Sleeping Barber - A Marketing Podcast

Day three at Cannes Lions revealed something unexpected.

Coming into the festival, many predicted AI would dominate every conversation.

Instead, another topic has quietly taken centre stage:

Creators.

Not creator hype. Not influencer marketing. Creator effectiveness.

Presented by System1, today's Cannes Cut explores one of the biggest conversations happening across the Croisette. Marc and Vassilis reflect on another packed day at Cannes...

This episode has been presented by System1.

Everyone talks about the full funnel. Amazon has actually built it. Day 2 of the Sleeping Barber's Cannes Cut takes Marc and V from the Amazon port activation, a full marina-length brand experience housing a cafe, a speakeasy, 30 meeting rooms, and a stage headlined by Shaquille O'Neal and Oprah, to a sit-down interview with Lauren Anderson, US Head of the Brand Innovation Lab.

Lauren expla...

This episode has been presented by System1.

What happens when Byron Sharp, Mark Ritson, System1, creators, AI, and Cannes Lions all collide on Day One?

In the first edition of our Cannes Cut series, presented by System1, Marc and V unpack the biggest themes emerging from Cannes Lions 2026, including why creativity is increasingly being judged through the lens of effectiveness, why marketers may be spreading budgets too thin, and why ...

What if the biggest problem in marketing isn't your message, your targeting, or your budget? What if it's the map you're using?

For more than a century, marketers have relied on funnels, customer journeys, and pipeline stages to explain how people buy.

The problem?

People don't move in straight lines.

In this Sharp Cut, Marc and Vassilis unpack why buying behaviour looks far more like a messy search pattern than a carefully planned jou...

For years, Cannes Lions has been the home of creativity. This year, it feels like effectiveness is taking center stage.

In this special Cannes preview edition of The Barber's Brief, Marc and Vassilis discuss what they're most excited to explore at Cannes Lions 2026.

From the surprising reunion of Mark Ritson and Byron Sharp, to the growing influence of effectiveness research, creator marketing, AI, and measurement, this conversation ...

Most marketers think great creative comes from better talent. Karen Pearce made a different case.

In this Post Pod discussion, Marc and Vassilis reflect on their conversation with Karen Pearce, Partner at Rethink and one of the leaders behind some of the most awarded creative work in the world.

The discussion explores why creativity often dies inside organizations before it ever reaches the market, how criticism can become a cultural...

Most people assume award-winning creative work is a high-wire act: brilliant, risky, and impossible to repeat.

Karen Pearce of Rethink makes the opposite case.

Fresh off Ad Age's 2026 Agency of the Year and ADWEEK's 2025 Independent Agency of the Year, and as the most-awarded independent agency in the world last year, Rethink keeps producing famous, business-moving work on purpose.

Recorded as a Cannes Lions lead-up, this conversati...

What if the biggest threat to your strategy isn't a competitor, a budget cut, or AI?

What if it's busyness?

In this Sharp Cut, Marc Binkley and Vassilis Douros tackle one of marketing and leadership's biggest comfort blankets: the belief that activity equals progress.

Drawing on the work of Roger Martin, Richard Rumelt, Michael Porter, Henry Mintzberg, and decades of research in strategy, psychology, and organizational behaviour, they...

Everyone is talking about AI replacing marketers.

But what if the bigger problem isn't AI at all?

In this episode of The Barber's Brief, Marc Binkley and Vassilis Douros explore a series of stories that challenge some of marketing's biggest assumptions.

They unpack new research showing that most CMOs aren't worried about AI replacing jobs. They're worried about whether their teams have the skills to use it effectively. The conversatio...

Most marketers talk about growth through media, performance, and digital channels.

But what happens when growth comes from stores, people, and product instead?

In this PostPod discussion, Marc and Vassilis reflect on their conversation with David, exploring the resurgence of iconic Canadian brand Kit and Ace and what modern marketers can learn from retail done properly.

The conversation moves beyond dashboards and attribution models i...

The Bay closed. Frank and Oak shuttered. Insolvencies have been climbing for years and the narrative everyone's repeating is that retail is in trouble. David Lui has a different read. Retail isn't dying. The operating model is. And the brands going under aren't the ones customers stopped loving, they're the ones whose people, product, and place stopped working.

As CEO of Kit & Ace and co-founder of Unity Brands, David is doing a...

For decades, marketers have debated one question:

How much frequency is enough?

But what if the industry has been arguing about two completely different things the entire time?

In Part 2 of this Sharp Cut series, Marc Binkley and Vassilis Douros revisit the reach vs frequency debate after a wave of listener feedback challenged, refined, and strengthened the original episode. What emerges is a far more nuanced framework built around on...

Most podcasts never make it past three episodes. This is episode 200.

In this special 200th episode of The Barber’s Brief, Marc Binkley and Vassilis Douros reflect on five years of The Sleeping Barber Podcast while diving into some of the biggest marketing conversations shaping the industry right now.

The episode explores why the laws of growth apply even to blood donation behaviour, how brands like McLaren Formula 1 Team are t...

What if modern marketing’s biggest problem isn’t bad targeting… but safe creativity?

In this PostPod episode of The Sleeping Barber Podcast, Marc Binkley and Vassilis Douros unpack their conversation with advertising legend Terry O'Reilly, and explore what today’s marketers may have lost in the pursuit of optimization, dashboards, and defensible decisions.

From pink flamingos and whistling beer campaigns to d...

There is a commercial in this episode that the president of Fibreglass tried to kill on a Thursday. By Sunday he had changed his mind, when his minister grabbed his arm and told him the pink panther ads were the funniest thing in advertising.

That campaign went on to capture 70 percent of the Canadian insulation market.

Every story Terry O'Reilly tells in this conversation is a campaign like that.

A group of nuns who lost their habits...

Most marketers believe brand purpose drives growth.

The data says otherwise.

In this episode of The Sharp Cut, we take on one of marketing’s most widely accepted ideas and put it under a microscope. Drawing on research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, Peter Field’s IPA databank analysis, and perspectives from Mark Ritson and Roger Martin, we unpack a simple but uncomfortable truth:

Brand purpose works… rarely.

We e...

In this episode, we cover everything from the growing trust gap in performance marketing to the evolving role of attribution, AI, and search, and what it all means for how marketers prove impact.

What we unpack:

1. Performance marketing’s missing layer: proof

Are clicks, conversions, and ROAS actually telling the truth — or just telling a story?

We explore the growing need for verification, transparency, and accountability ...

In this episode, Marc and Vassilis revisit their conversation with Dr. Nicole Hartnett, reflecting on the enduring principles of marketing effectiveness. They discuss the importance of market penetration over customer loyalty, the significance of mental and physical availability for growth, and the need for marketers to understand their customer profiles better. The conversation emphasizes the simplicity of marketing laws and the n...

Description

Picture a marketing world flipped upside down: Where heavy buyers aren't your golden goose, where loyalty programs might be missing the point, and where the brands you think are exceptional actually follow surprisingly predictable patterns. Dr. Nicole Hartnett, senior marketing scientist at the world-renowned Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, joins Marc and V to demolish some of marketing's most sacred assumptions with cold, har...