Adam Morgan is the founder of consultancy Eat Big Fish and author of the landmark marketing book Eating the Big Fish.

In this episode, host James Welch sits down with Adam to explore why the challenger brand concept is widely known yet deeply misunderstood — and why a challenger mindset is just as powerful inside Uber as it is inside a startup.

Adam shares the origin story of his consultancy (born from anger after TBWA rejected his book), the Apple stock he regrets never buying, his role in the new collective the Illuminari, and a surprising new chapter: writing children's picture books rooted in what he calls "joyful defiance."

Stick around for the High Five rapid-fire round featuring Tim Harford, Rory Sutherland, and a £350 offer to learn the principles of his own book.

[00:40] James Welch: Adam, hi. Good to see you.

[00:42] James Welch: I want to ask you about what I call the signal and the noise. So, something you've seen in the news, something you think is an interesting signal for the future in today's world.

[02:56] James Welch: The simplicity of the two words and yet the poignant effect that can have. That's what advertising planners have been doing since day dot, right? If you take yourself into a different competitive set, then you can be in the top right-hand corner of that competitive set. I love how you found something so poignant in today's scary landscape. I would love to turn to talk about how you've been using that idea of reframing throughout your career. What have you been doing of late from a business perspective, and what is Eat Big Fish up to these days?

(The 7-minute cut happens here)

[06:56] Adam Morgan: It's essentially a group of people, all of whom are interesting in their own domains, and offering a stable of interesting minds who have slightly different perspectives around marketing.

[10:12] Adam Morgan: Yeah, I've always wanted to write. I've now moved to three days a week working with Eat Big Fish... and at the same time, on Mondays and Fridays, I'm writing children's fiction. It's 750 words, picture books. It's just giving me enormous pleasure to live in my imagination. There's a fantastic writer called Katherine Rundell... she talks about writing children's fiction and says great children's fiction is like vodka for the human soul. I write a lot about joyful defiance for children, and learning to be joyfully defiant, because I think that's a very important attribute for any child to develop.

[12:04] Adam Morgan: I don't have heroes if I'm really honest. I think people I find very stimulating in terms of the way they think about the world... Tim Harford in the FT. Rory Sutherland. Derek Thompson in The Atlantic.

[13:40] Adam Morgan: Getting angry with TBWA, which was the agency I was working in when they decided that the book I had been writing for them they didn't want anymore. I spent 18 months writing this book which became Eating the Big Fish, and they didn't want it. I got really pissed off, and about six months later I was driven by anger and bile, and I decided therefore to leave and start my own business.

[14:42] Adam Morgan: I was flying out to Amsterdam where Apple was based from London... and I was in a meeting with Apple in 1998... and I heard one of the guys at Apple lean across to the other one and say, "I gather we're going to be in profit for the first time next month." And I didn't do anything. Apple stock I think was $10 at the time... Terrible decision. Sheer laziness.

[15:34] Adam Morgan: A slightly hollow laugh. When I started my own business... about eight months in I got a letter from the Chartered Institute of Marketing. They were doing a day-long course teaching the principles of a book I had written, Eating the Big Fish, that had come out eight months earlier. And they were offering to teach me the principles of my own book for £350. I thought that was hilariously funny.

[17:18] Adam Morgan: I think one of my key principles is we need to be as marketers consumer intimate, but idea-led and brand-led. Charlie Dawson at the Foundation is a really interesting thinker, very deep, very reflective on what it means to bring the consumer properly into an organization at a structural level.

[18:59] Adam Morgan: Pleasure, enjoyed it. Thank you.