From the subtle tyranny of “should” versus the liberating possibilities of “could,” we discover how Jonah Berger’s linguistic research reveals why even the smallest word choices can transform both creativity and collaboration in business.
Belle Baker’s thoughtful response to our previous episode on conversational power sparks a deeper exploration into the magic words that either constrain or liberate our thinking. When we default to asking “what should we do?” we’re unknowingly shutting down possibilities, but shifting to “what could we do?” opens creative floodgates.
Steve draws unexpected parallels between the French Revolution’s rebranding strategy and modern business transformation, questioning whether today’s rebrand obsessions serve customers or merely cure internal boredom.
David cuts through email protection scam sophistication with his characteristic directness, while our Perspicacity segment celebrates the raw authenticity of a 1978 Ford Falcon advertisement that put actual racing legends in harm’s way to prove a point about precision and trust.
Get ready to take notes.
Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes
01:00 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.
When Sorry Becomes a Linguistic Crutch
Belle Baker’s follow-up to our previous conversation about conversational power strikes at something fundamental about how we diminish our own presence through careless word choices. Her observation about women apologising for taking up space resonates beyond gender dynamics to reveal how automatically saying “sorry” for shared inconveniences robs our communications of intentionality.
But the real revelation comes through Dr Jonah Berger’s research (Magic Words) on the creative constraints hidden in plain sight. His studies demonstrate that asking “what should I do?” unconsciously narrows our thinking to a single correct answer, while “what could I do?” expands our cognitive horizon to encompass multiple possibilities.
Steve and David unpack how this linguistic shift transforms not just individual problem-solving but team dynamics, with David noting that “could” invites genuine collaboration while “should” often steamrolls over other perspectives. The implications extend beyond creativity to agency itself — when we frame challenges as having multiple potential solutions, we bring people along as co-creators rather than task-followers.
11:00 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.
Revolutionary Lessons in Rebranding
The French Revolution’s approach to visual identity offers surprisingly modern insights into the art of organisational transformation. Through Jacques-Louis David’s painting work and revolutionary festivals, the new republic deliberately adopted Roman aesthetics to distance itself from rejected monarchical symbols while establishing credible alternatives. As our historian notes from The Rest Is History podcast, “There is no government without rituals and without symbols” — a principle that translates directly to business rebranding efforts.
Steve and David explore how this historical example challenges contemporary rebranding approaches that often prioritise internal novelty over external necessity. Too many rebrandings emerge from organisational boredom rather than strategic imperative, forgetting that most customers experience brands as occasional “glancing blows” rather than daily encounters. The French Revolution’s success lay in combining the best cultural elements worth preserving with genuinely transformative new principles — liberty, equality, fraternity — rather than throwing everything out for the sake of change. David emphasises the crucial implementation phase: new symbols and rituals only gain meaning through consistent repetition and demonstration of improved outcomes.
19:30 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.
The Sophistication of Modern Email Deception
Email protection scams have evolved beyond obvious Nigerian prince territory into convincingly professional presentations that exploit our legitimate security concerns. Steve dissects a particularly sophisticated example featuring pre-selected radio buttons, personalised details, and urgent 24-hour deadlines designed to bypass our critical thinking faculties.
The solution lies in deliberately engaging what David identifies as our slower, more analytical thinking system rather than the fast, automatic responses these scams exploit. Having trusted advisors to verify suspicious communications creates a crucial circuit breaker against social engineering attacks that increasingly target small business owners through carefully crafted authenticity.
22:00 Perspicacity This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case study from the past.
When Advertising Had Skin in the Game
The 1978 Ford Falcon advertisement featuring six champion racing drivers standing as human targets while another driver weaves between them at over 90 kilometres per hour represents a vanished era of marketing authenticity. Allan Moffat, Colin Bond, John Goss, Dick Johnson, Ron Dixon, and Murray Carter risked their reputations and safety to demonstrate their genuine confidence in Falcon’s precision handling.
Steve and David contrast this approach with contemporary automotive advertising that prioritises surviving crashes over preventing them, reflecting our broader cultural shift from collective responsibility to individual protection. The Falcon ad’s power emerged from its inversion of modern safety messaging — rather than promising you’ll survive harming others, it demonstrated you could avoid harm entirely through superior vehicle control. Today’s cynical environment might dismiss such authentic risk-taking as special effects trickery, illustrating how our assumption that “everything’s fake news” potentially undermines genuinely meaningful demonstrations of confidence and competence.
Transcript This transcript was generated using Descript.
A Machine-Generated Transcript – Beware Errors
TAMP S06E07
Caitlin Davis: [00:00:00] Talking about marketing is a podcast for business owners and leaders. Produced by my dad, Steve Davis and his colleague talked about marketing David Olney, in which they explore marketing through the lens of their own four Ps person, principles, problems, and per s. Yes, you heard that correctly. Apart from their love of words, they really love helping people.
So they hope this podcast will become a trusted companion on your journey in business.
Belle Baker: Hi, Steve and Dave. I hope you are well. I have just finished listening to your podcast. Featuring Golden North Ice Cream, et cetera. And here are my thoughts for what they’re worth because, uh, what are my thoughts if I don’t share them with somebody else?
Steve Davis: My thoughts. Exactly. David,
David Olney: I like it when people share their [00:01:00] thoughts.
Can you just be quiet? We’re about to start a podcast.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number one person. The aim of life is self-development to realize one’s nature perfectly. That is what each of us is here for. Oscar Wilde,
Steve Davis: as you just heard in the beginning of this program, uh, bell Baker sent a message to myself and David, uh, hello Bell. Uh, reflecting on our reflections from episode six in which we were talking about the next conversation by Jefferson Fisher and a couple of things that I was particularly wanting to work on that he’d raised such as.
Reducing the use of the word, sorry, when it’s just being used as a crutch word, a filler, uh, little, um, automatic reaction as opposed to when the word sorry, is called [00:02:00] for genuinely. I actually shared that at the beginning of the conference, ie, uh, for the South Australian Visitor Information Services Network.
And of course then for the rest of the time, I had people calling me out when I accidentally said, sorry. So that was, I. More for me, but I’m not sorry for that because we all learned, uh, some great lessons there of just finding different positive ways. So if you missed last episode, A go back and have a listen, but B one quick example is like today when I was five minutes late to pick up David, instead of saying sorry, I said, thanks for waiting for me.
Did you notice I said that Dave?
David Olney: I think I was more concerned with, uh, finding the door, saying hello. So sadly your big effort. I was just glad that you were there. Yeah, it’s a thankless life, really. Uh,
Steve Davis: well being glad that people think it’s good that you’ve turned up. Well, there is that. Anyway, bee wanted to share a couple of things.
First of all, she agrees she struggles with [00:03:00] the overuse of the word. Sorry, and this is important for the person’s segment because this is about us. Not diminishing the power of our words and our conversation, and thus diminishing the presence we have in that message. She did say women in particular.
There is a a culture of feeling like you have to apologize for taking up your space, which is not something most blokes feel. That’s just one. Shade of what she was talking about, but the, the two people trying to go into the same supermarket aisle together, she said in her example, and I’m just like her, oh, sorry, I have nothing to apologize.
We were both equally at blame and she did confess that, you know, if you just stop and let them go through and they don’t say anything, we both have been known to say, well, um, my pleasure really. Saki David, that’s, we are both gonna try and [00:04:00] stop that. Does that bring you happiness?
David Olney: It brings me some happiness.
I really low Be’s. Other example of when people say it’s just a small token of our appreciation. The word just is a word that should more often than not, not be used. Either you’re grateful or you’re not grateful, or it’s a token of appreciation or it isn’t. But just is not adding value. If anything, it’s questioning the value.
Steve Davis: It is worth having the listen to that segment if you’ve missed it, because we go into a bit more nuanced, bit more detail on it, but we revisited it because of bell sharing those ideas. Uh, and also because there is another body of work, which we think in a, in a world of, um, Venn diagrams would have a big overlapping center.
Point and that is the book, uh, called Magic Words That you have been, you know, I think raving. Uh, is fair enough to say for a while now,
David Olney: raving is a very particular word. What I’d say is I [00:05:00] always like the fact that Jonah Berger’s arguments are data driven. This is someone where when we got the capacity on the internet to go, what words get used?
What words get used most? Where do words get used? Which words have the most impact? What words keep people on a webpage? What words keep people listening to a podcast? I like the fact that. Everything Jonah Berger does is based on a heap of research, and you can, you know, go and look at the evidence and go, yeah, that’s not just him coming up with an idea.
It’s him seeing a trend in how humans actually communicate and how they positively affect each other. I.
Steve Davis: Let’s have a listen to him talking here about a couple of words that are pigeon peas in many of our lives. The words should and could,
Dr Jonah Berger: and this one comes from some research, uh, on problem solving. Right? Often we’re stuck, uh, in a difficult situation. We’re trying to solve a problem. We’re trying to come up with a creative solution, but we don’t know how to do it. We’re sort of spinning our wheels. We’re not [00:06:00] really getting anywhere. We’re often stuck.
We’re trying to figure out what to do. Well, often in those situations we ask ourselves, what should I do? Right? What should I do? How should I solve this problem? But some researchers wondered if a slight shift in language could lead people to come up with better solutions. So they gave people a bunch of problems, and for some people, they ask them, what should you do in this situation?
But for a second set of people, they used a subtle linguistic shift. Rather than ask them what they should do, they ask them what they could do in that situation. Now again, the difference between should and could is pretty small. It’s only a few yet letters. Yet those few letters led to a big increase in how creative people were in solving those problems.
People came up with better problems, uh, better solutions to those problems, and rated as more creative. Solutions when they were using coulds instead of shoulds, because shoulds focus us on, there’s one particular answer. There’s one right course of action. And if we could only get there, right, we will be successful.
But coulds incur us to widen our viewpoint a little bit more to realize there are multiple courses of action, multiple [00:07:00] places we could go, or things we could think about. And all of them may not be good ideas. All of them may not be the best possible approach, but at least by considering that wider set of options.
Before coming up with a final solution, we’re much more likely to reach a positive outcome in the end. And so when stuck on a tough situation or trying to motivate others to come up with a better solution, don’t just ask what we should do. Tell them and us to think about what we could do instead, by focusing on coulds rather than shoulds, we can come up with better solutions and be more creative.
Steve Davis: A nice little reflection that he has there. The way that should closes down options and could, opens potentialities?
David Olney: Yeah. I’d have to say historically there’s times where I’ve wanted to say we should do this to people. ’cause I want to get things moving and I’ve done the calculation that it would be better to go in this direction and just get it done.
But the more [00:08:00] you interact with people, the more you realize that should. Well, you can maybe push people to do something, but are they really on board? Do they feel heard? Do they feel like they’re an equal contributor in whatever happens next? So, really. Take the time to say, could we do this or have you got a suggestion?
It’s so much more powerful than using should to try and wrangle the world to turn out the way you want quickly when in doing so, you potentially lose an ally.
Steve Davis: What you are saying there is you bring people along with a sense of agency. Together that everyone’s proactively got their hands in the wheel at the on the wheel as opposed to someone being shoved in a corner with a task to do.
David Olney: Absolutely. There’s times in small business where someone just has to say, I need you to do this, and just make it a clear this needs to be done. I want you to do it now, but if it’s something where you want everyone on board and there’s time and there’s resources, you know, could we get [00:09:00] together as a group and discuss how we’re gonna move forward with this thing?
Here’s the thing I think we could do. What does everyone else think might work? Like it just works so much better.
Steve Davis: I think it’s fascinating, the the, the power. That our choice of words has the impact, the consequences of the words we choose. ’cause we come back to that could versus should. Looking through the lens of should shrinking down options to basically one and could opening them up.
I did do an interview for another podcast, which will be, if it’s not out already, will be out soon, called around the school table, inter interviewing lots of different people from the world of education and one gentleman in particular. Has championed chess in his public, uh, high school. And it’s been transformative for a number of reasons.
And when that comes out, we might talk about it and share that link because there is so much to learn from life from this. But one of the things that stuck with me that intersects what we’re talking about now is the very first thing they teach kids [00:10:00] is the end game. And the big lesson they learn or teach is that there are more than one.
Way. There is more than one way to end a chess game. There are multiple ways they could end. They’re not always gonna go your way. And just letting kids really sink, have it sink in that there are lots of different options out there. And if it didn’t work this time. It’s okay. We could have chosen something else.
There’s a great power that comes from that. David
David Olney: could opens up ambiguity, but ambiguity means there’s room for agency. So a little bit of ambiguity, a little bit of discomfort is worth it if everyone has more agency.
Steve Davis: Checkmate.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number two principles. You can never be overdressed or over educated Oscar Wilde.[00:11:00]
Steve Davis: David, you better not hit me with a baguette. Yes. Well, I have been listening to the history of the French Revolution or one of the French revolutions. It’s a fascinating thing. It’s through a podcast called The Rest is History, and I’m loving this because it’s obs I’m absorbing in these four or five part little 30 minute, um, episodes of walking back through bits of history that I haven’t really taken the time to read about deeply, but I’m getting much more color and nuance from it.
One of the scary things is. At any point in human history, it seems that many societies are susceptible to the rise of Trump, like Hitler, like people who just sees and you go, oh my God, why can’t they think it’s not just social media that softened our [00:12:00] brains? It seems that there’s, uh, a lot of that. Lying dormant within us, David.
David Olney: Yeah. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of people who would like to be told, here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna lead, you are gonna follow and it’s gonna be great.
Steve Davis: Isn’t that interesting? That’s the could and should think and some people just wanna be told, you should do. You should do this and I’m gonna lead you.
David Olney: Yep. Whereas, please be
Steve Davis: suspicious of
David Olney: those
Steve Davis: people. Yes. Well, one of the things that really jumped out at me is when they were talking about. Uh, an aspect of the French Revolution, uh, when, uh, David, a very famous artist at the time, was painting these striking paintings of, um, French citizens dressed in ancient Roman garb and making all the buildings look like it was ancient Rome.
There was a real, as the republic was finding its way, there was a, a great. Fondness and a, and and connection they felt with Ancient Rome to give them some sort of [00:13:00] rubric to to set themselves up for
The Rest Is History: the look that you get in his paintings, which is kind of austere and lacking in any sense of kind of fluffery and self-consciously antiquarian. I think this is his own and under the revolution. He brings this style to public display because people recognize that he’s brilliant at, you know, the visuals and you know, as with so much else in a revolutionary situation, people need.
A new look. They need expressions of the revolution’s identity that aren’t drawing on what is being repudiated and rejected. And so he’s the person who, for instance, is coordinating these great festivals that are being held on the Cho de Mars on Bastille Day. And of course, Daffy entirely recognizes the Roman connotations of this, the Roman echoes of it.
He’s organizing the, um, when aire remains are brought to the pontoon. [00:14:00] It’s a very kind of Roman looking building. So again, it’s a kind of classical ceremony. And, and the Pantheon had originally been intended to be a church. So it’s this, again, this idea of replacing Christianity with something that is Roman and revolutionary.
Simultaneously and Lynn Hunt, who’s written a lot about this, is brilliant in all this. I mean, she says There is no government without rituals and without symbols. You need rituals, you need symbols, and therefore you need people who are able to create and invent it.
Steve Davis: Interesting, David having the, um, a different type of clothing and specific hats of that. Observation that every new government or any government needs a set of rituals and symbols so that people know what it stands for. This is sounding like we’re gonna find some parallels here to branding.
David Olney: Oh, very much so.
It’s that thing of you can put the new in front of [00:15:00] people, like companies try and do, like governments try and do, but initially all it is is new. If it doesn’t have value, if it’s not repeated, if it doesn’t actually seem to make things better, the novelty of novelty can wear off pretty quick.
Steve Davis: I think what happens with symbolism and ritual when, when you’re involved in any sort of organization that’s doing that, there’s something that’s preverbal, that’s word based within us that seems to be connecting to that.
Would you agree?
David Olney: Oh, absolutely. Look, we, we have accounts of the Spartans. You know, dancing, you know, synchronous dancing in huge groups to have that sense of I’m moving, but everyone else is moving and we’re all moving the same and we’re all moving together. The power of symbolism, the power of being part of something bigger than yourself, the power of uniformity.
Steve Davis: And the other nuance that came through in that little clip we just heard is part of the [00:16:00] rationale is to distance. What now is compared to what once was to say we’ve made a difference. And this is where rebranding, uh, comes into the fore for this particular conversation. Some rebranding. Operations, and we all know that brand.
I mean, the definition of the brand is always in the eye of the beholder. We don’t really control it. We can try and set things up, we can strive to be thought of and spoken about in certain ways, but at the end of the day, it’s what people’s interactions with us have been that forge the brand value that we have out there.
The brand definition that said. There is some rebrandings, which is just a little shift to a font or a slight change of color tone, which makes everyone inside the organization feel fantastic because they’ve got bored, they’re watching this stuff, they’re seeing the same website every day without realizing that, um, most of us don’t.
Most of us, [00:17:00] your brand is a glancing blow that we might have from time to time. It’s new for us every time, so I think sometimes changes happen because of a boredom within rather than a rationale for it. And I saw one on the weekend, David, a company here in Adelaide. I think that works in, I think it’s some sort of degree of securities.
The video of the CEO who wasn’t looking at the camera off to the side to try and be a bit arty was just in a monologue. It was all us, us, us, and we are this. So that’s another side of the coin where it’s all just internally focused. But back to this thing, branding. If you are going to really rebrand, do you, should you draw a line in the sand?
I think there’s gonna be times when you want that. Especially if you’ve had, you’ve taken over a, a, a company and the, the previous management was terrible, uh, versus just changing direction. There’s a lot to think about. David.
David Olney: Yeah, and I think France is a [00:18:00] brilliant example because if we look at it, the French Revolution really did turn France on its head, and we ended up with an interesting combination of things.
You know, French culture, French food, wine culture, fashion, um, the arts. Maintained extreme importance, but added to that came the idea of liberty, equality and fraternity. This is a huge, you know, sort of melting pot of the best of the old and the best of a new idea. And I think probably if you want to rebrand, you know, make sure you don’t throw everything out or no one will know what to hang on to.
Keep the best. Add what you want new, and then make sure it gets repeated. Make sure that it’s implemented. Make sure people see the new inaction and connecting with the best of the old so they can see its merit and see its place and see that the transformation to this new perception. Uh, is [00:19:00] worthwhile.
And who would’ve
Steve Davis: thought that in this modern age of revisiting, branding, brand messaging, et cetera, we can still learn something from the 17 hundreds and beyond
Caitlin Davis: our four Ps. Number three problems. I asked the question for the best reason possible. Simple curiosity. Oscar Wilde
Steve Davis: David in the problem segment. I hope you don’t mind me breaking confidences, but I, I want to talk about, um, using protection.
David Olney: This could go so sideways, like usual.
Steve Davis: Well, there’s a lot of, uh, emails I’ve been getting lately called, uh, with headlines like, or subject lines like mail protection notice. And I should just spell that out.
That’s MAIL as in your email protection notice, some of them look crappy. You can tell they’re spam [00:20:00] others. Are looking pretty good and they, I’m looking at one now on my screen where it said, it’s now time to maintain your password activity to avoid login interruption. And they’d made a little preselected radio button, a little dot that’s been selected with Steve.
It talked about marketing there, so it looks official. It looks like it’s a pre-filled form and. It says, if you don’t click through here, if the server does not receive your response in 24 hours, you may have login issues. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve just handed over my password to absolute crooks.
It’s dangerous out there. I think the reflex should always be with anything like this is we should never do it on our automatic thinking. What’s that one Mode one or mode two? Which one’s the,
David Olney: oh golly, now I’m thinking about it. I’m pretty sure it’s system one, system one. System one is fast. I think
Steve Davis: just fast.
We don’t [00:21:00] want fast thinking with these things. What we should do is, is in fact, I’ve had a few this week of people, um. Active clients and clients from a long time ago just flick an email our way, just double checking, does this look legit? I feel like I’ve done a good deed for the day when I can help save people from that.
You need some trusted person to bounce something off ’cause it’s always there. And I just wanted to share this in our problem segment of a new flavor of that, of about to lose access to your email. Typically these are going to be BS most of the time.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number four per sy. The one duty we OTA history is to rewrite it. Oscar Wilde.
Steve Davis: David, I want to propose something to you. Does it involve protection? Uh, well, the continuing the theme, [00:22:00] in fact, it’s the no use of protection. I want to make the point that at talked about marketing, we pay close attention to everything, and so I want you to stand in the middle of the road. I will drive my car at you at 95 kilometers an hour, and at the last minute apply the brakes so that my car stops and just.
Touches your cane softly.
David Olney: Are you up for this? I, I want you to have some advanced driver training and then we’ll reconsider.
Steve Davis: Well, the reason I mention this, David, is there was a Ford Falcon ad that you might, dear listener, remember from 1978, should you have been born at that time in which there was a big racetrack in the middle of nowhere.
And standing on it. Were about five, I think, of the top drivers racing, car drivers for Ford. Uh, Alan Moffitt. You remember that name, don’t you, David? Absolutely. Uh, Colin Bond, [00:23:00] John Goss, Dick Johnson. I was a big fan of Dick. He would’ve been the youngest of them at that point, I would imagine. Yes. Probably why I associated with them.
Yeah. Ron Dixon and Murray Carter and what they did. Is they stood on the racetrack in place of witchers hats while another driver in a big hulking Ford Falcon came tearing at them at high speed and weaved between them. This is before the age. Of fancy schmancy special effects, they were having skin in the game.
Let’s have a listen to the ad
Ford Falcon Ad: between them, these six professional racing drivers have won just about everything worth winning in Australian motorsport. They came to the Ford High speed test track today to prove a point, this is a production model, 78 Falcon 500. Now Falcon Suspension is matched to high quality steel belt [00:24:00] radial tires, and is engineered for smooth ride as well as for handling.
The Falcon is now traveling at over 90 kilometers per hour.
Once again, and the point we are making is that no matter how a car looks, when it’s driven around witches hats, it’s how a car performs. When your life’s at stake. That really counts. We never felt better about Falcon, and Falcon never felt better.
Steve Davis: I think that’s a stunning piece of advertising because it would make me, would’ve made me then does make me now think, wow, yes, I can actually trust the safety of that car. It’s going to hold its own because they’ve risked their pedigree.
David Olney: It’s such an interesting ad because you know, we [00:25:00] dunno who the driver in the car is.
Steve Davis: No, we don’t. So
David Olney: it’d be so interesting to know who was in the car that they all felt comfortable doing this. And I know you could film this in a way so that it’s probably a little bit safer than it really is, but it’s not really very safe and it’s a whole different perception of safety. Now. All the safety in our cars is you can screw up monumentally everyone else around you can screw up monumentally and your car will stop you dying.
This is actually saying this is a precise piece of machinery. Where if you switch on, you can make sure you and everyone else get home safely. Complete inversion of how we define safety now,
Steve Davis: and even here, I, I notice, I think a starker contrast. This is saying you will not do harm to others. And the ads today are.
You’ll smash through lots of other people, kill a few pedestrians, but you, you’ll be fine. And your little baby in the back are gonna be really happy. Yeah. And as people [00:26:00] buy bigger and bigger and bigger trucks on our roads, uh, I think that’s just writ large. That, that thought that long as I’m safe. Tough luck baby.
David Olney: Yeah. No concept that you’ve got skin in the game. Everyone else has got skin in the game. Mm-hmm. So how about we all play the game better?
Steve Davis: Yeah. What a, what a fantastic ad. I, does it make you enthused to do the ad? I’m talking about for, talked about marketing. Like
David Olney: I said, if you go do the advanced driver training course, I, I, I would consider it.
It’s always caveats out there. Always caveat. Well there is. That’s why these six guys had run, had won everything you can win in Australian motor racing. ’cause they did the hard work. Yeah. Well, I mean, they,
Steve Davis: they were top of their game. They had nothing else to live for, so it’s so, a bit like you, David, you’ve, you’ve achieved everything you’ve wanted.
Why not put it on the line for a, for a swan song? Uh, but I won’t hold you to, okay, I’ll, I’ll pull, I’ll pull back. Don’t worry. I’ll do, I actually wouldn’t mind doing one of those advanced driving causes and I’ll happily come along and ride [00:27:00] shotgun and hang out the window and yell, scream in Yahoo. It’ll be awesome.
But here’s the final thought. Per per Cassidy, we do reflect on whether this would work today. I think. Depending on how it’s done, this still has legs. The thing you’d have to fight about is this culture that everything’s fake news. It must have obviously been a trick. It might actually be watered down ’cause no one would believe it was real.
David Olney: Yeah. This level of skin in the game, everyone would be incredulous now. That anyone would take the risk for a product.
Steve Davis: Yeah, that’s right. This is the age of responsibility. Personal responsibility, and now we kind of hope that someone else is being responsible for us and everything.
David Olney: Very strange times where there’s not skin in the game and personal responsibility is said endlessly.
But it’s very hard to define what it now means.
Steve Davis: Let’s come outside now, David. We’re finished. Um, now don’t get suspicious. I’ll just let you stand. I’m gonna stand near a [00:28:00] tree. Yeah. And if you hear a car approaching, just relax or jump at the last second.
Caitlin Davis: Thank you for listening to talking about marketing. If you enjoyed it, please leave a rating. Or a review in your favorite podcast app, and if you found it helpful, please share it with others. Steve and David always welcome your comments and questions, so send them to [email protected]. And finally, the last word to Oscar Wilde.
There’s only one thing worse than being talked about and that’s not being talked about.