Joe Martin founded Tickle, a platform that lets people save an ad into their phone wallet instead of buying right now. Live at MAD//Fest, he joins Rory and Elfried to ask a blunt question: why do so many companies chase the same metrics as their competitors, and end up looking exactly like them?
They trace how optimising for what's easy to measure can work against what actually makes a business succeed, from a CPG brand that got an outstanding result and refused to repeat it, to Soviet factories that paid workers by the weight of the chandeliers they built, until the ceilings gave way.
"Good numbers" and "a good business" have quietly become two different things. This episode is about telling them apart.
Timestamps
00:22 – Bottleneck's second-ever live show
01:40 – What Tickle actually does
02:21 – Why most ads arrive at exactly the wrong moment
05:12 – A brand gets a great result and says no thanks
08:03 – The AR treasure hunt that led to Tickle
15:17 – Why clients are bonused on the wrong metrics
17:28 – "We're in the trust business, not the ads business"
20:29 – Why finance can't measure a relationship
21:12 – The AO teddy bear nobody can put on a spreadsheet
26:34 – Heathrow's pods and the tyranny of the wrong metric
29:40 – The Soviet chandelier problem
32:00 – Closing out MAD//Fest
Follow Rory
Instagram: @rorysutherland_clips
TikTok: @Rorysutherlandclips
X: @rorysutherland
LinkedIn: in/rorysutherland/
Follow Elfried
Instagram: @elfriedsamba
LinkedIn: in/elfriedsamba/
https://www.butterflyeffect.xyz/
Follow Joe Martin
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/itsjoemartin
https://jointickle.com/
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