Episode 113 / MG Motor UK / David Pugh / Marketing Director / The TV Remote
Turn Back to Old-School Marketing For An Unexpected Advantage in Brand Building
David Pugh likes to say he’s not a marketer at all. He started his career in engineering, then switched to business and eventually started working in the automotive industry – today, he is the Marketing Director at MG Motor UK Ltd. Despite his love of analytics and numbers, David’s Shiny New Object is something unexpected: the TV remote.
David absolutely loves marketing, in the most unequivocal way we’ve seen pronounced on the show. This is because he finds it to be the one job which has not only allowed him to work with interesting people and on interesting topics, but also because of how it works: “Marketing is about getting under their skin and I don’t think there’s anything more fascinating than how human beings work.”
Marketers are “the luckiest people in the world” for doing the jobs they’re doing, according to David. And he credits going back to studying with allowing him access into the marketing world. Deciding to go to business school meant that he expanded his horizons, met lots of amazing people, and eventually the automotive industry in finance to then switch into marketing. This is David’s best investment, in time, resource and money, which has yielded an amazing benefit.
As an engineer, David loves analysing numbers and measuring the impact of his work. However, through navigating the beginning of digital marketing, he realised that untargeted, mass ads are actually extremely effective. This is why his Shiny New Object is the TV remote. Ultimately, “people have been interacting with advertising since the TV remote” – choosing to watch a TV ad is as powerful as clicking on a targeted ad.
The reason David thinks untargeted marketing is so effective is that it interacts with our need as human beings to communicate our identity and to achieve a standing in our peer group. As an example, someone watching a Corona beer advert depicting laid-back, relaxed people at the beach, will then buy this beer to identify themselves as that type of person when they go to a party. And this is not because the ad was targeted at them, but because they know that everyone else has also seen this ad and will connect their choice of product with the identity conveyed in the ad. In David’s view, therefore, “sometimes the untargeted [ad] is just as powerful as being targeted.”
To find out more about David’s top marketing tip, how he views the perfect blend of marketing strategies and his favourite marketing books, listen to the podcast
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