The path to greater mental bandwidth isn’t doing more with multitasking magic but achieving unconscious competence that frees your mind for what truly matters.
From Christopher Hitchens’ reflections on truth-telling to the paramedic’s competency cycle, discover why mastering basics creates mental space for what truly matters in both crisis situations and everyday business.
Christopher Hitchens challenges us to speak simple truths without fear of consequences, while Leigh Anderson’s paramedic mindset shows how unconscious competence frees our mental capacity for deeper human connection.
Website editing emergencies remind us that preventable technical mishaps often steal valuable focus, while the Poly Waffle’s unlikely resurrection raises questions about whether nostalgia alone can sustain a brand.
Get ready to take notes.
Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes
02:15 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.
Hitchens on Truth: Knowing the Lie When You See It
In a clip from EconTalk, Christopher Hitchens brings us the refreshingly direct assertion that while objective truth may be elusive, we can absolutely identify a lie when we encounter one. The late journalist and intellectual powerhouse argues that making the conscious decision to avoid dishonesty forces us into the more difficult but ultimately rewarding path of meaningful communication.
As our hosts explore this idea, they consider how fear of consequences often leads business communicators to meander around uncomfortable truths rather than speaking with clarity and kindness. This self-censorship, they suggest, creates cognitive overload as we struggle to remember what we’ve smoothed over rather than simply telling the truth—even when delivered with appropriate care and consideration.
11:30 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.
The Paramedic’s Competency Cycle: Mastery Creates Mental Space
Drawing from Leigh Anderson’s book “The Paramedic Mindset,” our hosts unpack a four-stage competency cycle that applies brilliantly to business contexts. From unconscious incompetence (where we don’t know what we don’t know) through conscious incompetence and conscious competence, we ultimately reach unconscious competence—where skills become so automatic that our attention can shift to higher-level awareness.
This final stage proves crucial for emergency responders who must perform technical tasks flawlessly while remaining attuned to the emotional states of people experiencing their worst day. For business leaders, this same principle applies—when core skills become second nature, we create mental space for customer empathy, strategic thinking, and identifying opportunities for further improvement.
23:00 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.
The Golden Rule of Website Editing
A brief but crucial reminder about WordPress website management: when editing pages built with Elementor, always hover over “Edit in Elementor” first. If clickable, use it to maintain your site’s beautiful framework—otherwise, you risk seeing the behind-the-scenes “hodgepodge” that can trigger panic about “destroying” your website.
This simple technical guideline perfectly illustrates how preventable errors often create unnecessary stress and derail productivity, reinforcing the episode’s theme that mastering basics creates space for what truly matters.
26:30 Perspicacity This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case study from the past.
The Poly Waffle Paradox: When Nostalgia Isn’t Enough
The hosts reflect on an ancient (1981) advertisement for the now-discontinued Poly Waffle chocolate bar—a product that, despite its unfortunate visual resemblance to “a human turd,” earned devoted fans through its delicious combination of chocolate, wafer and marshmallow.
Despite recent attempts to resurrect the brand in a different form, the hosts question whether nostalgia alone can sustain interest when the new product fails to capture the original’s distinctive qualities. This light-hearted segment offers a cautionary tale about reviving brands without understanding their essential appeal—sometimes memories are best left unaltered.
Transcript This transcript was generated using Descript.
A Machine-Generated Transcript – Beware Errors
TAMP S07E06
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 ity. 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.
Steve Davis: David, whenever you talk to me, do you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Every single time? 100%.
David Olney: I’d have to say probably not. ’cause I don’t remember all the words I’ve ever said to you, so I, it would seem arrogant to say it’s always been [00:01:00] 100% the truth.
Steve Davis: That sounds like some, uh, riggle words there.
David Olney: Yep. I’m pretty proud of ’em actually. I, I think I’ve come off sounding. Reasonably. Okay.
Steve Davis: If you can you think of our exchanges of what sort of topic do you think you’d be most inclined to wriggle a little white lie about?
David Olney: It’s funny, as we’re talking about, I remember probably the first time we met, which was at the podcast festival and we didn’t know each other yet, and you’d just been on stage with the person who used to be Fat Cat.
And I was trying to process how Fat Cat really had a voice, and I think I was probably feeling a large amount of incredulity. And yet when we were introduced, I remember trying to say nice things about the guy who once was Fat Cat, even though I was actually utterly
Steve Davis: confused. I’m not sure you even answered that question properly, but it’s probably against all the rules in, uh, industry for me to even be asking you that, that question, isn’t it?
I shouldn’t,
David Olney: yeah, it’s fine to ask the question, but the best answer I can give is I [00:02:00] don’t think I gave a complete answer, which is. That was weird, dude. Well, I believe you and that might be true.
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: in the person segment. Uh, this episode, uh, you may or may not be familiar with Christopher Hitchens. Now, Christopher was a very, very astute and accomplished journalist. He would be immaculate in his detail in, in what he would be writing about. And then, uh, thinking about out loud, out loud, in his opinion pieces, et cetera.
And midway to the end of his career, he [00:03:00] found a calling as one of the four horsemen, uh, which were four very well-known, um, atheists in in public discourse. And he built quite a name for himself in debating everyone from top bishops and priests and theologians, and pastors, et cetera, and basically tore most of them to shreds.
But in, always in an eloquent and astute way. I, I don’t recall ever seeing him be nasty.
David Olney: I don’t think so. The fact is you could end up eviscerated on the floor with him still being enormously polite.
Steve Davis: Hmm. And so it was with great joy that I saw that one of my favorite podcasts, EconTalk, for some reason, something possessed me, David, I, I think it was because I was.
At home, rocking back and forth in the corner thinking, did David lie to me today? And, and I just, for, for my sucker, for my comfort, I looked [00:04:00] into the econ talk and I thought, I wonder if Christopher Hitchens has ever been on it? And sure enough, back in about, I think it was 2006 or one of those times, he was on and got talking about George Orwell, uh, and of course 1994, his great, one of his great novels.
And in this conversation. There was a really important point about truth telling that I wanted to share and toss around with you, David. So let’s have a listen.
Christopher Hitchens: I was thinking this morning of something, actually while I was right, trying to write my own memoir, the job of the intellectual, the so-called public intellectuals. We know for some reason doomed to call it is or ought to be to say something along the following lines. It’s more complicated than that. You mustn’t simplify this.
It’s more, there’s more complexity to the subject that that’s what an intellectual should be doing to public discourse. One thinks, but then there are occasions when it seems to me that the, the, the reverse is the case. That actually what [00:05:00] the, the really thoughtful person should be saying to is actually it’s simple.
Couldn’t agree more. Do not make complexity here where the nine is required. I was trying to imagine what Barack Obama would say if he was asked about Sam Rushi. Would he say, of course I’m forced free expression over religious sensibilities. Every time he wouldn’t be able to do it. I suddenly remember, he’s never been asked, but in his campaign to remake our relationship with the Muslim world.
No one’s ever asked in the fat book question, could you just give a straight reply and no dancing around? I bet you he could not. Tough one. Whereas the CR critical, the most boring thing I ever said about solo rushdi was I’m was the only thing I wanted to say, which was, you have to be on his side.
There’s no other side you can possibly be on. Don’t accuse me of something complicated. I know I understand what complexities people want to introduce, but I’m, I’m here to repudiate them and say, no, no, keep it simple. Orwell’s very good in that way. Um, it’s very hard to tell what the truth is and some people will even say that you can’t quite do that, that there may not [00:06:00] even be such a thing as objection truth.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try for it, but. Crucially, it doesn’t mean the following attempted corollary, which is you wouldn’t know a lie when you saw. You may not be able to tell the truth every time, not tell it. I mean, detect it. Yeah. Uh, identify it, but you sure can identify a lie and if you refuse yourself the lie, say, I just won’t tell any, even if it suits me or my cause, I won’t do it.
I make that simple renunciation. It’s amazing what you’ll have to do instead. This is some bill might say simplistic, but in that case. Then the word simplistic deserves an upgrade.
Steve Davis: Do you agree with Christopher Hitchens that although we can’t always tell if it’s the truth, we can tell if we’re telling lies or hearing lies? I think
David Olney: he’s more certain about it than I am. Mm-hmm. I, I actually take what he’s saying to mean. What is your moral intent when you open your mouth? Are [00:07:00] you in alignment with your moral intent or are you willing to say something immoral that goes against your beliefs?
And can you tell the difference if someone is in alignment with their moral intent or is willing to say something just to get a win that is, you know, morally questionable?
Steve Davis: In small, in business, there are times when you are in an awkward situation, supposedly, where the truth is fairly simple. But we meander around it.
We don’t cut to the chase. We don’t wanna hurt people. We have talked about on this podcast before that great damage is done. I think Jefferson Fisher talked about this, the next conversation, um. Damage is done by meandering around the place and not cutting, uh, getting to the point is that something, I mean, you get a bad review, you get a grumpy customer.
There are gonna be times when you know what the truth is, is what Christopher Hitchens [00:08:00] arguing David. That although we can speak kindly, we should have the courage to speak simply.
David Olney: I think that’s very much a part of it, and that’s where it links to Allwell who, you know, like Albert. Albert Kmu, can say more with a few words than anyone else of the 20th century.
Great authors, Allwell and Kmu are the ones who, in a single sentence can tell you about the whole world. So that ability to speak to the essence of things and make their meaning incredibly clear. Is amazing. And again, it’s another thing Hitchens was great at. He could use big, long words and he could, you know, come up with the most amazing paragraphs, but in a paragraph there’d be 10 related ideas that made his meaning absolutely clear.
’cause each bit reinforced the bit before and the bit after
Steve Davis: reading between the lines. I think what Christopher Hitchens is saying here is, especially with the Barack Obama reference he made, but also to public intellectuals. What stops [00:09:00] them from just speaking the simple, kind truth is fear of ramifications, and so it becomes a form of self-censorship.
What would you say to someone who counters back and say, look, David, that’s well and true. Well and good. You say that, but if I say to someone, look, I, I really would like to help you or offer something, but you have. This, you have not followed what we trained you in doing and have caused damage for which time will now be needed to repair it, and there must be some responsibility that you carry for that.
What would you say to them? Because many will think, oh no, then they’re just gonna go crazy. We’ll get one star reviews and the world will fall down.
David Olney: It’s that terrible thing of, do we just keep brushing? You know, things under the carpet or, or smoothing things over, or do we have a forthright, you know, conversation?
I’ll always remember a, a friend of mine, an ex-Navy Seal in the [00:10:00] early two thousands when everyone was, you know, using web chat boards, you know, to have conversations about things they were interested in. You know, his signature line was telling the truth means not having to remember what you said. And I always loved that line because at the end of the day, to smooth something over, you have to then remember what you smoothed over.
And you end up in cognitive overload with all this stuff that leaves situations unfinished. Like there’s almost always a way to preface something by saying, you know, I need to say something negative here, but I’m not saying it to be hurtful. I’m saying, because I believe there’s an important point where I’ve learned something and I’d like to let you know what I’ve learned and see if this is useful for
Steve Davis: you.
That’s actually a timely, um, recollection of yours because I think you’ve just done a Kao. Orwell to Hitchens by bringing up that thing. When you speak the truth, you don’t need to remember, don’t remember what you said, what
David Olney: you said. Like, I have no idea where John found the line. I’m, I’m sure he didn’t [00:11:00] invent it.
No, but the fact that he put that as his signature block, I think was a, a profound statement on the kind of human being he was. Have you remembered anything you’ve lied about yet? Mm, I I can’t remember having to remember anything, so I must be okay.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number two principles. You can never be overdressed or over-educated Oscar Wilde.
Steve Davis: Something a little bit different in the principles segment this time. And Dave. Oh, can you hear that? Is that a siren?
David Olney: There was a weird noise. Yeah, but the pattern has not continued.
Steve Davis: No, I feel like a normal driver who ignores an ambulance as it’s coming up behind them and trying to get past, uh, as if nothing is there.
And it’s the perfect segue for us, David, because we’re talking [00:12:00] about the paramedic mindset. Uh, Leigh Anderson, I’m glad you introduced me to his book. It’s a great book. It’s a cracker of a book, and I know that we’ve, we, we’ve talked about, and we’ll talk about again, uh, Harry Moffitt, who comes from the realm of the.
A s soldier or operator, but this is an ambo and they really do get, without necessarily. Not always, but not, not necessarily getting at risk of being shot at a knife, which I, I can, I do, concede does happen in certain parts of certain cities, but at the most part, they’re at the pointy end for us wading through our muck to save us and having to deal with that potential for vicarious trauma that they have to deal with.
David Olney: Yeah,
Steve Davis: every
David Olney: day they’re dealing with our worst day. They are, aren’t they? Which is an awful thing to have to do, and they’re remarkable people for coping with it as well as they do. Is that [00:13:00] what makes someone like a Leigh Anderson compelling to listen to? I think so, because to stay in the career and not be totally jaded or broken by, it means you have to be such a reflective.
Person that you’ve seen that I’m seeing people on their worst day and I can’t let those worst days make every day my worst day. Like the sophistication of working out how to help people under those difficult circumstances without letting the harm stick to cause permanent damage is quite remarkable.
Steve Davis: They hold a special place in my world. I mean, they’ve intervened to help my members from time to time. I can never walk past an ambo without stopping and saying, excuse me, I just wanna say thank you for what you do. I always do that. I dunno if they get sick of it or not.
David Olney: I hope
Steve Davis: not.
David Olney: I hope it helps them with those difficult days
Steve Davis: because the thing that just caught me off guard in this book was him telling the story.
[00:14:00] ’cause yet they’re human. People make mistakes from time to time, but there was one point where he did everything that he should have done and the family of the person who knitted the ambo filed a complaint against him. That was groundless, I believe, in the end, but it’s such a slap in the face for someone who every day, multiple times is fronting up.
To do their all for us. It, it feels wrong. I mean, there’s gonna be cases where that might be needed, David, but it goes against my intuitions. It’s, I dunno if you are the same on that front,
David Olney: uh, it could breed a kind of resentment. About people that could really be damaging. Yeah. To your sense of self and the fact that Leigh’s learned to deal with these things as well as he had, and he makes the point in the book, not everyone learns to deal with this stuff.
A lot of people leave the profession totally burnt out and
Steve Davis: basically hating people before that happens to you. I want to get to the main topic for principles, and that is the competency cycle that Leigh talks about. You have a nice [00:15:00] way of. Recounting what he means by that so that we might pick up something that we can apply in our own life.
So the point of the
David Olney: competent cycle is to recognize we don’t start as competent and at, you know, at the bottom level, in the competent cycle, you are incompetent and you are unconscious of your incompetence. Now there’s a famous psychological concept that fits with this called the Dunning Kruger Effect.
Mm-hmm. And the Dunning Kruger effect is people are so dumb. And so Blisteringly ignorant of how dumb they are, that they’re a danger to themselves and others. ’cause they think they understand the world they’re in and what to do and normally put themselves and everyone else around them in danger.
Steve Davis: And yet Americans vote them into the P Anyway, sorry.
That’s a whole other weird issue. Yeah.
David Olney: Yeah. So Leigh’s point of saying this is that if people are stuck at that point, they really are a danger to themselves and others. The first thing you’ve gotta do is recognize your incompetence. So [00:16:00] stage two in the competence cycle is you are incompetent but conscious of your incompetence.
You recognize that you don’t know things, that you want to learn things, and you make the decision from now on. I’m gonna admit when I dunno, and I’m gonna try and learn. That then gets you to stage three, which is you are competent and conscious. You are conscious of all the things you’re trying to learn.
You are conscious of where your competence has got to. You are conscious of what things you still don’t know, so at this point, everything you do, you are having to think about how to do it. You are having to think about where its limits are. You’re having to think about when you’ve exceeded its limits and to remember that that’s the next thing you wanna learn.
So it’s a very dangerous stage to be in because you’ve now got quite a bit of competence, but you can’t use any of it without a lot of thinking as you’re doing it. [00:17:00] And then when you get to the fourth level of the cycle, it’s that you are highly competent. But unconscious. And what that means is you can do the things you’ve learned so well that you don’t need to be thinking about them as you’re doing them.
Instead, you think about the situation around you, the people around you. You see the big picture. And the point he’s making in the book is, as a paramedic, you have to get to this fourth level. You have to be so highly. Competent that you can be unconscious of doing the technical tasks necessary to be a paramedic.
Because what you need to be coping with and being aware of is all the people who are having the worst day of their life. ’cause they need you to be able to focus on them, to manage them so they’re not a danger to themselves or you, the paramedic or any bystander. It’s an incredible way to describe a cycle that you know, I’ve seen [00:18:00] repeatedly in special operation soldiers.
They go through exactly the same cycle. I’ve worked with emergency medicine doctors, trained them in complex problem solving. They have exactly the same cycle, and I never knew this cycle how to name. It’s so nice now to be able to explain this cycle to people and that we can all do it in any area of our life that we want to get better at.
How do you know where you are in the cycle? I think you need to be honest enough to say, I need to start with the assumption that I might might both be incompetent and unconscious of how incompetent I am and investigate with that level of beginner mind. To just make sure you’re not a danger to yourself or others.
Steve Davis: The coin just dropped for me at the top of this. Or the, the end of this cycle where you are competent and unconscious. You, you’ve, you’ve got that competency as reflex, as instinct, as habit you can [00:19:00] operate. It builds in breathing space so that you can be situationally aware of those around you and where this applies in business.
I think if you’re a chef or running front of house in a. Restaurant or you are the paddle boat steamer and you’ve got day trippers coming on. When you are at this level of competency and ability to be unconscious about it, because you you’ve got that down pat, then it would follow that. If someone is, you can be more aware and have more empathy.
That someone could be having a really shitty day or there could be a squabble in the family, or there could be someone who forgot to tell you that they can’t eat chives or whatever it is, and there’s a all this emotional current. If you’re at this level, I would think, tell me if you think I’m wrong, that you have greater capacity to do that other part of what you have to do, which is the, the connection to other humans, the, the [00:20:00] customer service, if you will.
David Olney: That is a huge part of it, and I think the bit that Leigh doesn’t say in his book, but what I’ve seen working with elite soldiers and you know, emergency care medical people, is it’s also. Where you see the anomalies, it’s where you see the limits of your competence. It’s where you work out what to focus on later to get even more competent.
’cause by not having to think about doing a technical thing, you can see if it’s got any limitations. You can see if there’s a better way to do it. You can see if you need to explain what you’re about to do to calm some of the stressed people around you, down, so you know as much as possible, you know, the, the more the system works.
To give you the freedom to apply your limited cognitive ability to the bigger picture, the better off the outcome’s gonna be today, but also you’re setting yourself up to do a better job tomorrow.
Steve Davis: So if this has really raised the stakes for a sec, given someone a sense of [00:21:00] hope or a a way forward, a pathway, and they’re a bit pent up now, what should they do?
Should they. Buy a copy of Leigh Anderson’s book The Paramedic Mindset, or just dial triple zero. Definitely buy
David Olney: a copy of the book, but also sit down and work out what thing it is that you want to be competent at next, and give it a name and come up with a timeframe and work out how you are going to get good at it.
Who are you gonna work with? What course are you gonna do? What book are you gonna read? Who are you going to ask to, you know, keep an eye on you to see does it look like you’re learning and getting better? You know, you want structure to become competent, otherwise you just get demoralized.
Steve Davis: And look, I know we don’t do any really, uh, pushing or marketing in this.
Podcast, but to me this is exactly why we offer your mentoring your business one-to-one, mentoring people even to check in on a monthly basis or every couple of months. [00:22:00] Your don’t, you’ll be blushing here, but you are the perfect sounding board to listen here, test. And prescribe a few things to go forward and just be that sounding board and perhaps that measuring stick to help, uh, with the competency cycle or anything else.
David Olney: Yeah. ’cause the trick is it’s not, you give people an answer. It’s, you get them to reflect on should they really be satisfied with the answer they’ve got. And if not, why And what are they gonna do? It’s about helping people to help themselves in a faster way with more confidence. And, you know, eventually more competence ’cause they recognize the value of building up their competence through mentoring.
Caitlin Davis: Uh, four Ps. Number three problems. I asked the question for the best reason possible. Simple curiosity. Oscar Wilde,[00:23:00]
Steve Davis: David, it’s funny, we talked about Christopher Hitchens earlier in this podcast because he would rail against the Golden Rule, the uh, the New Testament, et cetera. But I have a golden rule. I like to, um, impress upon people for whom we build websites, particularly when we build a WordPress website and we use the Elementor framework within it in the problem segment.
I just want to publicly highlight one golden rule. I, I try my best to go over and over and make this part of the DNA, but every now and then someone just makes a little mistake and they, they, they end up panicking David. You know what it’s like the, the, the, the sky falls down and it’s horrible when you’ve put hours and
David Olney: hours of work in and you make one bad choice and it looks like all your hours have gone out the window.
Steve Davis: That is overwhelming. So when we do the sites for someone, we do all this, you don’t have to worry about it. But there are a number of people we work with who, [00:24:00] who are, don’t have. Budget, they, they, they can’t justify or afford the budget to have it all done. They wanna do as much themselves, which is fine.
But what happens is when you use Elementor as a framework within WordPress, you still put the same elements in the words, the pictures, et cetera, but it. Has been given instructions by us on how to present them to the world in a really beautiful manner. That’s in keeping with your branding, et cetera. So when you go in the edit screen, and this is if you don’t have the WordPress website, just tune out for 30 seconds.
This won’t take long. Please remember this. You go to edit the page you are looking at, and you have two buttons at the top of the page. One of them is edit in Elementor, and the other one is edit page. The golden rule is this. If you’re going to now edit. That page you’re talking about, always hover your mouse over the edit in elemental [00:25:00] button first because if your cursor does not change to something that’s clickable, then you know that you can go to edit page.
And this page has just been built simply within the native. WordPress framework. But if your mouse does change to something clickable, by all means click it because it means you are going to make changes to your content within this nice framework where everything looks nice. What happened this morning at the time of recording is uh, a woman emailed in quite distress feeling she has destroyed her website.
All she’d done was clicked. Edit a page. All the nice framework and instructions get ignored, and you just see the hodgepodge of all the elements together behind the scenes and all of that beautiful work seemed to have gone. It was remedied within 30 seconds. It. Uh, and so that’s possible. But I just wanted to take this opportunity for a very short problem [00:26:00] segment.
If you have Elementor that you are running, which is a beautiful framework inside WordPress, remember this before you go to edit a page or a post, hover over edit in Elementor first. If it lets you click it, go forth. If it doesn’t click edit post or edit page.
Caitlin Davis: Uh, four Ps number four per sy. The one duty we, yo, to history is to rewrite it. Oscar Wilde.
Steve Davis: David, how would you describe a long diatribe of meaning this gibberish from a parrot. It’s a poly waffle. Oh, I thought that was gonna be a harder joke to actually cra Nah, sorry. You set it up so well. Yeah, we are talking about the poly waffle in per sy because [00:27:00] again, something a little bit different. We, we are looking at an old ad from many years ago, I think it was 1991, from memory, which is, you know, in most of our lives, that’s a long time ago, don’t you think?
81, actually. 81. Even longer. And it’s an ad for potty waffle, which was an iconic Australian piece of confectionery that looked like. A human turd because how sad it was. Well, it was about, it depends on where you sit on the Bristol sta uh, scale. But, uh, they tended to be about once, about six inches long, uh, round, very diameter of an inch or two and a half centimeters, and you had brown knobbly.
Outside, which was the chocolate covering over the, uh, the wafer, um, uh, cylinder. And it was inside, it was stuffed with beautiful, [00:28:00] soft white marshmallow. Did I describe that well enough?
David Olney: I think it’s an excellent description of something that tastes great. Looks terrible.
Steve Davis: Yes. Anyway, um. They are no more.
Although men’s in Adelaide, in South Australia makes a variation. We’ve already talked about that. Let’s have a listen to this ad from 1981
Polly Waffle Ad: into
Polly. What’s a mouthful? A creamy, creamy sensor. So your beds are catching you, Polly. Poll. What a mouthful. New Polly Waffle with an extra Rey Center. What a mouthful Mouth.
Steve Davis: David, that ad was [00:29:00] shot out the front of Luna Park and all the actors were in sort of the early eighties, harsh new romantics, uh, black lipstick, you know, heavy black eyeliner, uh, fur and leather, and. And a bit like the way you are dressed now, but what, what, what’s your impression of that ad?
David Olney: I’m very glad I never heard that ad.
’cause poly waffles were awesome, but if I’d heard that ad it would be like, am I willing to eat these things in public after that ad?
Steve Davis: It’s interesting, isn’t it? This is like a reverse per pica. It is. Because I think that was one of the most awful ads I’ve ever seen or heard in my life. And had I not already tasted poly waffle, it would not make, it would put you off forever.
Yeah. Whereas the poly waffle itself was beautiful. You could probably run those ads and not, I, I just, it wouldn’t make me stop eating them, but I can’t see it. It wouldn’t make you eat them. No.
David Olney: And maybe it should be bought back now for the resurrected poly waffle bite.
Steve Davis: Yes. We have to be a bit gentle [00:30:00] here because, um.
Men’s is an iconic South Australian company and they brought back. The poly waffle sort of, they do poly, they don’t do the long turd like, uh, extrusions. What they do are little hard nuggets. That would be sort of one on the, on the, on the Bristol stool index, maybe two, um, sort a little round ball of marshmallow, the waffle, and.
Sadly not up to snuff. Well,
David Olney: the reviews have not been kind, the reviews, it’s not like I’ve even tried one, so I cannot say, but the reviews have not been kind.
Steve Davis: Yeah. I think if you’re a new young person, you’ve never tried a poly waffle before, uh, and you want really super sweet, hard nuggets of. Nugget ness, confection ness.
Um, there might be, there might be a market, it’d be interesting to see what the sale figures are doing, but if you are nostalgic for a poly waffle, I think that’s where it’s a, it’s a stumbling.
David Olney: If you’re at the theater about to listen to [00:31:00] Kate Sobrano or Leo Sayer, it’s not the right poly waffle.
Steve Davis: Well, it is if you wanna throw something at them.
That’s true. Uh, it’s like the, the, the Jaffa, you roll down the. Um, the floor, but the poly waffle bite, you can just ping at someone. Take a little slingshot. Maybe don’t do that. That’s not a responsible thing for me to have mentioned. Be responsible in the nice new furnishings of the theater. Yes, exactly.
Uh, so this is a weird per per cassity. Normally we got an old add and say, would it work today? Well, we’ll still ask that question even though we don’t think it was possibly or that successful back then would this. Ad have any relevance
David Olney: today? Other than nostalgia? No. If it was a new ad for a new product, I think it would harm its
Steve Davis: cause.
Yeah. I, I think you’re right. I think it’s one of those things best forgotten. Uh, unlike and, and possibly with what we’ve got available at the moment, maybe the poly waffle is best forgotten, so we don’t have any hankerings for it. [00:32:00] Would that be fair to say?
David Olney: Well, the whole point is I didn’t. Know that it finally disappeared and I didn’t know it had been reborn because I couldn’t actually tell you the last time I ate a mainstream chocolate bar.
It’s probably like 20 years
Steve Davis: and there’s the rub, but maybe you had moved on, you’d graduated from being a chocolate bar eater.
David Olney: Yeah. Now I just buy nice chocolate and go, well just go straight to the core thing. I like.
Steve Davis: Just final weird question, if there was, say a platter and people had unwrapped a poly waffle on it and put it on a plate near you, given of course being blind, what’s the risk that you would have?
Sensed it as being a human turd.
David Olney: I think the smell of Oh, the not bad chocolate. Yes. And the strong sweet smell of the marshmallow. Like part of the thing with the poly waffle was you open the pack and it was very definitely, you knew it was a poly waffle. Hmm, that’s true. So I would [00:33:00] hope that the smell
Steve Davis: would save it from its appearance.
Uh, fair enough. And I should just point out that one of the things men’s does sell is a poly waffle car. Uh, fragrant the, uh, thing, you know, the card that you, you put in your car and you can cardio deodorize it. Yeah. So
David Olney: it indicates
Steve Davis: how many people do actually love the smell. Yes. Must be a heap, but it must be really hard to make it.
I know that. Um, I believe the original people making it were the machine that was able to make that particular configuration. They were getting older and older and breaking down all the time, and it was gonna cost a lot to recreate it. But, um,
David Olney: and it would be a portion control thing these days too, of giving people away to have a bite going, well, I’ve had my, my bad calories, but I’ve only had a few bad calories.
Steve Davis: Well, that’s true. And they’re not easily breakable like a Golden North giant twin.
David Olney: Yep. Terrible things happen. They just explode and become a mess.
Steve Davis: So you can’t have your tur to eat it too. No, you really can’t. [00:34:00] You need more rabbit and kangaroo style versions. You need more fiber. Well, I think we’ve contributed some waffle to this topic.
I don’t know how helpful it’s been, but how helpful has any confectionery ever really been?
David Olney: I think the most important thing is no parrot named Polly was injured in the making of this episode.
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 Wild. There’s only one thing worse than being talked about and that’s not being talked [00:35:00] about.