The Push cover art

The Push

The Push

By: Jack Ferguson
Listen for free

About this listen

The Push is a podcast for senior marketers eager to hear honest perspectives from peers who tell it like it is. We speak directly to your day-to-day reality and don't bother with superfluous tactics you don't need.


We understand that senior marketing is uniquely frustrating.


  • You have to sell the 'why' more than any other department.
  • You're held accountable for results beyond your control.
  • You're forever dealing with non-marketers who 'know better than you'.
  • Stakeholder politics, opinions, and “gut feelings” constantly get in the way.
  • You're so busy dealing with stakeholders, there's little time left to conceptualise new strategies and hone your craft.


We bring together senior marketers to candidly share stories, analogies, strategies, and mental models they've used.


You can use these conversations to:


  • Explain complex concepts to non-marketers.
  • Get more client buy-in.
  • Explore new strategy ideas.
  • Better articulate your existing knowledge.
  • Explain the 'why' behind your strategy.
  • Keep your own team engaged.
  • Better navigate marketing politics (which are inevitable).
  • Remember that you're not alone in your experiences.


No empty buzzwords. No listicles. No generic advice.


Whether you’re in-house, agency-side, or a consultant, you’ll leave feeling empowered to speak up and lead with confidence.


The Push is hosted by Jack Ferguson, a Brand Strategist with 15 years of marketing and brand experience across 20+ industries.

© 2025 The Push Career Success Economics Marketing Marketing & Sales
Episodes
  • S3 E47: When Marketers Market Themselves: The Pressure to Be Perfect and Why Self-Promotion Feels Unnatural (with Chanel Clark)

    S3 E47: When Marketers Market Themselves: The Pressure to Be Perfect and Why Self-Promotion Feels Unnatural (with Chanel Clark)
    Sep 16 2025

    Building a brand is hard enough; but when you’re a marketer, the challenge intensifies. You feel the pressure to be perfect, and every misstep feels like you “should’ve known better.”

    Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson and Founder of the Marketing Club Chanel Clark co-host this episode.

    In this episode, Chanel shares how leaning into authenticity and vulnerability, rather than perfection, built her credibility, grew the Marketing Club to 10,000 members, and turned simple diary-style LinkedIn posts into a fully booked consultancy and speaking opportunities with Google and SXSW.

    The episode covers:

    • How Jack accidentally picked a fight on LinkedIn and went viral

    • How Chanel and Jack’s discomfort around talking about personal achievements makes self-promotion feel unnatural

    • How Chanel has noticed marketing professionals struggle to transition from promoting others to promoting themselves

    • The pressure Chanel believes marketers feel to present a perfect, polished image online

    • How Chanel launched the Marketing Club from a simple Slack community and grew it to 10,000 members in two and a half years

    • How Chanel’s public disclosure of losing $80,000 in her first year of business became a powerful LinkedIn post

    • Chanel’s experience running a successful consulting business for 18 months without a website

    • How Chanel built a personal brand by documenting her marketing journey through “diary entries” on LinkedIn

    • How Chanel overcame her initial discomfort with self-promotion by being authentically vulnerable online

    • How Chanel became fully booked within a month of launching her consultancy

    • How Chanel grew her profile to secure speaking slots at SXSW and Google

    Find links to Jack's and Chanel's online profiles below:

    Find Jack on LinkedIn here: Jack Ferguson | LinkedIn

    Find Chanel on LinkedIn here: Chanel Clark | LinkedIn

    Follow The Push on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thepush

    Follow The Push on TikTok here: thepushmedialab (@thepushmedialab) | TikTok

    Follow The Push on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/bethepush

    Visit The Push website here: For Senior Marketers...By Senior Marketers | The Push

    Visit Jack’s personal website here: https://jackferguson.co/

    Visit Chanel’s website here: Chanel Clark - Marketing Consultant

    Visit The Marketing Club’s website here: The Marketing Club

    Follow The Marketing Club on Instagram: Instagram

    Follow The Marketing Club on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-marketing-club-au-nz
    Show More Show Less
    46 mins
  • S3 E46: The Marketing Objectives Paradox: Promises Get Remembered

    S3 E46: The Marketing Objectives Paradox: Promises Get Remembered
    Sep 9 2025

    Every marketer knows the value of objectives, they help you prioritise, decide what to push, and what to park.

    But here’s the paradox: the very objectives that keep you focused can come back to bite when stakeholders grip too tightly to the promises baked into them.

    This episode is hosted by Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson.

    In this solo episode, Jack unpacks a story of working with a professional services client where well-intentioned objectives turned into “but you said we’d have sales by now.”

    From that experience came a shift in how he sets, frames, and manages objectives.

    He’ll cover:

    • Why outcome-based objectives set you up for blame when factors outside your control stall sales


    • The danger of stakeholders remembering promises, not caveats


    • How to balance short-term tactics with long-term brand building without losing credibility


    • What input-based objectives look like in practice (and why they’re safer)


    • How ongoing retainers and project-based arrangements affect expectation drift


    If you’ve ever felt trapped between setting clear objectives and being held to outcomes you can’t control, this episode will give you a framework for balancing ambition with defensibility.

    Helpful Links:

    Find Jack on LinkedIn here: Jack Ferguson | LinkedIn

    Follow The Push on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thepush

    Follow The Push on TikTok here: thepushmedialab (@thepushmedialab) | TikTok

    Follow The Push on Instagram here: Instagram

    Visit The Push website here: https://bethepush.com/

    Visit Jack’s personal website here: Brand Strategist: Marketing Consultancy — Jack Ferguson
    Show More Show Less
    7 mins
  • S3 E45: Marketers vs. Client Beliefs: Why Alignment Outperforms Persuasion (with Ben Reeves)

    S3 E45: Marketers vs. Client Beliefs: Why Alignment Outperforms Persuasion (with Ben Reeves)
    Sep 2 2025

    Every marketer has faced it, clients convinced marketing should be a quick fix or a single big idea. In this episode, we discuss challenges with non-marketer persuasion, and why alignment and expectation management matter more.

    This episode was co-hosted by Brand Strategist Jack Ferguson and E-commerce specialist Ben Reeves.

    They discuss:

    • How Ben’s client claimed his one “big marketing idea” worked, and whether his claim stands up to scrutiny


    • How Ben missed out on hiring a top UX designer after a client insisted on an unnecessary last-minute “vibe check”


    • How Ben’s retail client demanded that digital ads drove only online sales (not offline) and how he responded


    • How Jack was asked to hire a PPC freelancer, then held accountable for results on a campaign he wasn’t managing


    • How Ben rebuilt a company’s digital operations from scratch after realising they were running campaigns through WhatsApp chats and iMessage threads


    • How Ben navigated his marketing role when one founder exited, roles shifted, and he had to play goalkeeper, midfielder, and striker all at once


    • How Ben fought constant scope creep when “North Stars” kept changing


    • How Jack and Ben discovered that much of a marketer’s work is invisible: fixing fundamentals, plugging holes, and preventing breakdowns that clients never see


    Helpful Links:

    Find Jack on LinkedIn here: Jack Ferguson | LinkedIn

    Find Ben on LinkedIn here: Ben Reeves | LinkedIn

    Follow The Push on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thepush

    Follow The Push on TikTok here: thepushmedialab (@thepushmedialab) | TikTok

    Follow The Push on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/bethepush

    Visit The Push website here: https://bethepush.com/

    Visit Jack’s personal website here: Brand Strategist: Marketing Consultancy — Jack Ferguson

    Visit Ben’s website here: https://benreeves.co/
    Show More Show Less
    29 mins
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.