, Christopher talks about a buzzy application in the social media world called Clubhouse. Today, let’s examine the question: is clubhouse a legendary category queen in the making or a dumb idea? New Hot Category, As They Claim If you check...

In this episode, let’s talk about sales training slash sales enablement. Companies make a very big mistake on sales training. Christopher shares his thoughts about that mistake and how not to do that. Bio: Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one o...

It is super important to know how social media and the online-world itself work, especially if you’re a business owner or an entrepreneur. This holds true because we are living in a digital-first world, where you can search for anything on the internet. Managing your digital reputation is indeed challenging and sometimes complicated. So today our guest, Josh Greene, CEO of The Mather Group, explains how search engines work and what you can do to optimize them for your benefit. Positive Google ...

On episode 90, we talked about how complexity is the enemy of revenue and how to shave the marketing dog down. Now let’s talk about what we do once we shaved the dog down. We talk about the powerful marketing execution concept called the multiplier effect. The concept means taking our precious marketing dollars and getting maximum impact for them. “Imagine you’re going to make a $10,000 investment in some kind of marketing initiative. The question is how do you make it feel like a hundred or a h...

If you’re currently doing a big initiative, say a new product launch, a new campaign, a sales kickoff or a lightning strike, let’s talk about why you are also, most probably, making a huge mistake. Shit sometimes, gets too complex and we know that complexity is the enemy of revenue. So on this episode, let’s talk about why it’s time to shave the marketing dog. Doing Too Much There’s 99.9% chance you are doing too much in marketing. Christopher candidly shares that sometimes in life, it is not a...

Just because it turned January 1st and we’re into a new year doesn’t mean anything is going to change unless people make it change. We are all in a cocoon time and it means that we, as marketers, entrepreneurs and category designers can design the future of our choosing. The Future Is Not Like The Weather Christopher poses his observation on some people and how they comment about the future. Some people wish to have a better 2021 but do not think about who is responsible for positive change to ...

This is Christopher and I just wanted to take a little moment to share a couple quick things with you. First, just big thank you. Thank you for making me and our entire team part of your 2020. The second thing, I know it’s been a horrible year for many of us, for me and my family, it’s been the most horrible year of all. I also want you to know that I thought about quitting a lot this year, both podcasting and writing. Knowing that you were there, if you sent email or tweets or LinkedIn messa...

Steven Kotler has written one of the most important books of 202, The Art of the Impossible. One of the things discussed in the book is human evolutionary motivations. As a result, Christopher believes Steven has uncovered a key learning point for marketers, entrepreneurs and category designers. That is: the kind of human you are determines what kind of marketer and category designer you are. Bio: Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Do...

“Marketing is what you do when you have a shitty product.” Says an ex-CEO/Software Engineer who found himself wrapping his company around the lamppost, with his entire executive team leaving, and his investors getting f*cked up. In spite of many stories like this, there are still a lot of people in Silicon Valley (and in the business world in general) who believe the best product wins and that marketing isn’t worth very much. So in this episode, we dig into a research project involving one of ...

According to the January 2018 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average person changes jobs 10 to 15 times within their career. If you take it from that perspective, if you’re 25 years old and you are serious in your career, you still get seven chances to do something legendary in your career before you hit the big 6-0. So in today’s episode, we ask, are you wasting your career? Make Every Career Count You get a very few chances to do something legendary, so make them count. Mike...

In June of 2020, Netflix announced that it was moving 2% of its cash equal to about $100 million to bolster black owned and black run banks, allowing these banks to lend more. The way this works is pretty simple: when we make deposits in a bank, that allows them to make more loans. More and more corporations and nonprofits are jumping in to join the movement. In this episode, let’s go deep on the power of justice deposits. Corporations Joining The Movement After NetFlix’s announcement, Twitter...

In this episode, let’s talk about why, when you’re designing a new category, you need to be very careful who you listen to. Often times, listening to customers is the worst thing you can do. Whose Feedback Matters? Christopher shares one of the things that they discussed in their book Play Bigger, that new categories are often only obvious in hindsight. He further advises that if you’re designing a new category, it’s critical to be very, very careful whose feedback you listen to. “You don’t n...

On this episode, let’s talk about what the problem with your marketing plan might be in specifically three areas. Number one, calling it a “plan” might be a problem. Number two, it’s actually a legendary marketing plan that is about more than just marketing. Lastly, number three, your relationship with your CFO and finance team might be a problem, but I’m hoping it won’t be when we’re done. Create A Marketing Framework Chris describes what a “plan” entails and how an actual marketing plan shoul...