Ghetto Story

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, not a rock star, but a CMO and trusted advisor, and in this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of marketing street knowledge that I hope will help unlock the rockstar marketer in you.

Hello!

If you’ve opened this newsletter, follow us on LinkedIn or listen to the podcast, then you’ll know that a couple of years ago, working with my chum Jeff Clark, a former Forrester Research Director, we created The 5 F’in’ Marketing Fundamentals.

One of the things that seemed to crop up across multiple conversations, with various guests on the podcast is that marketing doesn’t fail because teams don’t work hard enough. It fails because fundamentals get ignored, often as teams are driven to follow the latest trend or buzzy channel, as the boss asks “Why aren’t we on Tikface”.

We’ve talked about them a lot on the podcast, but what are the consequences of neglecting the fundamentals?

Well, Jeff’s suggestion was “The 5 F’in’ Fails” an occasional series where we dig into each of our 5 fundamentals and share 5 potential fails a commercial team might experience, based on the decades of experience we share in B2B marketing leadership and the clients he advised during his tour as a respected analyst.

As a reminder our five fundamentals are The Masterplan, The Knowledge, The Story, The Campaign and The Machine.

A couple of weeks ago we took a look at The Machine, this week, for the episode dropping on Saturday, we are looking at The Story and I thought I’d share a preview of where I think that conversation will go (we’ve not recorded it as I type this, so let’s see).

The Story shapes how buyers understand their problem, how sales frames conversations, and how the business earns confidence over time and we’ll dig into five fails for when companies get The Story wrong.

First, sales quietly stops trusting marketing. Reps rewrite decks. They tweak the narrative. They avoid using content altogether. The result isn’t just bruised egos; it’s fractured messaging, slower deals, and an erosion of trust across the revenue team.

Then there’s the fade to “B2B beige”. Professional, polished… and completely forgettable. Without a strong point of view, stories collapse into category language. You don’t offend anyone, but you don’t stand out to anyone either. And when you’re not distinct, you’re replaceable.

We will also talk about why sales ends up re-educating buyers far too late, if marketing hasn’t started that process. No doubt we’ll be referring to the 95-5 rule research from LinkedIn and that by the time sales engages, buyers have already framed the problem, built a shortlist, and formed opinions making it far harder to change the narrative.

My view is that if we don’t grab the hearts and minds of the buyer early, we end up in a feature, function, and price wars. B2B buying might be justified with logic, but it’s driven by emotion, confidence, risk reduction, career safety - and yeah, as I’ve shared here before FOFU - A Fear of F’in’ Up.

And finally, we’ll talk about the missed opportunity of the compounding effect with “random acts of content”. When stories are treated as tactics instead of long-term assets, launched weakly, measured too quickly, and constantly reset nothing sticks. The market gets confused and content becomes a cost.

I’ve not shared a podcast topic in advance here before, but hopefully, this isn’t a spoiler, but a teaser and you’ll still tune in on Saturday.

And the subject line this week, it’s Ghetto Story by Baby Cham and Alicia Keys.

Thanks for reading this far, please take a look at the links below and have a splendid week!

Cheers!

Ian

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