“It’s fair and square - every square essentially helps you hit three ESG metrics with a single product.”

In this episode of the Can Marketing Save the Planet podcast, we are joined by Rob Cobbold, Founder and CEO, of the brilliant organisation, Native - a platform which allows people, groups, communities and organisations of all sizes to protect the planet – one square at a time!

The platform enables the purchase of ‘squares’ from a range of terrestrial or marine habitats including rainforests, mangroves or coral reefs.

Rob talks us through why he founded Native, “we’re an evolution I suppose on binary one-dimensional carbon markets. We're trying to do things with a bit more transparency, a bit more holistically, and a bit more fairly as well.” We discuss the fact that when it comes to protecting the environment, how we are all responsible.

We discuss the importance of decarbonisation, but also the reality that carbon isn’t tangible, you can’t see it and you can’t connect to it and this creates a challenge when it comes to understanding and engagement. Rob tells us that we, (humans) have a very ‘left-brain bias’, “we like to break things down into their parts so that we can manipulate them, control them and make use of them.”

We talk about the unique features of Native and the fact that you can view your square(s) in real time, watching them grow and evolve. However, Rob also talks about the fact that you can also see the reality of what is happening in the places you’re investing in… - “in the map of our first project in the Solomon Islands, you can see the forest, and you can also see active logging, just 50 kilometers away.” It’s both exciting and sobering.

Rob has so may plans for Native when it comes to how people and organisations can get involved; from everyone being able to drive positive impact and take action - seeing the impact of their investment in real-time, through to employee engagement programmes, gifting, gamification and overall creating a big talking point - bringing friends, family and partners on the journey with you.

From as little as just £3 per square - there is no way you won’t be motivated to buy a square or two (or more) by the end of this episode. Indeed, we’re already ‘in’ –and so if you invest, do let us know!

Tune in and listen as we talk to Rob about:

• Native – the platform, it’s purpose and why it’s truly ‘fair and square’
• Why it is so important that we all take responsibility about protecting the planet
• How Native enables organisations to hit the environmental (E), Social (S) and Governance (G) all in one solution
• Why transparency and fairness is critically important
• How going beyond carbon brings impact to life - (literally)
• The need for better stories and engagement
• The need to measure impact in different ways
• The need for better more accessible funding across a broader range of projects

For more information about this nature based solution visit Native

And to connect with Rob to find out more and discuss your ‘squares’ - connect via LinkedIn.

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About us…

We help Marketers save the planet. 🌍

Join the Marketers and organisations who have signed our manifesto, engage with our newsletter and training and, work with us to communicate sustainability more effectively. Sign our Sustainable Marketer Manifesto, work with us, and join us on...

Welcome to “In My Humble Opinion”, a podcast collaboration between The Marketing Society and Publicis Groupe UK agencies that creates a space for marketing leaders to discuss their opinions on topics affecting our industry which they think about but may not always say out loud.

You will hear industry leaders and experts talk about their views and opinions on deliberately provocative subjects such as the impact of technology on brands and consumers, the future of our industry, the generational divides, diversity and inclusion and more.

Episode 3 - In My Humble Opinion...Retail is changing, powered by data and tuned by media’ - where we dive deep into how retail media is transforming the relationship between retailers and brands.

Featuring Susie Moan, Chief Data Officer at Currys, and Andy Barratt, Head of Retail Media at Currys, in conversation with Ben Foulkes, Commercial Director at Epsilon. They discuss how retail media is transforming the relationship between retailers and brands, exploring Currys Connected Media's journey and the exciting opportunities ahead. From leveraging customer data to creating meaningful brand partnerships, they discuss how retail media networks are reshaping the future of retail marketing and customer engagement.

Follow Susie Moan on LinkedIn here

Follow Andy Barratt on LinkedIn here

Follow Ben Foulkes on LinkedIn here

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Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review our podcast!

Our industry is filled with many brilliant minds with thought provoking views, we can’t wait to bring them to you, our next episode of “In my humble opinion” will be coming soon and find our series of content of the same name over at The Marketing Society website.

Episode #143. Today’s topic is a technical and leadership skill exploring building and leading brands with soul, which doesn’t just arise from the company strategy or tactical execution but from the passion, love, and responsibility of the leaders and people in the business. 

Abby’s guest who is passionate about this topic and author of ‘Building Brands With Soul’ is Siew Ting Foo. An impactful and influential marketing leader, Siew Ting is named consecutively, six times as Asia's most purposeful and influential CMO, and named Asia and China's top woman leader, having worked on brands including Unilever, Mars, Diageo, Fonterra and most recently, HP.

In this episode, Siew Ting shares her definition and characteristics of brands with soul and why it’s important, the five pillars, human-centric leadership, global brands to local markets and how she connects to her team through ‘Friday emails’.

Plus Siew Ting’s career highs and lows and advice for marketers of tomorrow.

00:00:00 Welcome and introduction to ‘building brands with soul’

00:03:45 The Five Pillars of Brands with Soul

00:05:13 Writing the Book for future leaders

00:06:29 Why is Human Centricity important

00:09:15 Siew Ting’s Personal Discovery and Purpose

00:11:00 First 100 Days Framework

00:15:21 How to Create Global Brands with Local Soul

00:19:49 Building Internal Belief

00:22:27 Authentic Leadership through Friday Emails

00:25:51 Personal Career Highs and Lows

00:27:36 Advice for Future Marketers

Host: Abigail (Abby) Dixon FCIM/ICF | LinkedIn

Guest: Siew Ting Foo | LinkedIn

Siew Ting Foo will be part of The Marketing Society's Global Conversation How CMOs can build Brands with Soul, a Virtual event covering many of these topics discussed, on 27 February 2025 - find out more here

The Whole Marketer podcast is here to support and empower the people behind brands and businesses with the latest technical tools, soft and leadership skills and personal understanding for a fulfilling marketing career and life as a whole. For more info go to www.thewholemarketer.com

The Buy Side is our regular series talking with brand side marketers about sport and sponsorship.

Our guest is Richard Deane, who's career includes running sponsorship programmes at Standard Life Investments, Abrdn and Investec across Ryder Cup, British and Irish Lions and many other major sports properties.

The Buy Side is sponsored by the Two Circles intelligence platform KORE. More than 900 brands, venues, and sports organisations trust the Kore platform to manage partnerships and assets and measure their impact with real-time insights. Through Fan Intelligence and Partnerships Intelligence, Two Circle’s Kore platform unites sponsors and properties with solutions that help enhance the fan experience, drive smarter decisions, and enable marketing and operations teams to spend time where it matters.

Learn more at twocircles.com.

Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry.

To join our community of listeners, sign up to the weekly UP Newsletter and follow us on Twitter and TikTok at @UnofficialPartner

We publish two podcasts each week, on Tuesday and Friday.

These are deep conversations with smart people from inside and outside sport.

Our entire back catalogue of 400 sports business conversations are available free of charge here.

Each pod is available by searching for ‘Unofficial Partner’ on Apple, Spotify, Google, Stitcher and every podcast app.

If you’re interested in collaborating with Unofficial Partner to create one-off podcasts or series, you can reach us via the website.

“The more people bring AI in-house the better it will be for the environment”…

“You’ve got to spend the money to take advantage of the opportunity – and you can say but AI is free, but it isn't - that's just bad AI”…

“AI allows us to do the art of marketing without marketing” …

A slightly longer episode this week, but boy is it an interesting one! In this episode of Can Marketing Save the Planet we bring together two of the biggest conversations in the world today; AI and sustainability to find out if they are friend or foe. Joined by tech futurist Dan Södergren and sustainability guy, Russ Avery, we discuss questions around, is business and society responsible enough to use AI? Why AI policies a must for organisations - and, how can Marketers use AI in an informed and meaningful way?

As with any big subject matter we jump straight into the challenges and opportunities. When it comes to challenges we of course go straight to the environmental impact where Russ explains, “AI -driven data centers are projected to consume 90 terawatt hours annually by 2026, which will be a 10 -fold increase from 2022 levels, which is only three years ago. And for context, that's equivalent to the energy uses of some entire countries.” Only part of the story - but something we should all be aware of as we all look to AI and how it will increasingly become more prevalent in our lives.

Dan agrees that energy is definitely something we need to be aware of, but more importantly, “it's more the fact of what you do with it. En-masse if you just take it out by itself and you add it on to the marketing you're doing, then yes, by its very nature, you're going to be creating more problems because you are going to be using more energy. But on the whole, he believes AI can make the world a better place (caveat - if the good guys use it). The ‘fifth industrial revolution’ also comes up a lot in this conversation, but you’ll need to tune in to find out more.

We talk about the need for more education, upskilling and awareness. Training is another area that we keep coming back to. Russ talks about the need for education and using AI responsibly, “we should not be using AI for socially useless mundane purposes’ – Take note Marketers! Dan agrees that education and understanding is critical if we want to be more productive and less wasteful. Both share hints, tips and ways we (Marketers) can all be using AI more effectively.

Russ believes that Marketers can use AI effectively if they “lean into their curiosity and understand the foundations of what you are using”, he goes on to explain, “I would just encourage Marketers to learn about the fundamentals of AI because it can only benefit your understanding how these things work and how they actually came about”.

Dan talks about the need for better prompt engineering, an understanding of language models and, the need for culture change, moving away from specialisation and IP to considering, “how does your organisation incentivise not just the use of AI, but actually incentivise the best practice use of AI? Say I've created a great prompt, what's in it for me to share that knowledge with the rest of the team? Now, that's something we've never really had.”

There is simply too much in this episode to summarise here in a way that does it justice, you’ll just need to tune in and get your pens and pads ready….and then click on the links in the show notes to take advantage of the offers from Dan…we certainly will be.

Tune in and listen as we talk to Dan and Russ about:

• The challenges and opportunities around AI
• The ethics...

Episode #142. Connecting with your Consumer is the focus of today’s episode, an evolving technical and soft/human skill for marketers to develop as our human understanding continues to deepen and evolve through societal and technological advancements.

Abby’s guest to discuss is Toby Horry, Global Brand and Content Director at Tui, responsible to Tui’s re-brand and the recently much talked about first Tui Christmas ad. Prior to Tui, Toby worked at Tesco as Digital Marketing Director, part of the Brand Turnaround team, tasked with rebuilding trust in the Tesco brand and in the agency world as planner for AMV BBDO and MD of Dare.

In this episode, Toby shares his definition of what it means to connect with your consumer, the challenges of mass targeting, skills and behaviours marketers need to connect with audiences, marketing to global audiences, and lots of examples of connecting from brands such as Tui, Nicorette, Tesco and Fiat.

Plus Toby’s career highs and lows and advice for marketers.

00:00:00 Welcome and Introduction to ‘Connecting with consumers’

00:02:23 The Importance of Understanding Customers

00:03:40 Changes in Marketing Communication

00:05:56 Consumer Expectations

00:07:25 Skills Marketers Need in Order to Connect

00:09:59 Insights from Nicorette Campaign

00:11:46 The Role of Concise Marketing Briefs

00:14:09 Global Marketing Considerations

00:20:03 Customer-Centric Ideas

00:23:23 Insights from TUI

00:27:32 Creativity and Agility

00:29:10 Toby’s Career Highs and Lows

00:31:29 Advice for Future Marketers

Host: Abigail (Abby) Dixon FCIM/ICF | LinkedIn

Guest: Toby Horry | LinkedIn

The Whole Marketer podcast is here to support and empower the people behind brands and businesses with the latest technical tools, soft and leadership skills and personal understanding for a fulfilling marketing career and life as a whole. For more info go to www.thewholemarketer.com

Welcome to “In My Humble Opinion”, a podcast collaboration between The Marketing Society and Publicis Groupe UK agencies that creates a space for marketing leaders to discuss their opinions on topics affecting our industry which they think about but may not always say out loud.

You will hear industry leaders and experts talk about their views and opinions on deliberately provocative subjects such as the impact of technology on brands and consumers, the future of our industry, the generational divides, diversity and inclusion and more.

Episode 2 - ‘In My Humble Opinion...more brand experiences should be buyable.’ where we discuss why brand experiences should be shoppable in today's digital landscape.

They explore how the traditional marketing funnel is transforming, why brand equity and commercial performance go hand in hand, and how companies can create seamless shopping experiences across multiple touchpoints.

Amanda Farmer, Chief Executive Officer of LeSHOP, sits down with Kate Narbrough, Global Brand Director at Nomad Foods

Follow Amanda Farmer on LinkedIn here

Follow Kate Narbrough on LinkedIn here

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Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review our podcast!

Our industry is filled with many brilliant minds with thought provoking views, we can’t wait to bring them to you, our next episode of “In my humble opinion” will be coming soon and find our series of content of the same name over at The Marketing Society website.

Episode #141. Today’s personal understanding topic is about owning your marketing career so that it is fulfilling to you, and the steps you can take to be proactive and intentional to move towards your ideal role.

Abby’s guest to discuss this is David Brewerton, Growth Marketing Director of Monzo. Initially starting his marketing career in digital marketing, David broadened his marketing roles to have more strategic impact and has worked with brands such as Tesco Mobile, Metro Bank and now Monzo.

In this episode, David shares his definition of owning your marketing career, perception as reality, the art of giving and receiving feedback, his story of finding an ideal role after redundancy and the value of building your profile and making connections.

Plus David’s career highs and lows and advice for marketers of tomorrow.



00:00:00 Welcome and Introduction to ‘Owning your Career’

00:02:12 Defining Career Ownership

00:03:55 Perception as Reality

00:06:11 Why Personal Branding is Valuable

00:08:52 The Importance of Authenticity

00:14:27 Feedback as a Tool for Growth

00:17:52 David's Approach to Securing a New Role Following Redundancy

00:22:35 Building a Profile Online

00:27:24 Proactive Career Ownership

00:37:13 Mapping Career Goals and Vision

00:39:15 Finding Your Tribe

00:41:27 Learning from Experience

00:41:40 Advice for Marketers of Tomorrow

Host: Abigail (Abby) Dixon FCIM/ICF | LinkedIn

Guest: David Brewerton | LinkedIn

The Whole Marketer podcast is here to support and empower the people behind brands and businesses with the latest technical tools, soft and leadership skills and personal understanding for a fulfilling marketing career and life as a whole. For more info go to www.thewholemarketer.com