Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO, delighted you are here. I’m Ian Truscott, and I intend to share a mix of what’s caught my eye from the Rockstar CMO community, the latest discussions from the podcast and our street knowledge blog.

Hello you!

If you listen to the Rockstar CMO podcast, you’ll know that for the first 150 episodes or so, I used the tagline “does the world need another f’in’ podcast”, but I’ve dropped saying it in the show opening, as it seemed weird to be asking if the world needed something as I celebrated doing 150 of them!

If the world didn’t f’in’ need it, I really ought to have stopped. But there is a small part of the world who have sustained me, either as guests or listeners, who maybe don’t need another f’in’ marketing podcast, but have found a place for it in their week (and if you are one, thank you!).

And weirdly enough, when I dropped asking the question in the podcast, it seemed the world started asking it. Based on the widely reported challenges, Spotify has had to get a return on their huge investment (for example this article in Morning Brew), causing them to reduce headcount, many commentators have been asking; does the world need more podcasts? Is it a content channel in decline?

Maybe I’m a couple of weeks late to this topic, all the cool kids are talking about ChatGPT, but as Jeff and I were chatting about B2B podcasting this week on the podcast (yeah, a bit meta), I thought I’d include some articles on podcasting that might interest you.

It’s still early days with relaunching this newsletter, let me know what you think, please email me at [email protected] and thanks for opening…

Have a great week!

Cheers!

Ian

Ian Truscott | Founder and Chief Bottle Washer | Rockstar CMO

Are there really 2 million podcasts?

You could feel that the market is saturated with millions of podcasts, why should you start yours? Well, as this shows from amplifi, the topline data is misleading and demonstrates that if you hang in there for more than 10 episodes, you’ll be in the minority, as only 36% of podcasts do.

This also underlines what we always say about any content marketing, it’s a longer-term strategy, and you need to hang in there to see the results.

Street Knowledge

The rest of what has caught my eye this week…

Monday Marketing Mojo

Finally…

Here is something to get your Monday marketing mojo working (for those of you viewing the web version, I send this on Sunday). The inspiration behind the title of this week’s newsletter a crew of classic hip-hop artists from 1994….